Today's story:

The return

As he walks through the dusty streets, he remembers the last time he was there: he was 18 years old and the war had started. Because he was poor and without parents, the government had said that he had to fight for his country. 10 years had passed since then and although they had won the war, there were many marks left, a lot of hatred, a lot of resentment.
o0o

He walked and remembered the people who mistreated him when he was a child; those who did not reach out to him when he needed them most; those who pointed it out when they came to look for people to send them to the trenches. He walked slowly and those who were stationed in the warehouse, in the plaza, at the doors of the houses, looked at him with curiosity from afar: Who was that soldier that he looked at with so much contempt and sadness? They murmured among themselves.
o0o

It was when the soldier arrived at the canteen that everyone knew who he was. They tried to greet him, but the soldier remained silent, absorbed, still. He ordered a beer and detailed everything around him. Then he took all the decorations out of his backpack and put them on the table. Without doing anything else, he finished the beer and as if he had just brought that back, he got up and started walking back. The people who saw him said that the soldier was carrying on a war inside, where the enemy was life and he was losing.