The Survivor's Curse/Falling Idol

Well, it has been a long time since my last post here, and even longer since I posted any actual writing; I have been distracted for the last few weeks by editing a novel. Now, however, that process is complete, and I have found time to write something. Today's piece is another in the 'snapshot' series that began with The Dragon Awakens from a few weeks ago, and is a sequel of sorts, although it could well work as a standalone. As always, the notes on this piece are added below, so for now, enjoy!

The Survivor’s Curse/Falling Idol

“And so there I was, this bloody great scaly thing bearing down on me, and I bring up the trusty old iron and put a ball right in the bugger’s eye!” He finished, and allowed himself to be momentarily absorbed in the tide of adulation that rose from every corner of the inn.

Six men offered him a drink on the house, two maidens and one woman he knew for sure was married called out for him to sweep them away on his next adventure, a dozen children who shouldn’t have even been there cheered for more. Mouths hung open and eyes stared and hands clapped furiously as he concluded the tale.

Someone he didn’t recognise passed him another tankard and a hand seized his pipe to refill if from some other man’s supply of tobacco. It was every bit the hero’s welcome he’d expected and come to dread as he rode with the three unburdened horses and his own faithful steed from the furious Dragon’s rage.

He could tell them all that part of the tale; eager ears would lap up every word. He could embellish the story with deeds worthy of legend. He could watch them listen with baited breath as he imagined Dragonfire coming down mere yards from him, how he could have heard the roar as the great beast descended from the heavens. It would make a good story, at least.

But he could not tell them how he had lumbered, barely conscious, from the rocky crags, stumbled down the mountainside and slumped over his steed. He could never tell them of the tears that fell by the dozen as he tied together the three riderless horses that would never be mounted again. He could not ever tell anyone of the fear that gripped him at any moment that he too would be taken and devoured and lost to the ages.

He drained the tankard in one gulp, no longer feeling refreshed by the contents, and sighed. All these faces would expect something more from him. Another tale told, perhaps, or even a new one made. Yes, they would expect him to go forth once again to fight some other great evil, and he simply could not do it.

Abruptly, he stood, and forced his way through the crowd, feeling the ripple of disappointment spread as he made for the exit. Through the pike smoke and the press of unwashed bodies he fought, not meeting a single disappointed gaze, nor heeding a single pleading word. He stumbled out onto the wooden walkway and slammed the door shut behind him, bracing it with his weight before eager observers could force it open.

 

Slowly, he sank to the ground, and cast off his dented and pitted armour. The bracers and helmet he set at his side, and then unclasped the cuirass, letting it fall away at the front before shifting and allowing the rear plate to slide down behind him. He reached round and cast it aside, completing the pile of worn metal.

In the night air, sounds from inside barely seemed to reach him; a few steps had altogether separated him from their world. A honed warrior’s sense told him a scuffle had broken out within the inn, and that it was safe to move away from the door; anyone inside would be too busy not getting battered to pursue him.

He rested his hands on the wooden fencing that stood between him and the black water below, and stared into it, seeing the rippling reflections gaze back. A mirror of the stars above was so far distant from its heavenly origin, and the lights that shone in the water were lesser than those in the air.

His own face, too, was something different; the mirror-him did not have the tears on his cheeks, or old scars on his brow, or a permanent frown etched on his visage. It did not carry the burden of lost comrades on a foolish errand, or the expectation of greater victories born from a single lucky escape. It was another him, and maybe, it was the him he used to be.

Maybe, that was why the followed him, even into the dragon’s lair, that most ancient of terrors. Yes, they followed that younger, stronger, better man. The man not yet a hero. They followed him, and he hated them for it.

The two brothers who had fallen as the others tried to escape, barely more than boys. They could still be brawling in the desert dust if they hadn’t seen something in him that made them follow. That brave shield-maiden from the north that stood by him until the very last, until she too was torn apart could be with her tribe, none the wiser but safe, so safe. The toff’s boy, out for adventure, could still be with his father, pestering him for the coin to travel the land, bored but alive.

But no, they had all followed him blindly, as so many men had before, and now they too were dead. Dead like the band that stood with him at the Grey Pass against the Orcen, or the army he led in retreat at the Fields of Fire. All those men and women and boys that would haunt his dreams, all following that man that stared back from the calm waters.

The reflection was shattered, the mirror cracked by the point of his sword as he hurled it down into the depths of the water. He didn’t even realise he had drawn the blade, and now it was gone, sunk to the depths of that stilling lake, lost.

Next to fall were the gauntlets, cast from his wrists into the dark water, and piece by piece, the rest of the armour was similarly discarded. Piece by piece, he stepped away from that life that had seen so much death, and stared aimlessly into the night for something new. The sounds from behind him subsided, and soon, all was silent, cold and still. The water settled, the dark closed in, and he was left to wonder. What now?

***

The boy watched from the shadows as this hero of heroes stared, mad-eyed and motionless, into the dark. He was unarmoured now, and there was no sword at his side. For a moment, the boy did not understand; the stories of the bold Dragonslayer and the broken figured before him trying desperately to reconcile themselves in his fevered imagination.

How could this man, so bold and proud and might, be reduced to something so mortal, so fragile? In the moonlight, the boy thought he saw tears on the old warrior’s face, and this too he did not understand. Brave warriors did not cry. Little boys, scared of their schoolmasters, cried. Mothers watching their sons leave for glorious battle cried. But warriors did not.

Seized by a concoction of boyish intrigue and a slight fear, not for himself but for the man before him, he stepped out onto the walkway, out of the shadow of in inn, and stood quite visible in the moonlight. The warrior did not turn. He took another step, and another and another.

Loud, so loud, a plank creaked under his foot, and in a flash the warrior turned, suddenly alert, hands going for a blade that was not as hit side. Then, frozen as if bewitched, he seemed to wither a dozen years, and collapsed to his knees, eyes fixed with horror on the boy.

The boy didn’t step back, or run away, or do any of the cowardly things that the voice in the back of his head commanded, and nor did he heed the imagined warnings of his mother about talking to strangers at night. This was no stranger; this man was a hero, and he knew it. There was nothing else to do, in that childhood mind.

“’Scuse me, Sir. Yer all right, en’t ya?” he asked, taking another tentative step forward. The man made no reply. “I asked if you was all right.” He repeated. Still nothing but the look of terror on the warrior’s face. The boy laughed in the moonlight. “Ha, ‘course yer all right, yer a man, and a hero, and you’s killed dragons, en’t ya? ‘Course yer all right. Just a bit too much o’ the ale, then?”

He turn cheerily to go, leaving the warrior to his silent madness. What more could he do?

Before he could take a step, an icy cold hand closed around his trailing wrist, and the boy turned again, to stare into those incensed eyes that were only inches from his own. He slowly withdrew his arm, and it slipped through suddenly relaxed fingers. He could almost feel the strength of this greatest of men ebbing away.

“Yer all right, Sir?” he asked for the third time, this time unable to hide the tremor in his voice that existed somewhere between fright and awe.

“No, lad, I’m not, and I shan’t imagine I will be.” He replied sullenly, and the boy felt his heart beating faster. The Dragonslayer, the legend himself, was deigning to talk to him. It took him too long to find words, and the warrior spoke again. “Not all right. There’s good men and a good woman dead because of me, and I come back, and they call me a hero.” At this point, the boy had no choice but to interject; he would not be lied to.

