Witfit Dec 10

The prompt for this one was "Dehydration". Got a bit experimental with it.

...............................................................................................................................................................

His sandpaper tongue scraped the roof his mouth, seeking what little moisture remained. How was it that in a place so water-logged, he could be so desperately, hopelessly thirsty? His kingdom for a sip of clean water.

Another shell wailed into no mans lands and the soldier squatted further down on the duckboards, further into the mud; never-ending mud that ended up in places you never imagined it could go. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been truly clean and dry, with no grime saturating his uniform, no lice in the hems, when he could actually feel his toes. It was always raining. He was shaking, there was too much sound, colour, panic. And the smell. Oh, sweet Jesus the smell! There were bodies everywhere, swarming around him in some sort of collective hysteria. Panicking, screaming, dying. Men who he had called his friends tumbled from the parapet and were forgotten before they hit the ground.

There was a nauseating splat as a body fell just inches from his boots, limbs contorted at bizarre angles as if drawn hurriedly by a child. Bloodshot eyes gouged into his own, a lobotomized gaze from under a peaceful brow. With a high forehead, straight nose and full lips visible from beneath the veil of battle, the man might once have been considered handsome. Except he wasn’t really a man at all, the smooth planes of his face could have seen no more than 16 years. The soldier stared at the body, his ears ringing around his frozen mind. Red flowers sprang from the child’s chest and blossomed as the violence danced on his makeshift grave.

Raising a calloused hand to his forehead, the man swung his back round to rest against the firing step. Maybe if he closed his eyes, just for a second, it would all go away; the smell, the fear, those eyes…

Hands like lily petals. A tree in the rain. A cinnamon embrace. Home.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Andrews!? Get back to your post now!” A voice raged at an alarming proximity “This isn’t nap-time!”

He staggered to his feet, dazed. The boy was too close. Rage Rage Rage. Dead, the child was dead. Oh God, the smell. The damn smell! He spun. Scrambled to the fire-step. Metal in his hand; cold, burning metal. Head above the parapet. Into the inferno. Children dead. Oh God. Load. FIRE! Load. FIRE! Load. FIRE!

red

fall

forgotten

Machine guns wept into the void as the sky rained his requiem.