Mark Hannigan loved to be right on the edge of conflict. He left the war, and came back from a trip to a foreign island nation. There he committed unspeakable crimes, many of which he struggled to suppress in his hippocampus. Hannigan has killed a lot of people. One time he even chopped an arm off a corpse for fun. He only kept the thumb, which is now in his breast pocket.
     When he left to fight sixty years ago, he wasn’t leaving anything or anyone behind. In fact, he was always set on going to war. War is where a strong, agile, workingman went in times of depression.  For Hannigan, war wasn’t about the destruction of communism. It was a safe place: where his aggression, large lanky frame, and desire to be seen as a hero are accepted and even commonplace.
     He never left the country, or even sat in a plane before he was deployed. Now that he’s returned, he hardly leaves his couch. He calls out to no one as he watches ESPN by himself. Now, Hannigan does not regret going to war. Despite all of the outrage and criticism soldiers, the president, and the country have faced, Hannigan would do it again if he could.
     He left too early, retired when he was only twenty-five. An explosion blew off his left leg one night when he made way to a trench to relieve himself. He was lucky to have a torso. Today, he wears a prosthetic leg he got for free years after his injury. He still feels the need to hide it underneath a pair of slacks when he goes out, making it his number one priority to take the slacks off when he gets home.
     Home is a lakeshore apartment in Minnesota, surrounded by other strangers and shared with no one. This wasn’t what he had pictured for himself; he actually used to think he would have a family. Even before the war, it was something inevitable and distant to his eighteen-year-old mind. Hannigan would have been considered charming and maybe even handsome when he entered the war. Most wouldn’t think so now. They wouldn’t think much at all if he passed by. Maybe they would notice a slight limp or a rancor they think is characteristic of old white people.
     Thankfully, Hannigan had found an outlet many years ago- to plug his television into. He also found one to help cope with his experiences in the war. Sometimes he would talk to the old dainty lady next door, whom he slowly fell in love with. That never happened, although Hannigan sometimes imagined that there was an old lady next door instead of the noisy Vietnamese family.
     One smoking hot summer evening, around the time when Hannigan could no longer pay for therapy, he went to the local marketplace. As he made way to the watermelon stand, he accidentally shoved someone. He furtively hid a smile while watching the man grimace. The young collegiate man looked at Hannigan as though he embodied all of humanity’s crimes and all that’s wrong with the world.
     This would no longer be an accident. Most of the time, Hannigan would jostle those unfortunate enough to meet Hannigan. Everyone was a target. Everyone was not a target! Hannigan is not a psychopath: he would never shove children, a pregnant woman, or the mentally or physically disabled. (Unless he didn’t know these things prior to the shoving.)
     Most of those shouldered and elbowed or full body thrusted would walk away quietly muttering curses. A number of others would give him a grotesque look or both. Some would turn around and apologize, even when he was the one who knocked a cronut out of their hand.
     For an instant, the majority would feel Hannigan’s pain. He recognized the flash of anger and confusion, which had become familiar with him. From the pain of relaxing on a beach of dead mangled bodies, deciding whether or not to go limp and become one of them, he was haunted by such anguish. Being forced to destroy lives or risk being labeled a coward and shot caused his miserable state of compliance.
     In their frightened eyes he knew they saw crime, pain, and a depreciating state of self-worth. Most walked away satisfied with fabricating the notion that they suddenly recalled a bad dream or a scene from a scary movie. The harder Hannigan shoved an individual, the more difficult it became for them to invent a remedy. This threshold varied for different individuals and he quickly recognized that.
     In the beginning Hannigan didn’t care, frequently taking part in bar fights. As he got older, Hannigan had become wiser and even more careless. Many wouldn’t engage in a fistfight with an old seventy-nine year old man, and he knew that.