Armature
Bent over, reeling from the bombardment overhead, thundering us and causing our heads to shake and shudder, our brains tiny porcelain cups and saucers falling from the china hutch. We tinkle and break open with fear, rattling around in the throes of panic. Albert and Thomas are the only ones strong enough to sit near the lip of the trench, their rifles still pointed true, pointed towards the dark heart of our enemies, these men with their unbearable cryllic tongue, with their dark beards, dark eyes, dark dispositions, they sometimes surge into our trenches and we fight them, tooth and nail, I killed a man with my trench shovel, I killed a man with my service pistol, I have killed a man with my bare hands, watching the light in his eyes die away as the fire in my eyes burns away, burns his soul into ashes, cursing him in my own language of the berserker that sleeps in my bosom, I damn his soul to hell and then spit upon the chaplain emblem upon his tunic.
We have been in this war too long, Albert has forgotten his wifes name, he looks at me with empty eyes, and I can hear him softly weeping as he stands guard. I hope he can go home sometimes, but I know he can never go home, he is not the man he used to be, usually, I pray he will be killed by a sniper, a painless, quick bullet through his brain, so his wife can remember him how he was and not as the strange automaton he is now. Thomas, with his family waiting, with his brothers and sisters writing him letters, I remember how he used to spend his nights writing them back instead of sleep, forcing his eyes to pierce the darkness of night and see the words of their communications from the life of happiness, from the garden of eden. Seeing him hunched over, writing out letters upon the butt of his rifle, using it as some cursed slab of tabletop. Thomas was the sanest for the longest, he was our voice of reason, the strong and pure call of our patriotism, our bravery. He changed one night, he just screamed aloud while we sat through a relatively low bombardment, he screamed and howled with the silence, he shrieked along with the whistles of the mortars and surfaced from the trench, firing wildly and tossing his last grenade into a foxhole, he wailed of the ghosts that cling to us all, that drain us of all our hope, our love, our compassion. We dragged him back into our trench, knocking him out and restraining him, when he awoke, he seemed defeated. When Thomas reads letters now, he burns them and writes back one or two line responses, he never bothers to flag down the messengers anymore though.
I came from an orphanage, a ward of the state so naturally the state decided I owed a debt and cashed in my commission when the war broke out. I was prone to fits of hysterics as a child, the alienists claimed I was unstable and should be institutionalized, but the state considered me a worthy candidate to serve Her Glorious Cause, the Defense. I've been here for a long time it seems, my current battalion consists of men culled from other units and batallions that were crushed, we are the final and first line, we are the beginning and the ending, to our backs, the river that acts as a natural border for our country. In front of us, it is the nightmare landscape of a dying prophet, crazed and delirious in the deserts of biblical times. The blasted field, with the pockets filled with venemous soldiers, pimples ready to burst and send the blood and pus flowing upon the face of our country. I have no one, nothing to return to, I will be sent to some hospital to die from whatever disease I contract if I survive, but I persist, I flourish at times, flogging myself into a fury and leading desperate, pathetic charges, we gain inches a month, at most, usually we are repulsed and sent back, losing feet of ground. Some claim I will become a hero, others claim I flirt with disgrace, sending good, hearty men to their deaths for my own glory.
Sometimes, I watch the battlefield and everything slows down, I can see every movement, every motion of the men scurrying across and between the bunkers, I can see each bullet, each tracer, each grenade flying through the air, spinning and coursing their paths until the end, terminal velocity. The wreath of bones that adorns my soul is heavy at times. I pay it no mind for the most part, dwelling on my deeds will only bog me down, make me heavier, it will not allow me the lightness, the springiness needed in my steps to properly act, to dodge, to parry, to evade death. Each day, each week, each month that passes is some glory to whatever gods of war that laugh above our heads, they probably masturbate while we kill each other, locked in some terrible struggle for a sliver of land that we have effectively blasted into a graveyard. Some say that there is no hope for us, but I know that hope does not die, it cannot be squelched, it will only hide in terror from those of us it can no longer empathise with, we are strange and alien creatures to the positive range of human emotions, we terrify them and send them feeling from our very shadows, our shadows which stretch long and red across the grass, across the concrete, our shadows that claw and leer at those unstained by our experiences, we spread the disease of shellshock, the cancer of the soul that slowly, carefully will break our country down, brick by brick.
