Here is part one of my short story entitled: The Wall Between.  If you enjoy, please pass it on to someone else that might enjoy it.

The Wall Between: Part 1

It was hotter today than it had been in a while. Parith wiped the sweat off his brow as he pedaled the last few feet to his station. The wall loomed in front of him just like it did every day. 

Parith had been stationed at the wall for almost five years.  In those five years, nothing really changed sure he and the other guards had bought a ping pong table, and someone had added some graffiti to the wall one night (which he assumed had been one of the guards on the night shift), but other than that, nothing had changed.  

Parith parked his bike in its usual spot.   He stopped bothering to lock it after the first month of deployment.  Who would rob a military outpost anyway?  He had thought.  He stood and looked over the section of the wall he had been tasked with guarding.  

The building they called the barracks was just to his left. It was a small two-story house in a desperate need of attention. The military promised that they would fund the renovations they had promised them three years ago that had not materialized yet.  Parith had repaired one of the green window shutters that had been falling off with a couple of nails, but it needed more.  The shutter would rock when they tried to open it, so they just left it closed all the time.  Still, it was comfortable enough for the three of them that were always on duty.  

Vivaan’s voice carried through the open windows of the grey building.  Parith assumed Vivaan was probably watching the cricket match that Parith hadn’t bothered to care about like the rest of the country.  He knew that Arjun watched on as well, but Arjun kept one eye on the wall.  

Not like anything had happened at the wall.  

Parith had nothing but respect for his co-soldiers Arjun and Vivaan.  While he felt like Vivaan was a little loose with his convictions when he was at work.  Vivaan was the tallest and the strongest of the three of them that worked during the day.  Vivaan loved to workout, run, and watch sports.  His attention to the wall wasn’t what Parith would consider key.  Arjun, on the other hand, was dedicated to his job.  He like Parith spent their time at work observing and running the line of the wall.  

Another scream came from the room, excitement or anguish, Parith couldn’t tell.  He desired no part of it anyway.  

Parith continued his morning ritual.  He had performed this ritual every day since they assigned him to watch the wall. His first time at his station, he walked to the wall, since then he always heads straight to the wall when he arrives.  The size of the wall impressed him from the moment he laid eyes on it.  Since he had been born, he had been told of the wall that blocked out the hideous invaders that would kill him in an instant if the wall ever came down.  

The wall itself was massive.  It was taller than the building they called home.  The wall spanned the entire length of the country.  Parith wasn’t sure of how many kilometers the border spanned.  It rose nine meters off the ground and its concrete construction made it only a couple of meters thick.  Parith found it quite impressive to this day.  

It was a strong wall, stronger than the houses in his country.  In school, he had been taught about the wall, all the tattered textbooks had pictures of the wall being built, and just after the wall was completed.  The government had put posters that read “The Wall Will Keep You Safe” and “We Stand With The Wall” in an attempt to force their issues on the people.  Although not mentioned in the textbooks, his mother had told him that the wall wasn’t what the people had wanted.  Now, as the country got further from the creation of the wall, the resistance to the wall had died.  The people had come to accept the wall for what it was.  

The posters the government had posted were still there; faded and falling off the walls now.  One of the posters was now covered in the dark crimson color of dried blood from when one of the Wall Guards had decided that he had enough with the wall.  He had taken a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

To the right of the splatter, a sliding door had been created.  Parith wasn’t sure how many of these sliding doors had been created, or even if there was another one.  He couldn’t see one on their section of the wall at all.  He had asked about the door when he got there, but his superiors had told him that no one had opened the door in so long, they weren’t sure what was on the other side of it.

As soon as they were gone, curiosity had gotten the better of him.  They hadn’t told him that he couldn’t open the door, so he made sure no one was watching and then slid the door open.  Behind the door, a viewport to the other side loomed.  It had been created as a square, three-fourths of a meter, by three-fourths of a meter, hollowed out to the other side with bars to keep the sense of security.  

Like he did every day, Parith approached the sliding door and made sure that Vivaan and Arjun weren’t watching and slid the door open.  He looked through the viewport until he saw what he had been looking for.

The eyes of the man on the other side of the wall.