The empty man at the Western Front
Soon Nigels Platoon would go over the top.
This was of course a euphemism, to mask the horrific thing he and his comrades had feared over the months of their stay at the front. The phrasing was a survival tactic to not go stark raving mad while polishing weapons and playing cards, while waiting for the call to throw themselves into a rain of bullets. It was the Damocles Sword that hung above their heads while being pelted with artillery fire, while trying to shovel away the endless heaps of mud, while burying the fallen.
The common sentiment, recently, was that this fate awaited every british soldier. Many had even ceased to talk about what they were going to do once they would come home. The thought no longer occurred to them.
The sound of an Artillery shot interrupted Nigels thoughts. The trench was previoulsy dead quiet with rows upon rows of soldiers anxiously waiting on fire steps. None were allowed to talk and none were in the mood. Tension was palpable in the air and the fire that was to precede their attack only amplified the feeling of impending doom.
He tried to steady himself before zero hour. He felt itchy, but that could‘ve just been the rat bites.
Nigel was not a religious man, he had not been in England and he certainly wasn’t in this hell. He envied the likes of James whose hopes never seemed to falter, always filled with the firm conviction that salvation awaited.
Now James lay buried in a shallow grave somewhere along the sprawling miles of trenches, among many other Brothers, Husbands, fathers and sons. All that praying still did him no good in the end, he died of an infection caused by the manure and rats that filled the trenches.
No one but the germans had expected to stay very long on this front, thus the trenches had been built with a temporary stay in mind. The dapper gents in London had not anticipated that the war would be fought inch by inch. That their soldiers would be huddled about in loose ground. And that once the first rains started to fall on the frontmost parts the problems started. Constant intrepid moisture, soaking into their clothes, their equipment and their boots. Many developed Trench foot. Caused James to lose his foot.
Maybe dying today could be considered a mercy. A final release from this tension.
There was a shrill whistle. George, the man in front of him, set into motion. His heart was thumping in his chest with such a ferocity that he thought it might burst through. He ascended after George peering over the edge into No Man’s Land. It was a waste of dead trees and barbed wire. Nothing grew here, everything had been burned or poisoned. It was not only a land abandoned by man but by any other life as well.
It seemed like they‘d come up with new ways to kill each other by the day, Machine Guns, Mustard gas, Tanks. All the ingenuity of Man combined together to make this as bad as it could be.
They lined up, the artillery still firing overhead at steady intervals. It‘s purpose was to soften the defenses and clear a path.
“Can‘t say it’s been nice knowing you,“ George spoke, “But it might’ve been worse without you“. Nigel managed only a nod. He noticed himself trembling.
The second whistle blew, now they advanced, at a walking pace, to ‘not break formation‘. The Artillery fire stopped. Nigel swallowed a dry throat. They advanced, with a speed that seemed agonising, could be moments till Fritz and Friends readied their machine gun on the other side of the barbed wire.
It hadn‘t been a minute until a quick barage of bullets pelted the ground in front of him, the trees and till they shot George through the head. His body crumpled like a marionette with it‘s strings cut.
There was no more formality now, no euphemism,Nigel charged, possessed by the madness that had seeped through the dead earth. Poisoned by corpses and gunpowder. The others joined him in a frenzied dash, grenades landed and men screamed, but he continued onward, focused on the emplacement ahead. To run was to act, to do and not wait for death to come.
Then he keeled over, he hadn‘t even felt it but he was shot, his legs simply gave out as his tendons were severed by a quick hail of bullets. Nigel didn’t get the chance to catch himself as he hid the mud. He tried to draw in a breath but his lungs filled with blood, apparently he had been absolutely peppered.
A terrible panic settled while he heaved and struggled, the pain hit him; white hot and burning. Nigel called out, but the others were as deafened as he was. He writhed in the mud, instinctually grasping for something to hold on to, but the soft earth offered him no purchase.
Nigel was not a religous man but in such agonising moments before death every man breaks and pleads. Not to god, not to a god, but to anyone out there, to everyone. There was no more dignity of disbelief as he called out to the dead black sky, begged for his life.
It was a pitiful sound, a wet rattling that barely resembled any words.
However, by some malignant whim of chaos the frantic gurgling of Nigels fluid filled lungs approximated a sound no human tongue had ventured to utter in centuries. A sound no human was ever meant to utter. A call.
There was felt by everyone that day a tremor, not in the earth but in the air, the very space they occupied, as Nigels unwitting prayer set the the air above him into motion. It started as a flicker, the way the heat of a fire distorts the air above it, like a desert mirage. It expanded to the vague shape of a man without colour or substance. The fabric of reality twisted into a figure that stood before him.
But it did not speak and no none but Nigel heard, he perceived the words. They pierced through his very being, not a sound, nothing sensory. The words reverberated through him as though they were written into reality itself, pushing away everything he perceived and felt. For an instance his consciousness consisted solely of their meaning.
His fear and pain were halted for a moment as a slender hand with too many digits to be considered human touched his forehead. A stillness stretched over him, calming his fears and pains, halting the processes that his body was going through in preparation of death.
Nigel stood and immediately a bullet shattered his skull and splattered his brains on the dirt. He barely flinched as he flexed his hand and felt the change. Adrenaline ran through him. Disregarding the figure he reached for his gun, charged the battlement, and didn‘t halt, even as barbed wire rended his flesh, he jumped into the trench and plunged his bayonett into the nearest german. Retribution, for everything.
His muscles were no longer restricted by the constrains of pain as prolonged hysteric strength pierced the blade through the soldiers body, blood splattering on the crude wooden walls.
A demon unleashed he massacred the soldiers, who were powerless to stop the unyielding immortal.
When there was nary a rat remaining in the trench, Nigel collapsed, there was no more muscle to move him. It had all torn apart. But as Adrenaline settled and pain crept in, Nigel realised that though his body had been destroyed beyond repair he could not die only suffer.
The entity stood above him, it‘s featureless gaze fixed on Nigel, only visible to him.
When his comrades found him they saw a mess of blood and gore vaguely resembling a man, somehow still moving and screaming.
There was nothing they could do for him.
As they carried Nigel back to camp, he kept wailing, though the sound no longer sounded human. His vocal cords were too malformed by now.
Even as they tried to shoot him in an act of mercy he continued, as they drained him of his blood he somehow continued and after they had finally burned him alive he still screeched far past the point that his lungs should have been capable of it.
And when there was nothing left of him, when the battle was over and the war was won, the screams of Nigel Cummines still rang in the soldiers ears and minds, until they too passed on.
It is said that even today when walking the former battlefields of Ypres, one can still hear a wail being carried by the wind. If they listen carefully.
