The church is filled with colors streaming from the stained glass, shards of light shifting across the bloody crucifix, highlighting the exquisite agony of Christ's face. The parents sit to either side, mother resting a hand on his leg to stop the incessant swinging, father softly snoring to himself.

The boy looks up from his fingers (if you hold them this way, it looks a little like a triceratops, don't it?) as the sermon suddenly thunders, jolting Father's head down from hyperflexion, eyelids snapping up, rifle tracking startled birds.

"Seven times seven times! Not one, not seven, but seven times seven times!"

It is several minutes before Father sleeps again.

The front sight is daubed lightly with whiteout, a trick told him by a captain a year gone. It works, keeps the eye from being as strained.

He looks up, bookbag in hand weighed by algebra and biology, the shadows of leaves crisscrossing the wooded path. The helicopter swirls overhead, a hurricane of noise, as he hums an old Stones song, imagining carrying a rifle, carrying camouflage, the chopper spiraling downward in plumes of flame and oily smoke, GI Joe figurines leaping to safety.

A bead of sweat drips from his cheek, tinted green facepaint, floating from recoil, slowly tumbling to splash in the dust below.

Stumbling, bottle grasped firmly in numb fingers, right hand supporting against the stair rail, he nearly runs into the overhanging rose. Slowly, he raises his hand to hold the fragile petals, weeping into the summer night, backblasted by music pumped through blown speakers as drunk reactions crumple it to a red velvety mess.

The brass reflects the muzzle flash, floating through the air, careening from rock to rock, an idiot's pinball.

The wall is black - that is the first thing that strikes him about it. Not black like a coat or patent-leather shoes. Black like space - endless void. The music pours through headphones, standing on the Mall, seeing the little dots he knows are names. If someone had read his lips, they would know that as he stood, trying to count the white stars in the void, that he said "there's so many...."

Nature never intended for metal to fly through the air.

Later, afterward, when the wounds were bandaged and the dead collected, he began scratching names in the mud, a graffiti artist on someone else's wall.