The Cost of Sunflowers

A Short Story

By Eric McQuiston

Part One

Luke stood on the verge of a cracked, gray sidewalk, staring out into the empty street as if it held some kind of answer. It was late evening, and the streets were quiet, only an occasional passing car breaking the silence. The orange glow of an aging sodium vapor streetlamp fell in patches along the pavement, casting long shadows that stretched like fingers toward him. He was only twenty-eight, but his face was weathered, carrying a weight far beyond his years.

He had come back to this small town, the place he knew best and despised most, searching for something he couldn’t name. The buildings were as he remembered them—stained with age, grimy, with broken windows and peeling paint. It was the kind of place that seemed trapped in its own shadow, and Luke felt like a piece of it. This town had been his first home and his last; no matter how far he’d gone, he always seemed to end up here.

His childhood had left scars, deep ones, but not the kind that people noticed. His parents, addicts both, had used him when it was convenient and ignored him when it wasn’t. Petty crimes had become a way of life, not out of rebellion but survival. He had learned how to shoplift food and cigarettes, slip cash from unsuspecting pockets and purses and play a victim. The skills had been tools his parents gave him to survive their world, a world that revolved around narcotics and faded promises. They had gone to prison before he hit adolescence, and he’d been shuffled from one foster home to another, each one more detached, more temporary than the last.

Still, something inside of Luke fought for a future. He had pushed his way through high school, his sharp mind and love of the escape offered by reading, pushed him forward when everything else seemed to be pulling him back. He earned a scholarship to State and qualified for numerous grants. And for a brief, beautiful moment, he thought he might escape. The State University had been an entirely new world, one with clean halls and classrooms filled with laughter and lightness, things he didn’t know people could have. His classmates would bemoan the hardships that only the privileged would consider hard. But he felt free, even happy. Yet, like an expanding stain in fragile fabric, his past began seeping back into his life. The unresolved wounds, the need to escape, the numbness he craved—they all returned, and with them came a series of poor choices that unraveled the life he’d tried to build.

A year and a half in, he dropped out, unable to keep up with the mounting pressures and the legal troubles that loomed over him like menacing clouds. The scholarship money was gone, the vision of a future fading into a bitter memory. The streets pulled him back, and with nowhere else to turn, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, hoping it would be the answer. And for a while, it was. Discipline, structure, a place to channel his anger—it worked, almost. Training gave him a sense of purpose, a rhythm to live by, even a kind of respect he hadn’t felt before. But the demons he thought he’d left behind followed him there, too. In moments of silence, they crept back, lingering just at the edges of his mind, whispering, reminding him of everything he was running from and beckoning his return.

As a civilian again, Luke was lost. No direction, no structure, just memories and regrets, trailing him like shadows on this broken sidewalk. He had done his time and left The Marines with an honorable discharge after yet another minor infraction that could not be overlooked. But it meant little to him. There was a hollowness now, a void that gnawed at him each day. Back to square one, with the weight of his past pressing down harder than ever. He could still see the faces of those who had once believed in him, who had offered him something better, a glimpse of a life that he could have had. He was ashamed at the memory. And now he was here, in a familiar place that was as lost and empty as he felt.

The streetlights flickered, and a soft rain began to fall, drizzling down and casting a mist over the dreary, suburban landscape. Luke closed his eyes, turned his head to the sky, and let it wash over him, Praying that the rain might cleanse something, as if it could rinse away the emptiness in his chest, the guilt in his bones. But it didn’t. He opened his eyes, blinking against the droplets, feeling them sting, feeling briefly alive, but barely so.

He knew he had to move, to go somewhere, do something, anything to keep from slipping further. But the pull of old habits was strong, the lure of medicating his numbing pain nearly irresistible. As he took a step forward, he felt that same sinking feeling creep back—the purposelessness, the endless cycle of highs and lows, each one leading back to this moment, to this street, to this sense of never truly escaping the place he was born into.

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Part Two

Luke drifted through his civilian life like a ghost, moving from one fleeting obligation to the next, unable to anchor himself anywhere. Each job he tried seemed to end the same way, with him out the door, an unspoken understanding that he didn’t fit, that he was either too much or not enough. Friends became strangers, relationships dissolved into chaos or silence, and each ending felt like another shove back into the pit he’d been trying to crawl out of for years. Legal issues cropped up like weeds, rooted in reckless decisions he couldn’t seem to stop making. Nights spent drowning in alcohol, or worse, turned into mornings spent knowing that he'd ended up there again.

One day, facing yet another summons, another round of courtroom glances and drawn-out hearings, an idea flashed into his mind. It was reckless, maybe even foolish, but something about it clung to him, pulled him out of himself: Ukraine. The news had been full of reports of the war, stories of foreign fighters volunteering to join the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion. He read about men like him, searching for a purpose and finding it on foreign soil. The thought burned into him—a chance to escape himself, to shed the dead husk of his old life and perhaps even redeem himself. In the depths of his disillusionment, it looked almost like hope.