“Buy y’are a hero!” he insisted. “Who else’d creep inta a Dragon’s lair and face the beast? Who else’d beat it? You gotta be, sir, ‘cos all them folks in there think y’are. Yer an ‘ero to them, sir. Yer an ‘ero to me.” His voice trailed off.

“A hero to you? Tell me, boy, you ever lifted a sword? Fired a gun? Course you haven’t, and mark my words, you die having done none of them things, you’ll die an old and lucky man.”

“But what about the glory, sir? The adventure? Surely that’s worth it, en’t it?” He gave a hollow bark, shattering the night quiet.

“Glory? What do we know of glory, we warriors? We make our living in other men’s death, and taking what don’t below to us, and we come back and you think us good men for it. There’s no glory in the killing, boy, and even less in the deaths.” He wiped a tear from his unblinking eye, and the boy could tell he was nearly sobbing.

“Ya lost someone, sir?” he asked, and the man nodded, nearly whimpering, so far apart from the bold, brash and confident façade he had worn inside. Without knowing quite why, the boy placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then I’m sorry, sir, for yer loss. But grieving won’t bring ‘em back.”

“You think I don’t know that, boy?” the man shook his hand away, and rose to his full height. He glared down, a shadow against the moon, and almost snarled. “They’re not coming back, boy, and neither am I. You’ve had your hero, you’ve watched him, now you’ve met him. Tell me, boy,” he went on, leaning in closer, “am I what you expected? Eh? EH? Is this the man you think of as a hero?”

The boy stepped back, uncertain, and for the first time realising he had been scared the whole time, but too proud in front of this man he praised so highly to admit it. His breaths became shallower, his hands got clammy. It was all he could do not to run.

“Nnn…no, sir. It en’t.”

“And what was it you did expect? Tell me, boy!”

Just a few more moments. A few more moments, and the guards would come, and they’d take this mad man away. Just a few more moments.

“To tell the truth, sir, I expected something… better.”

“What?”

“Better, sir.” The boy laughed, and then laughed at the fact he was laughing. It was a brittle, shaking laugh, but it was a laugh. “’Cos all them things ya did; I thought all of ’em was for us, and I thought that ya’d know that, and that that was why ya did them in the first place. But no. No, you did them for yerself, and yer gonna stop doing them now, for yerself.”

“I have that right, boy.” he seethed.

“No, you don’t. ‘Cos when you picked up that sword, and killed them men and orcs and whatnots, we was safe, and we trusted in ya to keep us that way. And now yer walking away and ya don’t get it. You got a duty to us, sir, and if you don’t do it, all of us is gonna die someday.”

There was no answer, and by the time the boy had finished looking around, even the sound of boot steps was fading into the night, leaving him there to cry like he had been wanting to ever since he saw that man, staring into the dark.

He cried for that man he knew he’d never see again, and his friends that he’d never see, and cried for himself for the lie he’d believed. But most of all, he cried for those people, safe and snug in their beds, that had no one now to defend them.

And in that moment, he knew what he would do, and the world seems to fall away to let him.

***

A boy’s hand plunges into icy midnight water, sending ripples across the surface, smudging reflections out of existence.

Thin fingers fumble in the dark, groping for something they had lost, desperately trying to hold on to nothingness

After an age of wandering they find their prize, seize it, and pull, five fingers on cold metal, and soon they are joined by five more in that struggle to pull from the depths a memory and a ghost and a shadow.

And then it is done, and the hands rise, and a blade pulls free from the silt, soaring upwards and glinting in the moonlight. The metal reflected a smile; it had a purpose again. 

***

Author's Notes: 

- For this piece, I've adopted two rather different and idiosyncratic narrative viewpoints, in an effort to create contrast between young and old, reality and expectation, despair and hope and experience and innocence. Interestingly, though, by the end of the piece the young boy ends up claiming a moral high ground over his former hero, in many ways growing as a character just through his 1000 or so words of involvement. He's certainly not the same at the start as at the end. 

- The other thing I inadvertently found myself doing with this one was fulfilling a brief I read months ago in which one character teaches another, but in turn learns something profound through the process. However, in this case, that comes through the presentation of the learner rather than the teacher, so it's left to the imagination to decide what exactly was learned by the elder 'teacher'. It also highlights the fine line between wisdom and naivety; the boy may seem to be idealistic and childish, but above all he's right, which is part of what triggers the reaction. 

- The last section is really groundwork for expanding the story rather than this piece itself, but I thought I'd leave it in for the sake of it. Perhaps unfortunately, I now envision a much larger work growing from this, so I shall see where this leads... 

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below. 

A New Dawn?

Today's piece is another instalment of the ongoing World War One series, The Poet's War, and follows on directly from the previous piece. As usual, newcomers can check where it fits in relation to the other pieces on the Ongoing Works page, and notes are below.

A New Dawn?

14^th November 1914

Stephens’ face stared blankly back at nothingness as they lowered him silently into the shallow grave, in truth little more than one of the less-flooded shell holes that littered what was left of the trench amidst the craters, shattered structures and littered detritus of battle. The eyes, unmoving and still, were what captivated Smith the most, some morbid fascination preventing him from looking away. The rest of Stephens’ face was a torn and bloody mess, ripped ragged by a single bullet, but the eyes were untouched. He could be watching a play, or a game of cricket on a summer’s afternoon with those staring, round, peaceful eyes, and they would still look the same, so real, so alive.

Alive in what Smith was rapidly beginning to accept was a dead and dying world. Too many corpses lay unrecovered in the chaotic ruins of what had once been a trench, too many sights hinted almost casually at the scale of the death surrounding them. Across that wasteland, nothing moved, nothing grew, and nothing lived.

Through the smoke that still hung over the vacated battlefield, the odd flare or cry would go up, the searchers and survivors locked in an ever-shorter game of Hide-And-Seek, counting the seconds, not until they were found, but until that was immaterial. A single tear rolled gently down his cheek, a gesture that seemed altogether too insignificant for the sheer hell he found himself in.

Just as suddenly as the world had burst into vivid live as he had approached the front lines, every sight and sound and smell a fusillade of words and lines, falling together and gone in seconds, it had become quite dead equally quickly. Somewhere in the last four blood-soaked days, the illusion had been shattered, the reality had become a nightmare, and what had once seemed a wide open world had transformed in an instant into something confined, trapped and claustrophobic. 

He couldn’t yet tell entirely when the sudden transformation had occurred, only that it had. Maybe when Stephens’ face, that same face he now looked down at, had been split red by the first shot fired in anger. Maybe it was when the grey lines had moved across the grey field, puppets jerking in haphazard motion ever closer. Maybe it was when that grey met his khaki and both were made red, bayonets plunging in riflelight. Or maybe, it was when he had stopped after days of alert readiness and near-constant bloodshed, and finally slept, as dead to the world as the corpses around him. Maybe that new dawn was what had finally tipped him headlong into this nightmare.

“We should say something. You should, sir.” Johnson muttered, the first words Smith had heard him offer since the fighting had stopped. There was something new in his voice, but also something gone, as if scorn had been relieved by a shattered pride. He had not seen much of Johnson in the battle, but the giant man seemed somewhat diminished by the ordeal, stooped over this shallow grave and looking as solemn as if it were his own opened up before him.

