More IDEA short story shit (the edited version)
I wonder how my poppy fields are doing, thought Ulysseus. My fields should be covered with red poppies in this early spring. Oh how beautiful my fields must look! Children will be running across the fields, playing, laughing, falling down and looking at the clear, blue sky. Such thoughts swam in Ulysseus’ brain as the artillery shells landed near the trenches.
A cloud of dry, blood-caked dust fell across him, covering his body like a pale pall. Then another shell fell, and another, and then another. With resolute determination and surprising calm, the men around him hastily ducked down. I couldn’t hear anymore, thought Ulysseus, and they couldn’t hear anymore. We only duck because we mechanically expect the coming shells, and the shells are always coming. They haven’t stopped for three months, and why should they stop now?
Yet amidst this state of chaos and confusion, his mind wandered back to his fields, where he used to harvest golden wheat in the fall, when the last traces of summer still clung in the air. At night he would rest in his little farm house, so simple and plain, but so full of memories. Just as he was about to lose himself in the sweet recollections of his home, another shell fell. But this time, it landed very close to him.
Ulysseus flew and landed on his back a couple of yards away. He was surprised that he didn’t feel any pain, and for a man who just felt the impact of an artillery shell, his senses were astonishingly clear. With an effort, he crawled back towards his original position, and when he got there, he saw his friend Arthur lying in the trenches. Ulysseus could tell from Arthur’s chapped lips that he was screaming in agony, but the bestial shrieks of pain were silent. Ulysseus’ eyes followed where Arthur’s hands were, and they saw an opening in Arthur’s abdomen. A pile of entrails had flown out onto the ground, and they were covered with dirt. Trembling, Ulysseus tried to pick up the entrails and shoving them into Arthur’s open stomach. But to his horror, he couldn’t grab the entrails, hard as he tried. When he lifted his arms, he realized that his hands had been blown off, and where his hands used to be there are now two bloody, messy stumps.
Arthur’s screams had been getting quieter and quieter, until his mouth barely moved at all. But his belly heaved slowly, up and down, up and down, each time exposing that yawning wound. Ulysseus held Arthur in his arms and tried to hold him in a comfortable position. Slowly the heaving stopped, and even from the barely perceptible movements of Arthur’s lips, Ulysseus could read Arthur’s last words: I want go home. Closing his eyes, Ulysseus held the cold, dead body in his arms, and he wandered back to the fields, the fields where the poppies grow, row on row. Around him, the shells rained from the sky.
Three months later, Ulysseus was discharged from the army because of his injuries. When he went back to his old farm shack, he found nothing, absolutely nothing. The poppy fields were gone, replaced by a scorched earth. Instead of a field of red, it was an field of hastily-dug graves, some with bones still showing on the ground, pieces of rotten flesh clinging tenuously, as if they were trying to hold on to the last remnants of memory, of the past. No, he no longer had a home.
Walking in the field, he saw a newly dug grave, with the shovels still lying next to the pile of dirt. Whoever dug the grave obviously meant to finish at some later date, because the brand new tombstone had just been erected. It was dedicated to an unknown soldier, and on the tombstone was this phrase: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Tired and sleepy, Ulysseus laid himself in the grave and fell into a deep slumber.