The Death Scene (revised)

“Fix bayonets!” The shout echoed through the infantry up and down the line, mixing with the clatter of Lee Enfield rifles in shaking hands.

Frederick wanted to go over as soon as he could, for he felt adrenaline begin to replace the blood in his veins. Things hadn’t gone well for the first and second wave, no one had made it two hundred meters. But surely things would be different this time. The third wave could break through, they were stronger and faster and wanted it more.

The explosions around them did not match the silence that had infiltrated the South Staffordshire Regiment’s trench. Frederick stood second in line for the ladder, bouncing on his feet. He was ready to fly, to hold his life in his hands and run with it, then sail home to Adelaide and Beatrice and Mummy, and Anna. He did not intend to break the promise he made her, for he knew he could keep himself safe. He would be fine. 

The whistle blew. 

A great scrambling began, as the boys hoisted themselves up ladders, over the top, into the fray. 

The soldier in front of Frederick fell back as soon as he reached the crest of mud. 

“What are you doing?” Frederick shouted over the din. “You can’t come back in-”

The soldier could not answer him. He had been shot through the head. 

Frederick felt bile rise in his throat. 

Perhaps the German machine gunners were like lightning, he thought wildly, and never shot at the same place twice.

He stepped over the body and sprinted across the cratered ground of No Man’s Land, surrounded by falling things. Falling shells, falling dirt, falling people. Of all the things that hit the ground, the people fell the fastest. Perhaps because they had less distance to fall, or perhaps because they were running straight toward the German guns. 

Dirt and mud sprayed Frederick in the face, which he wiped at with his sleeve, but only managed to spread. In his momentary blindness he did not slow, but fell. 

He could have stayed there, on the ground, and waited to be cleared with the wounded. But it was too likely that a mortar would land where he lay, leaving the army without a body to bury. Not that that would bother them. Coffins were in low supply.

He stood and rubbed at his eyes again.

His legs began to move, slippery though it was. The blood only made the mud worse. 

He heard his heartbeat in his ear, pushing against his eardrums in a rhythm more regular than the blasts. He listened to it until he couldn’t anymore.

How could he?

There was a bullet in his chest.

A boy lay in a field.  Not a field, perhaps, but a vast expanse of every color that anyone has ever hated. A boy lay still, staring at the sky with eyes that weren’t really looking. There were Things cracking inside of him, which he didn’t want to feel and almost couldn’t. He tried not to hear things either, he tried to forget about everything he saw behind his eyes when he closed them. He tried to keep his blood inside of him, tried to exist in a world that was dry and green and everything that this wasn’t. He had forgotten where the green things were, but he knew they were somewhere nice. Somewhere without rats. Maybe that was where he was going. 

He knew he couldn’t stay where he was, the noise was hurting his ears and he just wanted to find a blanket to crawl under and sleep, wrapped in someone else’s warmth. He knew he couldn’t stay in that place, so he didn’t. The boy left the horrible pit of mud, crawling under a blanket of sky, wrapped in the warmth of the soil that was saddened to take him back. And there, the boy fell asleep. He slept and never woke up.


 

PeachesMalone

VT

18 years old

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