“Aye.” Smith began, and then paused as the words caught in his throat, which seemed to tighten around them and force them back, intent on preserving the silence. He tried again. “Our Father, who art… who art…” He could not bring himself to say Heaven in this complete hell. “Ah, bugger it. Goodbye, Stephens. Goodbye, little Lenny Stephens. Goodbye.”

Smith pressed the shovel into Johnson’s reluctant hands and turned away without another word, not meeting the eyes that were deader than those of the corpse in the shallow pit. Some detached fragment of his mind wondered what his own would reveal should he dare to look. Ghosts in firelight of fallen men? Empty, dark spaces, a door to the soul that had just departed? The same fixed stare that he couldn’t shake from his mind?

With every step away from the open grace, the wet ground underfoot seemed more reluctant to let him leave, grasping and clinging at his boots.  Smith was tempted to let it keep him. Somehow, what meagre ceremony had been held did no justice to their fallen friend; he deserved something more. But then, others were still out there in the wasteland and the gunsmoke mist, dead and dying and so alone. He should be grateful they were able to give Stephens a send-off at all.

After an age, another tear fell, and this time it was one among many, a single tear for a dead friend amidst a torrent for nameless others. Through blurred eyes he looked back at the grave. Johnson had planted a makeshift cross of charred timber, and fallen to his knees before it, occasionally wracked by silent sobs. Smith left him to his grief; he would at least allow the man some dignity as he diminished.

Somehow, Smith was certain it was over for now. Over for Christmas. Whether it was the first hints of snow in the air, or the first silence of the relentless guns, or the complete lack of anything left to fight for he did not know, but he knew another attack would not come, at least until the new year. A winter, then, to grieve for the fallen and rebuild the trenches that would be their only monument, and welcome with open arms and forced smiles the men that would doubtless be sent to replace them.

And then what? They could do it all again when the winter ceased, or even before if they chose, and for what? For the foreign soil that clung to his boots, unremarkable, worthless, but urging him to stay with every step away? For the flag that hung in tatters over a burned-down ruin where so many men had already given their lives? For the hope that maybe, one day, far away, some other generation would not have to face the same?

Without knowing how it got there, Smith found the diary in his hand, miraculously unscathed despite the fighting, and opened it to a fresh page, letting the blood and mud on his hands stain the crisp whiteness; there was no purity here. Perched on an overturned barrel, pen in hand, he began to try and put some meaning to all of this madness. For minutes, maybe hours, nothing.  

When, at last, the words came, there were only two. It was enough.

                         

What Now?  

***

Author's Notes: 

- The first thing I had in mind with this piece was to really bring to the fore something that has been a constant, if subtle, feature of this series from its inception, namely that what I really intend to focus on is not the actual fighting of the war but the myriad effect that it has on the men who took part. While it's tempting to write an out-and-out battle scene (and one may well be forthcoming further along), I think in this particular context, it's better to only hint at the real fighting rather than present it directly. 

-The other advantage of this is that it leaves the exact reality to the imagination, which no doubt does a far better job of presenting the sheer insanity and hell of the fighting than words could ever hope to. 

- This piece possibly the first one which really functions better as part of the narrative than as a standalone piece. Not only does it herald a complete change in both Smith and Johnson and their perceptions of the war, but it also occupies the position of a turning point in the tale as a whole. It is only now that the promise of being  'home for Christmas' (hinted at towards the end of the piece) becomes an impossibility and the true nature of the war is revealed. This will also contrast nicely with the introduction of a new character to present 'part 2' of the story, but that'll have to wait for now. 

That's all. As ever, thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment, and I hope you enjoyed the piece. 

First Impressions

First of all, apologies for the lapse into inactivity that this blog has suffered over the last couple of weeks; I have found myself with too little time to really write or post anything. That said, I've got a few ideas and new bits and pieces to post now, so time-permitting there will be more coming over the next few weeks.

For today's piece, a direct follow-up to my last World War One piece, although very much a contrast to it. Enjoy:

First Impressions

4^th November 1914        

The journey through France had been long, too long, and Smith had found that, despite day after day with nothing to do but sit, march he and think, was still unable to really understand why he was here. These rolling fields, small woods and the huge European sky showed no signs of a war being fought; everything was as tranquil as it had been back home, the landscape unscarred, the people acting just the same, the very feeling of the place no different.

On reflection, he wondered what precisely he had been expecting. Ranks of soldiers rallied around a flag, fluttering in the French breeze? Fortifications manned by grizzled veterans already tired of the war?  Fields and fields of bloody corpses? It didn’t matter, those sights that haunted his dreams. They weren’t real.

The mud underfoot was different, somehow wetter than that of home, and the air was cleaner, at least on this remote road to nowhere. The sky, when not clouded, was bluer, the grass greener, every colour more vibrant and alive. It would have been ironic, if not for the grim and ever-approaching reality. He might not be there yet, but he was marching to a war. That was not something easily forgotten.

***

On the ninth day, the column came across the first signs of what they were moving inexorably towards. They had reached a small town scarcely twenty miles west of the front, and while the officers organised transport for the next leg of the journey, the men were given two hours’ rest. Smith had initially tried to maintain some kind of order, but it was hopeless. After ten minutes of barking whatever orders he could, he relented, and simply hoped the troops would not get too inebriated.

He eventually found a quiet spot, in the corner of the square, and unwrapped his carefully-concealed diary. Finding the first crisp, white page, he paused for a moment, wondering exactly what was worth noting. He hadn’t paid attention to the name of the town, nor the last, and no one really knew where he was going next. The weather had been unremarkable, if a little windy, and there had been nothing to do but march and halt. And that, he reflected, did not make compelling reading.

Ten long, slow minutes passed as the nib of his pen hovered over the page, searching for something noteworthy, and around him, Smith could feel a change in the atmosphere. A quiet had descended, the bustling market slowed and fell still, and all eyes turned to the eastward road. Smith stood, pressing through the crowd, and craned his neck for a better view the impending scene.

The unearthly quiet became even more silent, to the point at which sound seemed almost impossible. A pin dropping would be a gunshot. A sharply-drawn breath would shatter the world around him. Nothing moved.

Eventually, a green blur appeared at the head of the road, and instantly, Smith understood. He had been surrounded by nothing but that green for a month. The troops were withdrawing, possibly even the very troops his men were supposed to be relieving. Had they been too slow? Was this a retreat, or just a routine operation? Who were these men?

As the lines of khaki approached, these thoughts fell dead, replaced instantly by a morbid curiosity, a paradox of vision. At once, he wanted nothing more than to see everything he could, and to turn away. Dreams died as they drew nearer; the reality was becoming all-too-clear.

Eyes, unseeing, on staring faces. Gashes, still bleeding, sewn with cord and wire. Limbs flailing in a bizarre parody of motion. Steps, marching but out of time, one after another after another after another. These were not men, but ghosts.

Every detail was sharp in the midday sun; the men appeared to draw in the light, absorb it, darken it. Smith made out names, numbers, insignia and decorations, pointless shapes that meant nothing. He could see the bloody stubble clinging to the chin of a man too young to shave, and the limp of an old soldier, too old to fight. He could see a hand with a finger missing, the pattern tapped by its remaining companions somehow lacking, incorporeal. He could see the twitch at the corner of an eye, replaying the same look of utter horror again and again and again.

