The editor of the publication seemed interested in work from female veterans. She asked me to write a story in three hundred words or less. So I did. It was rejected. I wasn't at all surprised. Still, no reason why I can't post it here.
Triple-X, by M. L. Doyle
I stomp over and pound on the flimsy excuse for a door before storming in uninvited, strafing them with my senior-leader glare.
“Turn that shit down. NOW!”
They scramble up to face me. They are shirtless, in shorts, sweatpants, t-shirts and flip flops. All of them wear the shock of interruption. One dives and fumbles for the remote.
Oh yeah. Oh baby. Harder, harder, and the rhythmic slap of naked skin on skin weakens. The seams of the sharp night air, ripped open by the echoes of the graphic sex sounds, slip back together across the camp.
“I live next door. There are ten women in that tent!” I say.
They are Scouts, just returned from patrol. Defiant, young boy-men who glower through ancient eyes. They hate me, but they are soldiers.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Keep it down now.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
I climb back into my rack, deflated. Mumbled ‘thank yous’ from my tent-mates drift to me through the anonymous dark.
The clock glows zero two-thirty. Behind my heavy lids I see them staring at me. Flattened by fatigue, with eyes as rusted as the spent casings they’ve left behind in their work.
A guilt dagger in my gut makes me want to curl into a ball, but the metal sides of my cot won’t allow it. I throb with unleashed grief.
M. L. Doyle has served in the U.S. Army at home and abroad for more than two decades as both a soldier and civilian. Mary is the author of The Desert Goddess series, an urban fantasy romp consisting of The Bonding Spell and The Bonding Blade. She has also penned The Master Sergeant Harper mystery series which has earned numerous awards including an IPPY, a Lyra Award and the Carrie McCray Literary Award. Mary is the co-author of two memoirs; A Promise Fulfilled; the story of a Wife and Mother, Soldier and General Officer (Jan. 201) and the memoir, I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home (Touchstone, 2010), which was nominated for an NAACP Image award. Mary's work has been published by The Goodman Project, The War Horse, The WWrite Blog and The Wrath-Bearing Tree, an online magazine for which she serves as a fiction editor. A Minneapolis, Minnesota native, Mary current lives in Baltimore. You can reach her at her website at mldoyleauthor.com.