Luke went through the motions with a rare clarity and determination. He submitted the paperwork, scraped together what little he had, borrowed the rest, and booked a ticket. The decision gave him something he hadn’t felt in years: anticipation. The promise of Kyiv filled his mind, blotting out his spiraling fears, quieting the bitter whispers of failure that had been his constant companions. Maybe this was what he needed, he thought—a catharsis to wipe away everything he couldn’t seem to shake.

When he arrived in Kyiv, the city was nothing like he expected. A strange blend of normalcy and anxiety hung over everything. The remnants of the Mozart Group, an organization coordinating foreign fighters, took him in, and he found himself surrounded by men from all over the world, each of them carrying their own stories, their own reasons for being here. They didn’t ask questions; they simply handed him his gear and introduced him to his training officers. He was now part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) or Збройні сили України, a strange badge of purpose that he wore like hopeful armor.

But as the familiar training began, doubts began to worm their way back into his mind. He’d expected something raw and broken here, something that would match the fractured feeling inside of him. Yet Kyiv was unsettlingly alive. He wandered through the city after hours, watching people moving through dimly lit streets. Bars and nightclubs pulsed with music, laughter spilling out onto the sidewalks, groups of young women dressed in vibrant colors dancing as if the world beyond the city didn’t exist. The energy was surreal, a twisted echo of the life he’d left behind, as if the city itself was caught between two worlds—one at peace, untouched, and another waiting to be consumed by fire.

During the day, he saw a different side of Kyiv, a quieter, grayer side. Commuters hurried along clean streets dodging traffic. Elderly men and women walked with purpose through narrow market alleys, their movements deliberate, their faces heavy with an exhaustion that went beyond age. They were part of this city’s reality, standing in stark contrast to the brash, young people of the night. They moved through life in a somber rhythm, their eyes hard and sad, as if they’d long accepted what Luke was only beginning to grasp.

Luke felt split, like he was standing on the edge of a chasm between two worlds. The nightlife, alive with vibrant color and movement, and the quiet, worn faces in the daylight were two sides of something he couldn’t quite comprehend. The strangeness of it all seeped into him, filling him with a quiet unease. He had come here for purpose, for something to erase the emptiness gnawing at him, but each day in Kyiv reminded him of the life he couldn’t escape, a life of both promise and inevitable ruin. It was a tangible vision of the battles he was still fighting within himself.

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Part Three

The weeks of training blurred by in a whirlwind of sweat, exhaustion, and hollow camaraderie. Language and communication was the most difficult aspect, but Luke had thrown himself into it with single-minded intensity, grateful for the distraction it provided, the numbness it offered from his inner battles. Each drill, each maneuver, each shouted command buried a piece of his old life, silencing the questions he carried with him. The other soldiers were distant figures, faces he began to recognize but kept at arm’s length. He had become a shadow going through the motions, detached yet driven. It was a familiar place for him.

When he was finally assigned to an armored unit, reality hit with a jarring sharpness that he was not prepared for. His unit was deployed to a contested village, a place of crumbling buildings and bullet-riddled walls, where Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed in constant, brutal exchanges. Unlike the vibrant city, the village seemed suspended in a permanent haze of smoke and dust, scarred by explosions and defiled by the relentless grind of war. Luke’s mission was clear: hold the village. But he could feel the tension simmering in his squad, an unspoken fear that lurked beneath every strained breath, every glance exchanged as they moved into position.

The battle unfolded around him with a terrifying chaos, a maelstrom of noise and fury. Gunfire and the rumble of tank treads filled the air, mingling with the screams of orders and the distant cries of the wounded. Luke barely registered it all, moving on pure instinct, his mind a blank canvas painted only in survival. Without warning, a Russian tank round struck, the force of it ripping his new comrades apart in a powerful blast. Luke felt shrapnel hit his left side with the force of a hammer blow and he was thrown to the ground, ears ringing, yet deaf to any sound, heart pounding, his vision blurring as he took in the scattered bodies and a few faces he had seen only in passing now frozen in terror.

With his unit decimated he didn’t think—he ran. Through the smoke and debris, into an open field where sunflowers stretched toward a sky smudged with gray brushstrokes of smoke. He sprinted through the stalks, his body aching, stumbling and breathless, the flowers brushing against him like ghostly fingers. And then, in the middle of that field, he saw him—a young Russian soldier, no older than himself, wounded, unarmed, and standing there with wide, terrified eyes.

They locked gazes for a moment that seemed to stretch endlessly, each of them frozen in fear and disbelief. But before Luke could process it, his training kicked in. He raised his rifle and fired. The young soldier fell, crumpling into the sunflowers. Luke approached, feeling his breath hitch, his pulse racing with the raw, sickening adrenaline of it all. The Russian soldier lay there, eyes fixed on Luke, lips moving to form words Luke couldn’t understand. “Я не хотел быть здесь…” (I did not want to be here…) the soldier murmured in his native tongue, his voice fragile, choked with fear.