Everything here was so real and yet so distant; the silent crowd seemed to vanish, the buildings became simple shapes, every focus was on these poor shells of men, marching step by step to some other place, be it a haven, a sanctuary, or just another hell. At the head of the column, a bugler, one arm hanging dead and useless by his side, pressed his instrument to his lips and blew, but there was no sound. Something within the man was broken, unable to bring forth a sound.

One figure, ghostlier than the rest, with a blood-flecked face and madman’s eyes, suddenly leapt from the column. He fell to his knees, and then, with effort enough to move the world, stood shakily, and began staggering towards the crowd. His comrades, too tired, broken and confused to care, just kept walking ever onwards.

Smith’s eyes locked with this mad spectre’s, and the stumbling man started to claw his way through the crowd, who parted before him. Inch by inch, the ghost lurched and then crawled towards Smith. He was unable to move, transfixed as this monster of man, this blood-coughing, scrabbling corpse moved closer and closer.

He fell at Smith’s feet, another cough spraying blood, too red, too real, across his shoes, mingling with the mud. A hand closed around his leg, the fingers suddenly gripping too tight. Too real. Smith knelt down to this obviously dying man, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Their eyes met again, so close now, and Smith could finally understand this man. What he’d seen, what he’d done, where he’d been suddenly became clear; a portrait in a stare that he knew he would never forget. The grip on his ankle released, and the man fell suddenly limp, lying down in the mud at the roadside and fumbling for something at his breast pocket. Gently, Smith reached down and undid the button, and the contorted hand closed around something inside, pulling it out.

A simple pocketwatch, quite unadorned, brass somehow untarnished amidst the mud and blood a chaos. The soldier pressed it into Smith’s hand, gibbering madly but making no sound. Smith took it, and the dying man reached again for his pocket. This time, there was no grip, and Smith moved his hand aside, his own feeling in the pocket for whatever the soldier wanted. His hand closed around a scrunched ball of paper, which he withdrew. Immediately, the man started nodding, and Smith pocketed the paper. There was nothing to do now but wait.

***

It took two hours for the unknown soldier to finally die, and Smith remained with him the whole time, listening to the insane mutterings and watching his life slowly ebb away. Eventually, the crowd had parted and the troops moved away, and the two of them were left alone, a scene from a battlefield in the town square, a scene he could never forget.

Finally, Smith gathered the courage to unfold the paper the dead man had been so intent on handing over to him, and found on it only a few words, shakily scrawled on the crumpled page. A dead man’s last words. At last, he had found something to write in the pristine diary, marring it forever, its white innocence annihilated at the stroke of a pen. The watch ticked on as he painstakingly copied out each word, ink draining slowly out from the nib, life leaving an old soldier too young to die.

When all is burnt and all is dead

When all the world is blood-stained red,

When all our wars come to an end

Then will Death be called our friend.

***

Author's Notes: 

- Much like my last piece, there is a strong emphasise on body language in this one, although this time it was more a quirk of the context and content rather than a deliberately used device. I felt the 'silence' was important to this piece, as both Smith and the reader are held in a a grim illusion that direct speech would shatter. A similar effect can be seen in my piece Countdown, where speech is used in exactly that matter, to shatter the relative calm of the moment. 

- This piece also introduces a lot of motifs that have and will feature heavily in the continuing narrative, such as the watch, the use of poetry, the ideas of words being linked so closely with memory. As such, it lends context to a lot later pieces that I've already posted, or sets up these themes and idea for those reading in order. 

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment. 

The Bunker Diary: What is it All About?

Three days from finishing it, and Kevin Brooks’ The Bunker Diary still has me perplexed. While I cannot honestly encourage anyone to read it, I am equally unable to dismiss it as the pointless or powerless novel it initially seemed. Or maybe I am. For the last three days I have been almost constantly contemplating what, if anything, Brooks is trying to convey through the novel. Perhaps I was right in my initial assessment that the message of the book was ultimately nothing, but I can’t stop myself trying to find a meaning to it; the harrowing content needs to be justified in some way for the unsatisfactory ending to be at all worthwhile. Be aware, if you are wanting to read this, that there are several large spoilers below; this is very much a retrospective analysis that requires reference to the text itself. Some of the theories I presented in my previous review, but they are examined in more depth here, others are new and very much a work-in-progress.

  The most obvious of the potential overtones to the novel is its nihilist perspective on life. Regardless of meaning, one has to accept that the Bunker itself is a microcosm for the ‘real world’, with the diversity of the characters representing snapshot of a larger society. In the final third of the novel, the mysterious kidnapper, who until this point controls every aspect of the prisoners’ lives, disappears. Whether he dies, or simply grows tired of his imprisoned playthings remains unknown, but what is obvious is how, from this point on, life for the protagonists becomes entirely futile. There is no way out of the bunker, even when it is unguarded, and as the lights go out and the supplies dwindle, survival becomes increasingly impossible. For the three characters alive at this point, it is only a matter of time, and every entry in the diary is only a sign that the inevitable is delayed a day longer. Death can be the only end for the novel, and going back to the idea of the Bunker as a microcosm, it is clear to see the nihilist perspective here; life is ultimately pointless. There can be no escape and nothing matters. The conclusion is inevitable, a happy ending is impossible.

The nihilist overtones are also evident in the way Brooks handles what could otherwise be relevant social issues. While he does present drug abuse, alcoholism, homosexuality and terminal illness, these themes are not at all developed, becoming little more than plot points and character traits. It may well be that Brooks simply chose not to expand upon these themes, but given the context and the above theory, it is perhaps another element of the nihilism. The lack of development relegates these themes to insignificance, suggesting once again the ultimate worthlessness of life.

Finally on that point, the fact that no motive is presented for the kidnappings also implies a degree of nihilism. Arguably, the reason doesn’t matter, only the events, but no conclusion is ever reached regarding precisely why the victims are imprisoned. While it may not matter to them in the end, the reader is left wondering, and never answered. Death is, in the end, the only concern for the protagonists, but for the reader, the need to know why and the lack of an answer again highlights the sheer pointlessness of the events for those of us on the outside as well as those on the inside.  Perhaps there was no reason, simply the old Shakespearean statement that ‘as flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods, they kill us for their sport.’

Which leads me nicely to the next point: the atheist overtones of the novel. There are some very obvious allusions to unnamed kidnapper as a kind of deity (or false deity). The lift provides a channel of communication through which his will is done, the notes taken back up are akin to prayer. He becomes omniscient in this microcosm, able to see, hear and know everything about the inmates. They come to depend on him for their very survival. Linus refers to Him (always capitalised) as an omnipotent being, sometimes even the direct reader of the Diary, and at one point suggest that only the perception and not the reality of the kidnapper/god matters. He is very much a deified persona.

So how is this seemingly obvious godlike being representative of an atheist undertone? Because he is, in reality only a man, his power entirely manufactured (perhaps allegorical to religious control?). Because when, in the last section, they are abandoned by this godlike figure, the prisoners’ experience becomes far more dangerous but far more real than before; survival is the only instinct and only driving force, and ultimately the most powerful.

