A Friend In Need...

Here is a serious question I shall pose at the end of this short 'story'.

A man goes off to war. He lives everyday with the knowledge that despite all his armor and weapons and bullets and skill, the very moment he lives could be the last. People want him dead. They want him dead. He kills men everyday. It's his job, it's his duty. He sees his mates get wounded. He sees things that he never wants to see ever again yet it haunts him every night.

He returns home. He finds his "loving" wife, whom he has thought of during his tour as his beacon of hope, in bed with an old friend. He breaks down. Within a few weeks a rumor runs through his circle of friends, his "support" circle. According to his old friend and his wife, he beat his children. He hurt them. Suddenly he isn't the "hero" or the poor guy who came home from war to find his beloved fucking their friend. He's worthless. He's a psychopath. He's a dog.

The truth is that he never laid a finger on his kids, given the time frame they said he did. He was at war. But funnily enough 'everyone' seemed to forget that, or not seem to care. They don't come near him again, cast him out of society into loneliness and despair. Leaving him to battle his PTSD and the day he found his wife and mate together, all alone.


Tell me, what happens to these people that makes things up for their own gain? People who end up socially and financially better off than those they kicked in the guts when paralysed with pain?