Elmo sits in a dimly lit VFW hall, nursing a cheap beer, his red fur matted and faded from years of desert dust and regret. He looks into the camera with those big googly eyes, but there’s no childlike wonder left in them. Just exhaustion.
“Elmo thought he was doing the right thing,” he says, his voice a little rougher now. “Elmo left Sesame Street to fight for freedom, but all Elmo found was The Suck.”
He shakes his head. “The chaplain kept saying, ‘This is the fall of Babylon, boys. We are fulfilling prophecy!’ But Elmo didn’t know what that meant. Elmo didn’t read Revelation 18. Elmo was just a dumb jarhead with an M16, marching through the sands, sweating bullets—literally and figuratively.”
Elmo stares at his drink. “Elmo didn’t know about the Bush Family. Elmo didn’t know about the New World Order. Elmo thought we were stopping the bad guys. But now Elmo knows…” He looks up, voice lowering. “The bad guys were the ones giving us orders.”
A long pause.
“Elmo should have stayed on Sesame Street.”
He finishes his beer.