Another theory that crossed my mind was that the novel was an attack on voyeurism. The microcosm supplied in the Bunker is in many ways similar to any number of television shows that give insight into very real events from a perspective so detached that misfortune becomes entertainment. Through the diary, the reader is drawn into watching as, one-by-one, the protagonists fall slowly into insanity and destruction, and by the point things turn exceedingly nasty, one is already too invested to easily look away. By making his characters so real and layered prior to the true trauma, the reader feels almost guilty when they keep reading. I think this could easily suggest that Brooks is attacking the society in which schadenfreude is the norm; we look at the televised misfortune of unknown strangers and laugh, but when we ‘know’ the characters in the same (albeit more extreme) situation, we are appalled.

Another suggestion, similar to the above, is that the manufactured world in which the protagonists exist in is potentially a mocking of our own. Time is controlled by the kidnapper, sped up and slowed down on a whim. They are entirely dependent on him to provide their food and to keep conditions at a point at which they can keep a grip on sanity. They are mercilessly punished for every transgression. Is Brooks trying to warn us against the dangers of a controlled society? Or is he suggesting that control is imperative for modern life, as the characters descend into madness as soon as the control is lifted?

The real question is, am I just clutching at straws? The answer is undoubtedly yes. I’ve spent the last few days desperately trying to derive some kind of meaning or explanation from this harrowing novel, simply because to read through such a level of insanity and hopelessness without some kind of reasoning or statement to be taken from it is, to me, just plain wrong. I imagine every answer I’ve attempted to come up with is simply a wild theory to justify the novel I was appalled by. That said, I hope you found this interesting. 

Duty

For the first time in a while, I've written something without any kind of brief, as I'm still hooked into the story of Corporal Smith's journey across the Western front to the Somme. To my mind, this chapter pre-dates the other World War One work I've written, all of which can be found here. I think it speaks for itself, so I'll leave the introduction here and get to the story. As always, notes below:

Duty

The cell was a cold grey, the evening light casting long shadows of the bars that stood between the condemned and their final sunset. Too high to reach or see out of, all one could do was stare at that fading glimmer. The floor of the cell was a hard concrete, the grey stained by all manner of horrors. In the far corner, there was a puddle of still-drying blood, the stench of which filled the room; a final reminder of why he was here.

Smith’s shoes made a sharp click-clack, click-clack, shattering the silence and making every step a gunshot, echoing off the white walls, a never-ending cascade of noise. From somewhere nearby, he heard a voice raised in pitiful cries. The screeching and clicking folded together, the entirety of this place summed up in a few simple sounds. Madness, suddenness, silence. Even when Smith stood still, the noise circled round and round in his head.

Searching for something, anything to take his mind off the cacophony, he found his gaze irresistibly drawn to the deranged scrawlings that littered the wall. Some were indecipherable, some other language real or imagined, some were purely illegible, the tortured minds that produced them unable to remain sane long enough to form words. But a few were all too real, a name here, a prayer there, a date and a place and another date and here; the only testament these men would have, their own eulogy spilled across the walls, written in chipped plaster or red blood.

“Ah, you’ve arrived early, Smith.” Smith whirled, the voice that knifed through the silent echo chilling him to the bone, the upbeat tone at odds with the severity of its surrounding. Smith regained his composure without missing a beat, saluting crisply. “Well then, let’s not waste any time. I’m afraid we’re a little short of staff here, so you’ll be guarding the prisoner tonight, if you wouldn’t mind. No chance of escape, of course, but they tend to go a bit mad on the last night. Understandable, I suppose.”

Smith let the sergeant continue the monologue, feeling his fists clench and something in his stomach squirm. Everything about this man was jarring with this place; he was smartly dressed amidst the untidy scribbling, he stood straight where so many were broken, his voice rose crisply over the screaming from the other cells. After some time, the speech ended, and Smith was shown to the door of the cell, where he began the long, slow wait. 

***

It was midnight where the sobbing started. The walls muffled the sounds just enough that Smith could still hear them, each wracking moan and wordless cry came to him, as if from far away. Occasionally, he could decipher whole words. Home. Mother. Die. Why. Names broke through to him, meaning nothing, only echoes of people he never knew.

After an hour or maybe two, in which there had been no peace, the noise finally stopped, the silence just as haunting. There was a dim shuffling from inside the cell, and Smith knew it was coming closer. He felt the inevitable knock on the wall behind him, and moments later, the voice.

“Come on. I know ye’re there. Wouldn’t leave me wit’out a guard, would they? Just talk to me. Just talk.”

Smith was paralysed, unable even to breath. If he remained still, silent, then perhaps the prisoner would give up. Perhaps he would forget who he was calling out to, or slink back into the silence, and Smith could go back to pretending he didn’t know why he was here.

“Just talk.” Came the voice again, hollow and cutting, reaching down to the very fibre of Smith’s being. How could he ignore a dying man’s wish? Was he that inhuman? He knew it was stupid; in six hours he would be killing this man. But somehow, he just couldn’t ignore him. He couldn’t speak, either.

“D’ya know why I’m in ‘ere?” the walls whispered to him. He gave no answer, but the prisoner somehow knew he was curious. “Disobeyed orders, didn’t I? Mad ‘McLellan, not doin’ as ‘e’s told. Mad, mad McLellan.” The voice gave way to a high-pitched laugh, which seemed to tear out Smith’s insides and rearrange them in a grim parody of a human. Every word, every syllable, and both of them became closer to being animals.

“Told ‘em their war was bloody stupid, din’t I? Wouldn’t go over, would I? And they called me a coward. Hahhahahaha! Me, a bloody coward! And yet ‘ere I am, facin’ death with no way out. So when you’re out there, tomorrow mornin’, linen’ up yer shot, just ask yerself: Who’s the bloody coward now? Who, eh? Who?”

The last word was screamed out, shattering whatever was left of Smith’s resolve. The madman knew his piece was done, and slunk back to the silence, his scream becoming a mutter as the night wore on. Mad McLellan’s words went marching through his head for hours, and eventually, only one thought remained.

Mad, mad McLellan, the man who wouldn’t fight, was the only sane man he’d seen since London.

***

The morning light was cold and harsh, the rain becoming ice and making the footing treacherous. Smith picked up the rifle and marched into the courtyard, where McLellan stood upright, tied to the wooden pole in front of the stained grey walls. Smith didn’t need to see through the bag to know he’d be grinning, knowing that he had the last laugh over his executioners, who now formed a line and stood ready. Smith noted with some sickness that, apart from his own, no hand trembled on the rifle. These men were executioners, cold and ruthless.

“Firing squad. Ready.”

Rifles came to shoulders, Smith moving as one with the rest of the men, doing his best to do anything but think. It was no good.

“Aim.”

The air was silent, their breaths wisps of cloud taken on the wind, the gentle breeze ruffling the king’s flag that Smith could not take his eyes off. The seasoned executioners adjusted their aim, turning this brutal business to an art form. Smith’s own weapon wavered, pulled left and right by the burning desire to miss. McLellan stood a little straighter, defiance incarnate.

Who’s the coward now?

“Fire.”

***

Author's notes: 

- This piece is based on a very real place and setting; on my visits to Belgium I've seen a prison cell and execution range very similar to the ones described here, and it was genuinely a chilling experience. If the description of this setting is at all like I think it is, I hope there is a real sense of that in this piece. 

- One idea I was playing with when writing this was that Smith took on this role of executioner to 'save' Robson from it. In the narrative I'm developing here, there's an interesting dynamic between those two characters, with Smith doing what he can to protect Robson's innocence in the hell of war, while Robson is constantly trying to achieve the 'glory' he signed up for. I'll leave that there, as it's something I want to play with in another piece coming up soon. 

