Ghosts of Dresden

     Phil and Carol Steinman stood in the hallway, outside the hospital nursery- Phil in his favorite blue tweed suit, Carol in her favorite floral day dress.  They looked through the glass partition on the wall, at the bassinets and the newborn life they carried.  Some of the infants slept peacefully, exhausted by the existential journey they had made.  Others fussed and moved about- little legs kicking, tiny arms twitching; their fists closed tight, gripping.  Just gripping.  With each cry, they seemed to yell out, “I’m here!  I’m here!  Why?  Why?”  Few seemed content, in consciousness, watching the mobiles above their heads spin in circles. 
     Carol’s eyes gooed and gahed.  Phil’s, not so much. 
     “You know, I don’t see how anyone on this earth would want to reproduce,” he said.

Post-Traumatic Jim Fischer

    Jim Fischer started going crazy, as many veterans did, sometime after returning from the Vietnam War.
    In other words, Jim had become a cliché. 
    To elaborate on the cliché, it should be mentioned, Jim went crazy without having experienced any of the significant wartime traumas that so affected his comrades.  He never saw a second of combat.  He never even saw a human casualty of the war.  What he had seen, in his six months of “service,” was how an M60 machine gun could blow apart a wild boar.  His squad commander had mistaken it for a Viet-Cong. 
    His squad commander was high on cocaine. 
    Jim was high on marijuana. 
    Everyone in the squad was high on something; and they were high because they were either paranoid or bored.