CHARLES HAYES - LAST PRAYER

​Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others.

​ Last Prayer

I killed them all. Even though we were professionals, members of the same Green Beret A team, we were friends too. I planned the mission, had depended on the new weapon to be there to cover our backs, had been assured that it would be. Now with half my team dead and one of my legs gone I am told that some bastard blocked the money to purchase the new weapon. The same bastard that had ordered the mission to begin with. My generals tell me that he has explained how it was really Obama’s fault. Can you believe that! My friends are dead and it’s Obama’s fault that the weapon was not there. But I know who is to blame. I killed them.

The taste of blue steel as it presses against the roof of my mouth is vile but not as vile as what I have done. I voted for him. With my toe on the trigger, I flash pray. God, let this vote really count.  

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