That's all for today. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment. 

Who Art In Heaven?

I've completed another writing exercise, based around a character who finds themselves entirely loveless and alone.

Who Art In Heaven?

He awoke in total darkness, something cold in his hand, something heavy across his face, something sharp at his throat. Unable to move, he simply waited for enough of the feeling to return, aware only of the soft drip, drip, drip of the rain at the window and the howling of the wind through the bell tower’s open windows. Somewhere, a clock struck midnight.

Midnight. It had been no later than eight when he had relented, had conceded the sermon unwritable and reached all-too-eagerly for the bottle that now weighed his hand to the floor, and whose contents rendered him unable to think. The sin, so small, had been so easy.

Slowly, in time measured only by the raindrops, he regained feeling through his body and was able to reach up and paw desperately at the thing that lay across his face. His free hand reached it, clawed at it, felt the leather cover and instantly muttering a prayer for forgiveness, irreverently shoving the Bible’s dry pages from his face before his tears could wet them.

His hand then went down, seemingly of its own accord, and seized at the cold, sharp metal on his throat. The four limbs of the crucifix all seemed to spear him, each a reminder of a vice too distant to recall. He had wronged, and this was all he knew.

Climbing slowly to his feet, leaning to the oak desk for support, he allowed the chilled midnight air to blow through him, awakening, energising, bracing. All the while, prayers flew from his lips, prayers of forgiveness and protection and confession. Words uttered silently and carried away on that same wind that blasted through the church.

After he had recovered enough to walk, or rather stumble, he found himself drawn to the wooden door that opened to the tower, and then on and on up the narrow winding stairs that looped upwards for what seemed like for ever. He stumbled on the seventy-fifth step as he remembered doing before, steadying himself on the stone wall for a minute before going on.

The steps slowly became steeper and eventually spilled him out onto the belfry, into the full force of the midnight storm. Through a break in the clouds a narrow band of stars peered through, but it was a pebble against the tide, and all-too-soon swallowed up. Below him, the town lights were a sparkling vista; the soft yellows of muffled houselights, the orange glow of streetlamps, even the blue flash of a siren tearing the night apart was strangely captivating.

He looked out over this view, and only after an age did it become apparent why he stood there, soaked to the bone, storm-tossed and unthinking. This was what he had dedicated his life to. His eyes traced the path of the siren, as it chased down one street and through the next, before coming to halt at the scene of an unseen but ear-shatteringly loud altercation.

Closer still, he could see two late-night partygoers, staggering back home, faces beneath hoods illuminated and fading in the cigarette glow. A car swerved dangerously towards them, the icy road taking control, and a withering fusillade of abuse was returned. The driver merely dimmed his lights and continued, but not before countering with a curse of his own. He recognised the voice from the Sunday congregation, he would sit on the front left of the hall, his lips barely parted in song.

These people, who could stand before him and say their prayers and beg forgiveness leniently granted, were godless. Every time he looked deeper, he became more convinced. The two walkers passed a man begging change on the street corner, and only a still-burning butt was casually thrown his way. The voices near the siren raised, and again he knew them, their words transplanted into hymns in the back of his mind.

And if they were so lost, what purpose did he serve? To grant them the true forgiveness they would squander daily? No, that was The Lord’s role. To provide a channel for them to be heard? No, their voices raised, whether in prayer or blasphemy, would accomplish that. To turn a blind eye that their sins might be forgotten? No, for God saw all.

All he could do was give them what they begged and wasted, for there was no other way. He had no choice but to forgive them that they might one day repent; he had no choice but to hear their lies, pretend they were sincere, and bless them in the name of a God that would surely not. He turned his face up at the storm, and began to call out, louder than the wind and rain, that he would be heard above it.

“Oh Father, have I not been your faithful servant? Have I not loved as you taught, and taught to love as you did?” He paused for breath, the wind snatching the air from him, and resumed. “Oh Father, have I not forgiven those who ask it, though they repeat their sins? Have I not prayed forgiveness myself that my sins may be absolved? Am I not your true servant?”

There was no answer, only the wind rushing through the belfry that threatened to take him, hurl him from the edge and down and down to the ground so far below. Rain became tears that fell in droves, and without thinking, his hand reached for the crucifix, the points digging deep into his palm and drawing blood. A second later he had torn it away and flung it from the edge, out into oblivion.

The silence, he concluded, was answer enough, and in that second, the terrible truth became apparent. It was him, not them, that had chosen the wrong path, and if God would not answer now, everything he taught and had been taught was a lie. And after that, there was no point to any of it. No God, no Heaven, no Hell.

For some reason, the thought was comforting. Because it meant what he was about to do was no sin, what he had done was not either, and that the only certainty was annihilation and an eternity of nothingness. With that thought etched into his mind like the Commandments on the tablets, he placed first one foot then the other on the edge, and waited that long wait for the whistling wind to whisk him away…

***

Author's notes: 

- The first thing to be said about this piece, that also applies to everything I write, is that there is no agenda to it beyond telling a compelling story. I do not mean to criticise the concept of religion nor argue against it, simply to capture this scene in writing. 

- The brief with this one was to create a character who is without love, despite being loving themselves. While at first glance this appears to be the priest, I suppose it could also refer to God depending on which way you take the ending. Quite a lot of this piece, including the title, is deliberately ambiguous, so I will avoid explaining it too much; I'd rather you draw your own conclusions. 

As always, thanks for reading.and feel free to leave a comment. 

Absent Friends

As I mentioned yesterday, I have another of the writing exercises complete, and where yesterday's was a prequel to my other World War One work, today's is a conclusion, to these stories at least. I shall be revisiting these characters at some point, but this piece certainly marks the end of their collective story. It is set a few days after this piece.

The piece is based on creating absent characters. Again it's over the word limit, and I've taken a bit of liberty with the brief, focusing more on the effect of the absence on a character present. The first 500 words or so do work on building the non-present characters, but after that it really is the story of the protagonist himself. Here it is:

Absent Friends/After the End

The Somme, France, 3^rd July 1916

The dugout was silent, Robson’s reverberating full-belly laugh conspicuous by absence. The pile of papers on Smith’s makeshift desk uncharacteristically scattered, July snow fallen in sheets on the surface. Next to them, neatly perched on the edge, a parcel that had arrived too late, unopened.

Anders lit the candle as night fell, and turned for a moment to ask what time the lads wanted waking. The words were halfway from his lips when they stumbled and slid to a halt. The sound seemed to echo for an age before fading, as if waiting for a reply that would never come. He forced out a choked cough, shattering the spell before it could fully take effect. Too long in this ghostly silence and he’d start hearing voices.

No, that wasn’t it. He would never stop hearing them. Smith barking orders, a compassion behind the barbed commands. Johnson would never stop complaining about the way the lintel hung too low on the left or the constant but gradual trickle of water from the leaking roof of the dugout. As the watch hit nine, he almost heard Robson’s cheery daily announcement he was heading off for duty. Anders turned to wish him good luck before he could stop himself.

After an eternity of the echoing voice calling back, the silence gathered and stalked back in, the ticking of the old watch the only noise keeping it at bay. Anders pulled out the watch, the brass case glinting in the candlelight, and watched the hand tick round, seeming not to count seconds but hours in the never-silent half-light. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

For the thousandth time, Anders heard Smith telling that same story, how this watch had been pressed into his hands as a comrade lay dying in the mud, how he had kept it safe across the breadth of France, and when home on leave, had paid a small fortune to have engraved into the polished brass casing, a dead man’s words.

