Monument

The place where the two roads meet is always busy. A steady rush of people spilling into the open space and funnelling back out between the dappled stone walls of the buildings that line the streets, the rhythmic calls from the market stalls as sellers draw attention to their wares. Shouts and laughter as children run through the square, tripping on the round cobbles, whose smooth tops have been polished to a shine by generations of feet pushing the grime into the crevices between them. Life, swirling around that stone standing in the very centre of the square like a single, rough fang tearing through the ground. The sunlight catches the names picked out in bronze, a silent cry ever calling for those who died at his hands.

I had never killed anyone before. People reassured me, for ages afterwards, citing the greater good. They likened it to the trolley problem, an out of control train where you could do nothing and let it hit five people, or do something and make it hit just one. I did something, and those five – or ten, or fifty, we do not know when or if he would have stopped – names are not on the monument. That is what they told me, year on year, until now they and their children pass it by not even thinking how it could have been different. I, too, am forgotten, polished to a shine in their memories yet reduced to nothing but the dirt slipping through the cracks.

I long ago made peace with what I became in that moment. When someone – a hero – me – finally stood up to put a stop to it. Woke up an innocent man and went to sleep (but not for long. Never for long) a monster, albeit one trained and turned upon someone far worse. I remember facing him, staring eye to eye, fighting hand to hand under the scorching sun. I remember the hundred thousands of decisions that led up to that moment. I could not make peace with them all.

A cloud passes over the sun, bronze letters of the monument reflecting blankly back at the sky. The breeze is chill in the shade, and my joints and muscles ache for the sun to return, stiffening as if I too am becoming stone. The people rush on, spilling into the square and funnelling back out, merchants crying out their wares to be bought with cold metal, the weapons we used, the weapons used against us, melted down and reformed into discs blankly reflecting each person’s life back at them. Do they not see the shadow over their shoulders? Do they not see the monument, and remember that they may never have seen this moment?

Because many didn’t. Many fell before I – a hero – someone stood up to stop him. And those that were left washed their hands of it, of him, of me, of them. Grateful that someone did something. They do not understand the trolley problem. Whichever road you take, someone dies. Whichever road you take, it is the innocent who suffer. They liken him to the lone man who dies if you take action – but in the trolley problem, the man with the rope, the man who tampered with the train to make it lose control, is nowhere to be found.

I faced him, eye to eye, hand to hand, under the scorching sun, feet slipping on the polished cobbles painted with death. I knew behind me was a huddle of people behind an upturned market stall. I knew behind me was one person curled behind a fallen piece of masonry. I saw where he looked, where he guessed there were living bodies hiding. I knew I had a choice.

I wonder if their blood still lies beneath the dirt, in the crevices between the cobbles where it ran.