We have been in this war too long, Albert has forgotten his wifes name, he looks at me with empty eyes, and I can hear him softly weeping as he stands guard. I hope he can go home sometimes, but I know he can never go home, he is not the man he used to be, usually, I pray he will be killed by a sniper, a painless, quick bullet through his brain, so his wife can remember him how he was and not as the strange automaton he is now. Thomas, with his family waiting, with his brothers and sisters writing him letters, I remember how he used to spend his nights writing them back instead of sleep, forcing his eyes to pierce the darkness of night and see the words of their communications from the life of happiness, from the garden of eden. Seeing him hunched over, writing out letters upon the butt of his rifle, using it as some cursed slab of tabletop. Thomas was the sanest for the longest, he was our voice of reason, the strong and pure call of our patriotism, our bravery. He changed one night, he just screamed aloud while we sat through a relatively low bombardment, he screamed and howled with the silence, he shrieked along with the whistles of the mortars and surfaced from the trench, firing wildly and tossing his last grenade into a foxhole, he wailed of the ghosts that cling to us all, that drain us of all our hope, our love, our compassion. We dragged him back into our trench, knocking him out and restraining him, when he awoke, he seemed defeated. When Thomas reads letters now, he burns them and writes back one or two line responses, he never bothers to flag down the messengers anymore though.
I came from an orphanage, a ward of the state so naturally the state decided I owed a debt and cashed in my commission when the war broke out. I was prone to fits of hysterics as a child, the alienists claimed I was unstable and should be institutionalized, but the state considered me a worthy candidate to serve Her Glorious Cause, the Defense. I've been here for a long time it seems, my current battalion consists of men culled from other units and batallions that were crushed, we are the final and first line, we are the beginning and the ending, to our backs, the river that acts as a natural border for our country. In front of us, it is the nightmare landscape of a dying prophet, crazed and delirious in the deserts of biblical times. The blasted field, with the pockets filled with venemous soldiers, pimples ready to burst and send the blood and pus flowing upon the face of our country. I have no one, nothing to return to, I will be sent to some hospital to die from whatever disease I contract if I survive, but I persist, I flourish at times, flogging myself into a fury and leading desperate, pathetic charges, we gain inches a month, at most, usually we are repulsed and sent back, losing feet of ground. Some claim I will become a hero, others claim I flirt with disgrace, sending good, hearty men to their deaths for my own glory.
Sometimes, I watch the battlefield and everything slows down, I can see every movement, every motion of the men scurrying across and between the bunkers, I can see each bullet, each tracer, each grenade flying through the air, spinning and coursing their paths until the end, terminal velocity. The wreath of bones that adorns my soul is heavy at times. I pay it no mind for the most part, dwelling on my deeds will only bog me down, make me heavier, it will not allow me the lightness, the springiness needed in my steps to properly act, to dodge, to parry, to evade death. Each day, each week, each month that passes is some glory to whatever gods of war that laugh above our heads, they probably masturbate while we kill each other, locked in some terrible struggle for a sliver of land that we have effectively blasted into a graveyard. Some say that there is no hope for us, but I know that hope does not die, it cannot be squelched, it will only hide in terror from those of us it can no longer empathise with, we are strange and alien creatures to the positive range of human emotions, we terrify them and send them feeling from our very shadows, our shadows which stretch long and red across the grass, across the concrete, our shadows that claw and leer at those unstained by our experiences, we spread the disease of shellshock, the cancer of the soul that slowly, carefully will break our country down, brick by brick.