He quietly turned the body over, so that the corpse of his brother’s face was downwards. The Sniper sighed heavily and leaned against the brick wall. He knew that he was not out of danger yet, but still, with his left arm he pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. Puffs of smoke covered up in front of his face, making it impossible to read his facial expression, but his body shrieked, his shoulders cramped up and down, he breathed in and out of the short cigarette in an insane speed, and eventually his shaking left arm dropped the cigarette to the ground. The light got blown out by the breezing wind of Dublin night.
Looking down at the cigarette, the Sniper coldly laughed and turned his face towards the corpse of his brother. The ends of his mouth got dragged down by the pouring tears that he could no longer fit in his tired eyes. The tears poured and made their way through the wrinkles on the Sniper’s face, at last dripping to the back of the corpse. Under the dim street lights of Dublin, the other Sniper was visible. He had the same dark black hair as the Sniper, his pants sticked to the bony legs, it was like the matches that the Sniper used to lit his cigarette.
The Sniper squated down beside his brother’s corpse, still sobbing like a little kid. The burning pain on his right arm isn’t even the 100th of how his heart was torturing him, it was like a thousand bullets cutting through every inch of his muscle and skin.
The pain was unbearable.
He looked up to the dark sky with no stars, he was searching for the moon, the moonlight. He loved the bright and white color the moon shines on to the sidewalks beneath his window. Every night before all of these had started, he climbs out of the bed with his brother to the window. Carefully they pull back the curtain, and the white light shines in. The brothers will lean against the window and look down at the sidewalk. The sidewalk was never peaceful because of the gunfire every night, but the pure light of the moon quiets the neighborhood down in the brother’s minds, and they will peacefully fall asleep.
There was the moon, shinning a little amount of light through the dark clouds of the night. He stared at the white moon, barely visible behind the black clouds, he stared and sat down on the sidewalk.
At a sudden moment, the sniper stood up and faced the corpse lying on the sidewalk. He nodded his head and turned back to the building he came from.
The Sniper walked hurriedly to his reporter’s room inside the building, without even knocking the door, he went in. A group of people he never met was standing around the green table, his reporter was at the center near the huge black board against the wall. People stared cautiously at the sniper, all of them touched the guns hidden behind their back, ready to pull them out at any moment. The sniper straightened up, and stomped through the dangerous eyes staring at him, all the way to the reporter.
He hesitated for a moment and opened his mouth, but the reporter didn’t let any of the words out, he reads from the sniper’s eyes, the emotion, the sadness, the naive ness. After all, he is still a child, his fingers are not made to hold on to a cigarette, his eyes are not perfect for aiming, his heart is not hard as a rock, cool as icebergs in the North Pole.
A gun shots inside the tight room, no one gasped, they all took a look at the boy lying in the pond of blood, his eyes opens wide. No one caught it, but yes, he was smiling, smiling like the pure moonlight shining bright outside the room.

Continued from the Short Story “The Sniper” By Flannery O’Connors