Everywhere There is Blood
Title; Everywhere There is Blood
Author; mee
Summary; This is set back in WWI's time period. A man is put into the infirmary, like so many others.
Note; Hahah. I forgot how to do an lj-cut. Had to go look around for like soooooo long. :) I'm just silly. But, anyways, this was my history extra-credit essay. Bumped my grade up to an A. Yay:)
Link; from fictionpress.com // Everywhere There is Blood
It’s not really that uncommon to see death where I stand. I’m a soldier, all I know is Death. All that appears to me is that black-cloaked system of terror, gripping its prey in its razor teeth and forever binding their souls to him. Nothing else is what I know. There is no love, if not the dependence and trust of a comrade. Only pain, blood, and death.
Another died today, I know. He was in the bed across from he, had a nasty wound in the shoulder blade. From what I hear, it got infected. Once that happens, the doctors don’t waste any more time on you. Plenty of other soldiers are coming in, flocks of birds really, and someone that’s too far gone is only a waste of a bed.
I’m sure that’ll be me one day.
I remember it. Though hazy and dream-like, as if it was hundreds of decades ago compared to the measly days. I was with a comrade, a fallen comrade to be more exact. Just mere seconds after entering the front he was shot. I drug him as quick as my scrawny legs could take him, and hid us both in a ditch. But his wound had already devoured his blood. His life line. And he was gone.
I hadn’t realized it quite yet, but just when I discovered his death, I felt a striking pain in my side. The last thing I remember is pulling my fingers from this shark bite and acting like a shy nerd-like boy about to ask the most popular girl to formal when blood coated my fingers. My voice carried through the gun fire, at least it must have, the word “stretcher” flying from my tongue like nothing burned could burn it any worse.
My eyes first focused on the musky ceiling. Then the thin sheets hiding my frail body. And lastly the millions of injured men around me. I knew I was in the infirmary. A quick look under the sheets, to the clawing at my side, and nothing was more clear as to what I had taken on. Who knows how much blood I had lost, or how long I had withstood. But I was alive. One of the few, though hundreds, that managed to come out of it alive.
Yet all I could hear was the pounding guilt consuming my eardrums.
I’ve been here for five days. Each of which another man has died. Sometimes even two, or three, or more. But I live. The guilt never dying and the will slowly wilting. Maybe at once I had pleaded at the thought of fighting for this country. As for now, though, I would throw away everything I had accomplished and received to give at least one of these men his life back. Not as a soldier, but as a brother; a son; a father; a man. My life seemed so puny compared to this.
Terror shackled my breath; pain enraptured my body; guilt defeated me. Physical harm was common, this stabbing sting in my side was usual. I can’t remember a time when it had not hurt. But, unlike any time before, I felt as though a fifty-foot monster had ripped my limbs off my body, beat my torso with my flailing arms and spat acid in the small scratches. And the emotional pain made it all the worse.
As it was, screams had apparently left my throat, blind panic maneuvering doctors in my direction. My second slice of skin, my dirty, off-white sheets where strewn to the side. My side was being probed at like the dead carcass of a cow. It burned with searing, white-hot death.
“It’s infected,” the main doctor of the group confirmed. The words that held the key to reveal my fear and strange calmness. My hypocrisy.
Tears of either agony or despair, maybe even a mixture, ran down my face. I could smell the salty drops through my enfiladed nostrils; I could taste the metallic feel of them with my tongue and lips. It was almost as bad as knowing I was actually crying. And because of what I would not believe.
I was going to die. It was final. I was only a waste of a bed now, with my infected wound. Another life would be better suited in this bed. In these sheets that allowed me my only comfort. Staring at this spiteful ceiling with no feeling but an eerie calmness. Living the dead life until those fateful words were sprung upon him. Either an offer to leave, an indication everything would be fine, or the cold hard truth of his death. And I had gotten the third. After five days, I had gotten the third.
Albeit I had said I would give anything I had received or accomplished to give a man his life back. Deep down I wasn’t talking about any man. I wasn’t talking about the few, yet many, soldiers that had been given the same fate. Nor was I speaking of the hundreds of fallen comrades coating the dusty war grounds.
I was talking of myself.
I would give everything I had in the world to be out of this bed. Out of this life. But those words. Those two words. That held the only solace and believe I could behold. I was going to die.
I really don’t want to die. Please, don’t let me die.
But, as I said before, I’m used to it almost. It’s completely normal to see Death where I stand. I’m a soldier, all I know is Death. All that appears to me is that black-cloaked system of terror, gripping its prey in its razor teeth and forever binding their souls to him. Nothing else is what I know. There is no love, if not the dependence and trust of a comrade. Only pain, blood, and death.
