The Dark Gentleman.

I know the man who waits at the end, I have seen him with my own eyes many times. In war you can see terrible things. Things no man is meant to see, men treating others as target practice nothing better than meat. You can't think of the enemy as human, if you did you wouldn't be able to looks them in the eyes and then aim between them. You have to think of it as a game, a game you play as a child with sticks for guns and stones for grenades. You grow up but the games came in handy. There is a reason little boys all play army and dress up as soldiers. It's primal. War. The need to conquer all before us, to grow and expand our own little part of the world until it encompasses all. It can never be done. But we try anyway and we always will. Until the end of days. That is human nature.

I didn't join the army to fight. They put me through school and paid for my medical training, and in return I tried to do what I could to fix men that were already dead. They have a look in their eye when they get shot badly or blown half to hell, a sort of disbelief, a wide eyed stare as they try to stand on legs no longer attached to their bodies or desperately try to scoop their intestines back into the hole where their stomach used to be. You tell them they are going to be fine, that they'll make it if they just lay still. You look into the eyes of a dying man and lie. I don't know if they believed me or really even heard my voice but I dutifully spoke the words anyway. Sometimes they did live and they went home, maimed but alive. I met one of the guys at a reunion once, he came up to me walking with a slight limp due to his metal leg. He grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him, embracing me and patting me hard on the back. He thanked me for saving his life, for giving him his life he said. He showed me pictures of a happy smiling family, a beautiful wife and two kids, both girls stood around a fireplace covered in Christmas decorations. All because of me he said. He brought me a drink and we talked for a while about all he had done after his service. The guy still sends me a card at Christmas. At the time I didn't have the heart to tell him I couldn't even remember his name or where I had served with him. There had been many men with many missing legs, I never knew how many survived once they had been taken to the field hospitals, I only did my best to keep them alive long enough to get there.

But this isn't about the men who lived, it's about the men who didn't. The men who stare into your eyes in their last moments so they don't feel alone. It's true what they say you know, how you see the light fade. It's hard to describe but it's like a part of them goes, the body remains but it's just an empty shell for what was there. And sometimes in the glassy, distant stare of a dead man you see more than your own reflection. You see the man. The being. You see yourself reflected with a silhouette standing over your shoulder. He stands still and watching. You never see his face, though I'm not sure you would want to, a dark face hidden deep within that black, ethereal cowl. Many times I've turned when I saw him, sure I would find a squad mate there watching his friend die as I was. But there was never anyone, anything there. Nothing but the sounds and screams of war.

It kept me up at night. In the dark, early, unforgiving hours of the morning I am haunted by the memories of all the men who had died under my hands, as I try to stop the blood from leaving their bodies. Sometimes they would talk, sometimes cry, and some would just lay still and silent. Those where the men that scared me the most, the men who were seeing what I would soon see standing over them. Who knew what else they saw in those last precious moments. I hoped for their sake it was something good. It was always in the silent men's eye that I would glimpse his presence. Over the years I grow used to the figure and stopped turning to try and find him. But no matter how used to it I got it would still send a shiver down my spine, as if he had laid a cold hand on my shoulder.

But I still always wondered if he would be there for me. When my time was up and my end was close would I see him standing over me? Would he be smiling or would he be faceless as I had seen him all those times before? The thought both scares and intrigues me. To face ones own mortality is something, but to know there will be someone there ushering you into your new state of being is quite unnerving. It's something you're not supposed to know until the grand moment I think. It's private, between you and him. They say it's not over until the fat lady sings but I like to think of it as, it's not over until the dark gentlemen greets you. All these thoughts and more flit through my mind as the whisky sits in my hand and the clock ticks on. I count the years until I see him, the days, the minutes, the seconds. I find it hard to really live my life anymore. I know he is waiting to meet me, well meet me officially that is.

I have never told anyone any of this, these are the secrets I have carried all my life for fear of being labelled mad. Just another soldier with the same problems most come back with, the PTSD that can lead your mind astray from reality. And who could blame the poor guy they'd say, with what he's been through of course his mind has gone, all that war and pain and blood will do that to a man. But I know what I saw. I'm not crazy. For years I doubted myself, doubted what my own eyes saw. But I always knew, deep down somewhere in the very fabric of me I knew it was true. He stands to greet you into the arms of death. As friend or foe no one can truly know until this meeting, but he stands there all the same. No one dies alone.

I won't have to wait long to finally meet him. The doctors say it's terminal. They say there is nothing they can do for me since the chemotherapy stopped working, just make me comfortable. I don't welcome death but as I said it intrigues me. I think I'll shake his hand. As the moment draws closer I can almost feel my life slipping away. Like water draining from a cracked mug, slowly but surly the water leaks out. I can feel the light leave my eyes. My days feel empty now, I never had a family of my own. My friends, what few I had have all long moved away. The only comfort I have is the truth I know. No one truly dies alone. He is there waiting for you, watching for you. He has known of your meeting since your first breath on earth and he will be there for your last one. It's nice to know now I'm close. Everyday I feel a little nearer to him. I can already feel that cold hand on my shoulder. Already see the smile under his hood.