When all is burnt and all is dead

When all the world is blood-stained red,

When all our wars come to an end

Then will Death be called our friend.

An epitaph, he’d called it. An epitaph to a good man.

‘Bloody poets,’ Johnson didn’t say as Anders traced the tiny words with a finger, ‘if they’d spend as much time with a rifle as a pen we’d be a damn sight closer to winning this damned war.’ The tirade continued for some time, silently writhing in Anders’ head, over and over and over and over and…

He stopped still, frozen but for his eyes, darting from place to place, looking for any sign of life. Had the plates moved from the table where they had taken a last supper? Had a shadow passed over the door as an old friend returned? No. There was no one and nothing, Anders reminded himself, all those lives were stilled, those pulses dead, those laughs, cut off mid-stream and lying decaying in mud. Nothing in here but him and the ghosts. All night, he sat there, not sleeping, not moving, just him and the ghosts, the candle becoming a puddle of wax, until the first lights of day dispelled the thoughts for another brief respite.

In that instant, he could take it no longer. There was nothing to be done but sit and grow old, and he wasn’t meant for that. He was without purpose. As menial as his tasks had been, Anders had always performed them to the best of his ability, not out of a sense of forced duty or pride, but because every meal, every mud-filled mug of tea, every almost-clean uniform he laid out for them could be their last. Everything he did, he did out of respect for these better, braver men who would surely die, and now they all had, there was nothing left. No service or small favour freely given could help them now.

And then the thought came to him, a flash of clarity that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Hurriedly, he grabbed a pencil and paper, and scrawled a brief message onto it, childlike enthusiasm infecting his ageing frame. He placed the watch in the paper, folding it twice, and left it on the desk, before climbing to his feet with more vigour than he had felt in a long while, and walking slowly towards the early morning sunlight and beyond.

He passed through the trench unnoticed, just another batman on an errand, until he found a space filled only with the dead that had been cut down before they could leave the muddy slit.one hand after another, he clawed his way up the latter and over, and out into the wasteland that stretched for miles, a world of the dead where nothing grew.

He did not know how long he walked among the dead, and the almost-dead, who reached out and called for home and family, or uttered streams of curses and unintelligible babblings. Across mountains and valleys of that scarred land he walked, waiting for the bullet that only came when every last drop of his sanity was torn away. Silhouetted against the rising sun, Anders slumped to the sniper’s welcome bullet, and died, staring into the clear blue sky.

***

Epilogue:

The watch now sits, quite lost, among thousands of other artefacts recovered from those hellish places. The face is cracked, the mechanism muddied and jammed up, the time frozen at some moment from another age. The inscription is barely readable, only a few thin lines on the battered case. You might see it one day, small and insignificant, a piece of useless metal amidst a sea of others.

What you will not see is the paper it was wrapped in, an unassuming white sheet with a few lines of scribbled text. It has decayed, fallen apart, become scattered on the wind. Words that were forgotten.

Better men that me have died. I go to join them. Remember us.  

Author's notes:

- This is very much a tragedy, a story of loss and madness and ultimately suicide. As always, I hope not to have mistreated the context or content. It is also undoubtedly the end of the story of these men, although as I said before there are many tales still untold. I do hope this provides a sense of conclusion, though. 

- The last part I'm not sure on. Part of me wants to spend more time on the conclusion, but I feel with the previous piece I have done all I can on No-Man's-Land without needless repetition, given that I eventually intend to combine them all into a single longer piece. I do like the almost desensitised feeling of the last couple of paragraphs, but I also feel the need to redo them. In my head, I had a scene from Sebastian Faulks' novel Birdsong (a great book, by the way) in which a character goes 'over the top' and experiences a moment of outstanding clarity, seeing the world as almost beautiful for a split-second before all hell breaks loose. I wasn't intending to copy this, but there were a couple of bits I wanted to try and convey. I may well re-read that scene and then re-draft this ending, as I really do like the contrast he manages to achieve. 

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to comment. 

No Man's Land/The Poet's War

This blog has been lapsing into inactivity for a week or so, but now I'm back into the swing of writing, and have continued progressing with the Writing Exercises with two more completed in the last couple of days. It's a prequel to the stories found here and here, set in the trenches of France in World War One. This piece, unlike the others, has no specific setting, but is pre-Somme given its position in the story. 


No Man’s Land/ The Poet’s War (Ways of Seeing) 

Nine o’clock. Smith clicked shut the freshly-cleaned watch and climbed to his feet, noting with sudden alarm the chaotic mess his desk had become as he worked. Hastily, he shuffled the papers into some kind of order, and gave a dissatisfied grunt. It would do for now, he concluded. Grabbing his rifle from where it lay by the narrow exit, he made his way up into the trench. 

At this late hour, the trench was all but deserted, only a few stragglers and the watchmen not at liberty to return to their dugouts where they would huddle for cover as the night dragged on. The setting sun cast long shadows, plunging the entirety of the trench into darkness, broken only by flashes of blinding light where the last rays pierced gaps in the sandbags. Smith noted the major openings as he walked, and decided he would place a detail on repairs as soon as it was light enough to work. 

Smith reached the watchman’s post and tapped the current guard on the shoulder three times, a routine they had perfected over the long months of service together. Johnson turned on the third tap, saluted and marched back to the dugout, breaking step as soon as he was out of sight. Smith stepped up into the alcove and put his eye to the periscope, surveying the wasteland that was set out before him. 

Every day it was the same, and yet different. New shelling had created a barren landscape entirely different from what he had seen only yesterday; mounds stood where there were craters, craters where there had been a rare patch of level earth. Rivers of rainwater, unable to seep into the saturated ground, that had run away to the left yesterday now wound their way to his right, dripping slowly down into the ever-filling-and-draining trench. 

The words came to Smith unbidden, as they did every night, and again he fought the urge to prise his eyes away from the glass lens to commit them to paper. Instead, he let them dance in his head like so many fireflies. 

Today’s world is falling dead; tomorrow’s unborn, 
Greyness yet to find a form, 
These hills and gullies, crested with the sunset 
Will stand, will die, and we will forget. 

As his eyes became more accustomed to the light, the sharp shadows and glaring lights adopting more mellow tones, Smith was greeted with the same horrors he saw every day and dreamed of every night. Men lay in the mud, dead, their uniforms rotting away, their faces grey and pale, their flesh eaten away by the maggots and rats that paid no heed to allegiance. All these dead men, so far from home, were meals to those things that crawled in the dark and were consumed with ravenous hunger. 

Dead among the dying they sit, these pale husks of men 
Who cannot fight or die again 
Their too-young bodies rent and torn 
Will disappear before the dawn. 

Smith’s vision became clearer, this vision of a daily hell, and the more he looked, the more he saw. Morbid curiosity drew him in, calling seductively, ordering him to look closer, and closer, and closer until… 

A man still moves in this too-still world 
Face scarred, eyes bloodshot, lips curled 
In a cry for home 
To the crows and the sky 
Above 

The ghostly figure crawled, inch by inch, across the wasteland, driven by some desperate force that defied injury and reason. He was bloody all over, shot several times in the chest, and his left arm hung useless, handless at his side. Smith could not look away. For a moment, he considered ordering out a party of men to retrieve this moving cadaver from the field, but he knew it would be a futile effort. The man’s groans, coming to him now through the sunset, belied what little time he had left, his ever smaller and weaker movements were a death warrant. At the very least, Smith could end his misery, but he was somehow paralysed, unable to move until this ghastly play had its final act. 