And I was only another man to fill a spot in his bottomless stomach.
Author; mee
Summary; This is set back in WWI's time period. A man is put into the infirmary, like so many others.
Note; Hahah. I forgot how to do an lj-cut. Had to go look around for like soooooo long. :) I'm just silly. But, anyways, this was my history extra-credit essay. Bumped my grade up to an A. Yay:)
Link; from fictionpress.com // Everywhere There is Blood
It’s not really that uncommon to see death where I stand. I’m a soldier, all I know is Death. All that appears to me is that black-cloaked system of terror, gripping its prey in its razor teeth and forever binding their souls to him. Nothing else is what I know. There is no love, if not the dependence and trust of a comrade. Only pain, blood, and death.
Another died today, I know. He was in the bed across from he, had a nasty wound in the shoulder blade. From what I hear, it got infected. Once that happens, the doctors don’t waste any more time on you. Plenty of other soldiers are coming in, flocks of birds really, and someone that’s too far gone is only a waste of a bed.
I’m sure that’ll be me one day.
I remember it. Though hazy and dream-like, as if it was hundreds of decades ago compared to the measly days. I was with a comrade, a fallen comrade to be more exact. Just mere seconds after entering the front he was shot. I drug him as quick as my scrawny legs could take him, and hid us both in a ditch. But his wound had already devoured his blood. His life line. And he was gone.
I hadn’t realized it quite yet, but just when I discovered his death, I felt a striking pain in my side. The last thing I remember is pulling my fingers from this shark bite and acting like a shy nerd-like boy about to ask the most popular girl to formal when blood coated my fingers. My voice carried through the gun fire, at least it must have, the word “stretcher” flying from my tongue like nothing burned could burn it any worse.
My eyes first focused on the musky ceiling. Then the thin sheets hiding my frail body. And lastly the millions of injured men around me. I knew I was in the infirmary. A quick look under the sheets, to the clawing at my side, and nothing was more clear as to what I had taken on. Who knows how much blood I had lost, or how long I had withstood. But I was alive. One of the few, though hundreds, that managed to come out of it alive.
Yet all I could hear was the pounding guilt consuming my eardrums.
I’ve been here for five days. Each of which another man has died. Sometimes even two, or three, or more. But I live. The guilt never dying and the will slowly wilting. Maybe at once I had pleaded at the thought of fighting for this country. As for now, though, I would throw away everything I had accomplished and received to give at least one of these men his life back. Not as a soldier, but as a brother; a son; a father; a man. My life seemed so puny compared to this.
Terror shackled my breath; pain enraptured my body; guilt defeated me. Physical harm was common, this stabbing sting in my side was usual. I can’t remember a time when it had not hurt. But, unlike any time before, I felt as though a fifty-foot monster had ripped my limbs off my body, beat my torso with my flailing arms and spat acid in the small scratches. And the emotional pain made it all the worse.
As it was, screams had apparently left my throat, blind panic maneuvering doctors in my direction. My second slice of skin, my dirty, off-white sheets where strewn to the side. My side was being probed at like the dead carcass of a cow. It burned with searing, white-hot death.
“It’s infected,” the main doctor of the group confirmed. The words that held the key to reveal my fear and strange calmness. My hypocrisy.
Tears of either agony or despair, maybe even a mixture, ran down my face. I could smell the salty drops through my enfiladed nostrils; I could taste the metallic feel of them with my tongue and lips. It was almost as bad as knowing I was actually crying. And because of what I would not believe.
I was going to die. It was final. I was only a waste of a bed now, with my infected wound. Another life would be better suited in this bed. In these sheets that allowed me my only comfort. Staring at this spiteful ceiling with no feeling but an eerie calmness. Living the dead life until those fateful words were sprung upon him. Either an offer to leave, an indication everything would be fine, or the cold hard truth of his death. And I had gotten the third. After five days, I had gotten the third.
Albeit I had said I would give anything I had received or accomplished to give a man his life back. Deep down I wasn’t talking about any man. I wasn’t talking about the few, yet many, soldiers that had been given the same fate. Nor was I speaking of the hundreds of fallen comrades coating the dusty war grounds.
I was talking of myself.
I would give everything I had in the world to be out of this bed. Out of this life. But those words. Those two words. That held the only solace and believe I could behold. I was going to die.
I really don’t want to die. Please, don’t let me die.
But, as I said before, I’m used to it almost. It’s completely normal to see Death where I stand. I’m a soldier, all I know is Death. All that appears to me is that black-cloaked system of terror, gripping its prey in its razor teeth and forever binding their souls to him. Nothing else is what I know. There is no love, if not the dependence and trust of a comrade. Only pain, blood, and death.
And I was only another man to fill a spot in his bottomless stomach.