Writing exercise
A writing exercise pinched from apiphile. The brief was: 500 words, first person, no sight. Are not allowed to mention or directly allude to lack of vision, but simply avoid describing anything visually. Not allowed to just be dialogue.
Being a drabbler, when I see '500 words' I take it a little too literally, so the piece is exactly 500 words. And it's an original fic, because I don't do that enough.
Safe and Sound
My ears were ringing so loudly that at first I thought it must be an alarm, but it was definitely just in my head. I managed to lift my hand and press it to my ear and the shrill bells didn't get quieter - they only got louder, trapped in my skull. The hand was hot and sore against my ear, but at least I could feel it and move it; the other just sat there, numb.
I knew straight away that I must have been in a hospital. There were still the same smells that I remembered from before: gunpowder and smoke and burnt and rotting flesh; but there was another smell lying over it all: some sort of antiseptic that all hospitals smell of.
There was someone moving off to my side, quite close, and I knew that it was a woman. It was the closest I'd been to one in months. Even in the stink of the ward I could smell her. Lavender oil. I could smell fresh, clean cotton, too, and I hadn't seen any of that in the longest time. I twisted my good hand in it, cool and smooth.
Someone was screaming not far away; cries that started human but ended as something else; something that could barely remember being human at all. Just a boy. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should be screaming too; I should be yelling and wailing until the sounds were meaningless and the world was ready to end. If it wasn't already. It had certainly felt that way out there, in the mud and the stink, with the bombs and the putrid gas. After that, Judgement Day could never seem quite so frightening again as it had in Sunday school, when the vicar had described it in all its horror. That vicar knew nothing about hell. I could tell him a thing or two. I could send him mad with just a fraction of what I'd seen, and it should have sent me to the edge of madness and beyond. I was no different from that screaming boy. Only one thing separated us: hope. Hope and the scrap of paper in my breast pocket, scribbled on by an ordinary looking boy with an in-ordinary talent for words, his poetry a single flaming torch in the centre of the darkness.
I heard hushed voices near my bed; a man and a woman; probably the flower-scented nurse again. I could hardly make them out above the interminable ringing. Hollow footsteps on the hard wood floor as the man walked away, taking with him that faint hint of pipe smoke, leaving only lavender and clean linen and scorched meat.
"Billy? Can you hear me, Billy? My name's Emily." Her fingers were icy cold as she lifted my wrist to feel the pulse. "Your unit took a direct hit, but you're going to be all right. You're being sent home, Billy. Back to your family."
"Why can't I see?"
Being a drabbler, when I see '500 words' I take it a little too literally, so the piece is exactly 500 words. And it's an original fic, because I don't do that enough.
Safe and Sound
My ears were ringing so loudly that at first I thought it must be an alarm, but it was definitely just in my head. I managed to lift my hand and press it to my ear and the shrill bells didn't get quieter - they only got louder, trapped in my skull. The hand was hot and sore against my ear, but at least I could feel it and move it; the other just sat there, numb.
I knew straight away that I must have been in a hospital. There were still the same smells that I remembered from before: gunpowder and smoke and burnt and rotting flesh; but there was another smell lying over it all: some sort of antiseptic that all hospitals smell of.
There was someone moving off to my side, quite close, and I knew that it was a woman. It was the closest I'd been to one in months. Even in the stink of the ward I could smell her. Lavender oil. I could smell fresh, clean cotton, too, and I hadn't seen any of that in the longest time. I twisted my good hand in it, cool and smooth.
Someone was screaming not far away; cries that started human but ended as something else; something that could barely remember being human at all. Just a boy. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should be screaming too; I should be yelling and wailing until the sounds were meaningless and the world was ready to end. If it wasn't already. It had certainly felt that way out there, in the mud and the stink, with the bombs and the putrid gas. After that, Judgement Day could never seem quite so frightening again as it had in Sunday school, when the vicar had described it in all its horror. That vicar knew nothing about hell. I could tell him a thing or two. I could send him mad with just a fraction of what I'd seen, and it should have sent me to the edge of madness and beyond. I was no different from that screaming boy. Only one thing separated us: hope. Hope and the scrap of paper in my breast pocket, scribbled on by an ordinary looking boy with an in-ordinary talent for words, his poetry a single flaming torch in the centre of the darkness.
I heard hushed voices near my bed; a man and a woman; probably the flower-scented nurse again. I could hardly make them out above the interminable ringing. Hollow footsteps on the hard wood floor as the man walked away, taking with him that faint hint of pipe smoke, leaving only lavender and clean linen and scorched meat.
"Billy? Can you hear me, Billy? My name's Emily." Her fingers were icy cold as she lifted my wrist to feel the pulse. "Your unit took a direct hit, but you're going to be all right. You're being sent home, Billy. Back to your family."
"Why can't I see?"