Something I wrote for a class assignment
Flies buzzed around the rotted remains of his fellow soldiers. He couldn’t get that putrid stench of the dead from his nose as he trudged through. Screams of the condemned rang in his ears. Young men shipped out to fight weren’t coming home. Here, they would stay. Damned and forgotten forevermore.
“For your country,” they said.
Their justification for drafting boys to fight their battles. He believed them, trusted them. Now he wasn’t so sure. Still, he kept on walking. His feet ached and it felt like a cat’s claws were scratching incessantly at the inner walls of his esophagus. Forced was how the horrors became the new normal. The sounds of bullets flying and corpses squelching against his boots. As he looked around, he found that he could no longer distinguish between friend and foe. All he saw was the dead and the dying.
The days all became a blur. How long had he been there? Weeks? Months? He didn’t know anymore. He lost count after a while. All of the things he thought he knew, was taught, seemed only a fragment of the bitter truth. The true reality of the situation gnawed at his insides, like his body was consuming itself the more he thought about it.
He slowly watched as his fellow brethren seemed to develop some sick pleasure in the violence. Some of the best human beings he had grown to know became monsters. That carnal look in his eyes as they killed, something disgusting, feral. The way their lips upturned into a sinister grin as the blood of the vietnamese sprayed out. The sick bastards who collected ‘trophies’ of their murders, ears, teeth, it didn’t matter to them. They just had to have a souvenir. What scared him wasn’t the way they transformed into beasts within the confines of human flesh, no. It was the fear of becoming them.
He could hardly remember what it was that he was meant to be doing, why he didn’t run the second he got that draft notice. All he knew now was that it was quiet, too quiet. The kind of eerie silence that let the dark depths of his imagination run rampant. The sweat running down his back caused his shirt to stick to it. He held his rifle in shaky, clammy hands as he surveyed his surroundings for what felt like the millionth time. He’s never hated trees more in his entire life.
Every blow of the wind, rustle of the trees, the smallest thing could create an awful paranoia. He felt like he was going insane, and maybe he was. All it took was for him to pick up the faintest sound of the shaking of a tree’s leaves. His grip tightened against his weapon as he started spraying. The sound of stray bullets ricocheting against the trees in all directions. He didn’t stop, he couldn’t stop. By the time he ran out, he was panting like a mad man. The air stunk of gunpowder and burnt wood.
Just creatures of the forest, nothing more. He swallowed and let out a shaky breath as he tried to reload. The silence carried on as he focused on calming himself. ‘Nothing,’ he told himself. Nothing. But there was something. BANG—! The loud noise reverberated in his ears. His head hurt. His eyes stung, he could barely keep them open. The smell of smoke filled his nose almost immediately.
The viscous crimson liquid oozed out of his forehead like water from the kitchen sink back home. The rifle fell out of his grasp as he slowly reached up a hand towards the new hole in his head. He stood there, still. His legs started to feel numb, like they were made of anything other than skin, muscle, and bones. He couldn’t stop it as his legs lost all function and he fell forward against the force of gravity. It all went dark as his lifeforce spilled into the soil below.
Josiah could finally rest.
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