short fiction · 2026-10-30

The Centurion's Report

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The centurion stood at the edge of the camp, watching the smoke rise from the village they had burned. His report to Rome would say: pacified. His report to himself would say nothing. He had learned, in twenty years of service, that the space between what is written and what is lived is where a man either breaks or hardens. The scroll in his satchel was blank. He had not written a word in three campaigns. The scribe back at the fort would fill it in — standard language, approved phrases, the grammar of empire. But the centurion knew: the grammar of empire has no vocabulary for the weight of a child's doll found in the ash, or the way the old woman had looked at him, not with hatred but with something worse — recognition. He touched the blank scroll. Some reports are written in the margins of the soul, in a script no scribe can read.