But the words were lost on Luke, unfamiliar and drowned out by the pounding in his ears. He barely heard them, brushing aside the faint, broken syllables. His focus was forward, driven by a blind, consuming need to survive.

A searing hot pain hammered through his thigh, snapping him out of his trance. A sniper’s bullet had found him, and he collapsed into the dirt, his vision flickering with the sudden shock of it. He tried to crawl, dragging himself through the sunflowers, but his strength was slipping as blood poured from his severed femoral artery. Luke's body was growing heavier and colder with each agonizing movement. He managed to pull himself into a shallow ditch, his breath ragged, his vision narrowing as he rolled onto his back and lay helpless in the dirt.

Above him, he heard the steady, high pitched, whine of a drone, a cold, mechanical presence approaching from just out of sight. Luke’s pulse quickened as he realized what it meant—he’d been marked. He looked up, squinting through the haze, as the drone appeared and hovered above him, calculating, detached. A small object dropped from it, descending with deadly precision. His mind raced, a chaotic flood of memories and regrets, a lifetime flashing in mere seconds. All of the anger, the abandonment, the desperate need for escape that had led him here—the feelings seemed absurdly small now, insignificant beneath the descending object.

“Why did I do this?” he wondered, a pang of bitter clarity washing over him. “What was the point?” The question echoed, empty and unanswered, as the explosive detonated, his final thoughts vaporized in a flash of crimson fire; a purpose never realized.

Epilogue

The man slipped out of bed quietly and into the silken robe, barely sparing a glance at the young woman that had been lying beside him. Her hair was splayed across the pillow, her face softened by sleep, a faint trace of last night’s indulgence still clinging to her—a muddled mix of cocaine and cheap champagne. What was her name? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. She was merely a fixture, something temporary, like everything else in his life now.

He moved across the dimly lit room, the highly polished floorboards of the old building creaking beneath his weight as he approached the desk. His laptop sat waiting beside an expensive German coffee maker. He performed the habitual task of brewing a pot and and started the laptop as the appliance began to stream dark liquid into the carafe. Answering some routine emails, he poured himself a cup, inhaling the sharp bitterness that cut through the stale perfume and lingering hangover of the night before. It grounded him, this ritual of coffee and quiet, a small anchor in the life he had constructed out of mediocrity.

Years ago, he had been someone else—a respected, American educated engineer, working in Ukraine’s energy industry. His days had been filled with blueprints and board meetings, steady and predictable. But those days were long gone, buried under the layers of deception and fragile alliances he’d built piece by piece, shifting himself from one position to the next, becoming something that even he hadn’t foreseen. In the quiet of the early Kyiv morning, he allowed himself a brief moment of pride.

He turned to the screen, fingers dancing over the keyboard as he scrolled through the morning headlines. The news was not new: stories of war, foreign aid, and the ongoing tragedy that gripped the country. He scrolled past them with disinterest until a soft ping broke the silence, drawing his gaze to a notification—a message from his offshore account.

He clicked on it, and there it was: $50 million U.S. dollars. The payout, right on schedule. He allowed himself a small smile as he took another sip of coffee, feeling the satisfaction that came from seeing a plan engineered flawlessly. His price, for brokering the latest “humanitarian aid package” with a prominent U.S. senator, had arrived. Aid, he mused, had become an art form in itself—a delicate game of supplying desperate resources to desperate places, all while skimming just enough to remain invisible. He transferred the agreed upon 10% fee to another numbered account, transaction complete.

He closed the laptop, savoring the quiet feeling of triumph that settled over him. He sipped his coffee. There was a certain contentment to the life he had built, a freedom that came only from knowing he had escaped the grip of poverty by effectively manipulating the inherent corruption and relentless struggle of his homeland. Outside, the dawning day cast a warm autumn glow over the city, softening Kyiv’s jagged skyline, transforming it into something almost peaceful; glimmering.

His gaze drifted to the bed, where the woman lay sprawled across the sheets, blissfully unaware of the transaction that had taken place while she slept. To her, he was likely just another fleeting figure, someone who moved through her life as quickly and carelessly as she’d moved through his. He felt nothing toward her—only a faint amusement at her oblivion, her naivety.

Setting down his coffee cup, he walked to the window and opened it, letting the sunrise wash over him. He reached out to touch the single sunflower resting in a glass vase on his desk, the bright yellow petals stark against the muted tones of the room. It reminded him of the fields that lay beyond his village as a child, places that had yet been untouched by the conflicts and power plays that had woven themselves into every corner of this nation. He briefly recalled how his father, a poor farmer was fond of saying that “The treasure of conflict is not worth the cost of a few sunflowers.” He considered his late father a fool who died in abject poverty. He’d escaped that world and transcended it. What lay before him was pure possibility.

With a final glance at the city stretched out before him and the single sunflower in the vase, he decided it would be a fine day for a drive in the country.