He cries for death, this dying man 
That sweet relief that ends us all; 
And cries not tears but floods 
To drown himself in mud and blood 
If none will answer his fatal call. 

The sun set, and the crawling corpse groaned on and on into the night, Smith charting his progress and losing sight as darkness fell. Flares, sent up intermittently, would give him another brief chance, a glimpse as this horrible visage came closer, and then it would fade, those ghostly eyes and torn face haunting Smith in the dark between them. 

Why does he crawl? Why does he call 
For home, when he is alone 
So alone among the dead? 
What thoughts, what promises, 
What secrets never told are pounding, 
Marching round inside his head? 

At two o’clock, a flare was again sent up and Smith realised with some horror that the creature -for he was no longer a man with those howls and that grimace- was moving ever towards him, now only a dozen yards from the edge of the trench. Another fifteen minutes at most, and he would reach that precipice, and tumble down to lie among the sandbags or be consumed by the muddy water. 

Come home, old soldier, 
Come back to your ranks and be seen. 
Be seen that they might know who you are 
What you are and where you have been. 
Tell your tale now, or a hundred years hence, 
It make no difference till the warlords relent. 

Author's Notes:
- First off, a confession: on this piece I've gone well over the word count, but I've found that these characters have just run away with me somewhat. I feel I'd rather take a little longer and do the setting/character/message justice rather than truncate it just to meet the word count. As always, I hope to have treated the subject well and respectfully. 

- The brief for this task asked for a character to have a unique way of seeing a traumatic event, and the focus for this was the poetry in this piece. I've always been fascinated by the War Poets, (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke et al) and in poetry in general, so this was very interesting to write and experiment with mixing in poetry with prose. If anyone reading this is a poet, then I imagine you'll know what it can be like when words just spring into you head and change the way you see the world. I hope that's worked in this piece. 

- The poem itself I think works as a standalone piece, although I do feel the context of this piece improves it. It lacks a coherent rhyme, structure or style, but that is intentional as it highlights the confusion and lack of surety from the narrator. 

- At the end of the day, this piece is about character, so I hope to have made that the focus of it. With any luck, this piece and the other WW1 bits will give you a good sense of Smith's character and those of his comrades. I'm pretty sure I'm not yet done with this cast, and will almost certainly return to them. 

As always, feel free to leave a comment, and thanks for reading. 

Last Call

I've got a couple more stories done today, the Phone Tag and Backwards exercises are both done now, and both were very nice to write given how much trouble I'm still having with 'The Reluctant I'. The backwards one I have a few reservations about, but more on that later. For now, here's the Phone Tag exercise. Just a couple of quick notes beforehand: pay attention to the date at the start, it's important, and be prepared for quite a dark and tragic piece.

Last Call (Phone Tag exercise)

Norfolk, England, August 1940

Stanley waited patiently by the phone, just as he always had, while Ella (he should really call her Miss Stapleton, but she never minded) made the call. As she spun the dial and asked to be put through, he sat in silence, sipping his hot chocolate and trying not to wince at the heat. He was nearly seven, after all, and it wouldn’t do for him to be upset by it. Not in front of Ella, anyway. She was a Grown Up, and never upset.

The call seemed to take longer than usual, and when the phone finally seemed to connect, Ella did not immediately hand it over like she usually did. Instead, she seemed to stiffen, and when she spoke, her voice that Stanley had come to know meant safety and strength suddenly seemed to say ‘help me’.

 “’Hello? Hello?” she began, and Stanley leant forward to try and hear. He knew he shouldn’t, and that mother would think it awfully rude, but something wasn’t right. There was no ‘Hello, Mrs Wallace, can I pass you to Stan?’ or even the bright and lilted ‘How are you, Mrs Wallace? Good, good, I’ll pass you over now.’ that he sometimes heard if she was in a particularly good mood that day.

“Hello?” she said again, and then “Oh.”  A long silence followed, in which Stanley could do nothing but wait, perched on the edge of the step.

“No, no, he’s here. But I’ll hear it first, please.” Stanley noticed that she was doing the cross voice that he only got when he was naughty.

“Right…. Right… Oh crikey… Oh God.” Ella paused for a moment more, swallowed, and seemed to calm herself.

‘Close your eyes and count to ten.’ Stanley wanted to tell her, just like she taught him, but he said nothing. It would be rude to interrupt, especially a Grown Up. Still, she managed to regain composure as he knew she would, and started speaking again, her voice even more ragged now than before, a tapestry fraying at the edges.

“Ok… Ok, I’ll tell… Oh God no. How did it…?”

Stanley began chewing his lip and tapping his fingers in patterns of four beats on the bannister, counting each and trying to understand. Why wasn’t he allowed to speak to Mother? Or even Father? At the very least he would like to have said goodnight to them. Confused, he went back to listening to the call, fighting to understand. Like in the stories, Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery. Those stories always had a happy ending, didn’t they? Especially when Ella told them.

“Right. Right. Both of them?” Another age-long pause.  “Ok. So what will you do about… what will you do about him?”

Stanley noticed the pointed look his way that Ella must have thought he hadn’t. His mind was flying now, running through idea after idea. Maybe they were coming to visit, and they were already on the way? Maybe they had gone on holiday away from the city? But why hadn’t they told him?

“Right. Of course I will. Of course I will.” Ella put the phone down and stepped back as if it were a live snake, or a dead rat, or a monster from under the bed she always promised weren’t there. “I’ll tell him.” She said hysterically, voice high like it went when she was singing, but not as happy. That voice made the world better, this one seemed to tear it apart. “I’ll tell him… I’ll tell him.” She stared into the distance at something Stanley couldn’t see, but because he tried anyway, he didn’t see the tears flooding her eyes.

After Time (he didn’t quite know how much), he finally spoke up.

“Can I speak to Mother and Father now, please? Are they going to phone back?”

Ella appeared to evaporate before his eyes. She still stood there, not moving, but all the life and soul had left her like a sparrow flying south to warmer climes. She looked down at him, but not into his eyes, and finally, finally told him.

“They aren’t going to call back…” She sobbed, sinking to her knees and clutching desperately at Stanley. “Oh God, Stanley, they’re never going to call back.”

***

Author's notes:

- First off, a note on the tone of this piece. It really is upsetting and tragic, but again I hope I've handled it well. This is probably one of the saddest and most unpleasant pieces I've written, but at the same time, I think it is in a way quite touching and relevant. The story touches on a lot of themes that I do like, such as the innocence of childhood, the bond between parents and children and the way this is affected by various circumstances.

- This piece is also unusual for me in that the setting is not only a new area in terms of my writing, but also massively informing of the piece, without being explicitly explained. The first person that read this missed the date at the start, and the piece took on an entirely different meaning. So that's something I've not really done before, and I'm interested to hear whether it works or whether the story as a whole is too vague.

- I hope that the perspective on the story works well enough. I think I've managed to capture the mind of a 1940s child well enough, but I'm of course open to criticism.

I'll post the next one later today, and for now, any comments are welcome as per usual.