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Only a Matter of Time Now

  • 02-09-2013 8:28pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 29,930 ✭✭✭✭


    I actually had a version of this up here years ago, but I've only started writing again after an extremely long hiatus (partly because I'm starting a new course, and partly because I've been wanting to get back to it) and find that flexing my creative muscle is proving far more difficult than I expected, so I revisited an old piece rather than create a whole new one, though it is substantially different all the same. It's pretty short, so it won't occupy too much of anyone's time. :)

    It is only a matter of time now. They cannot be too far away.

    For now there is only an almost serene stillness; the proverbial calm before the storm; but in a few moments they will be upon me. I am the only one to have made it this far but suddenly I am awash with dismay and regret for my instinctual efforts.

    I am almost out of ammo.

    If there is anything worse than death that the mind's eye can conjure then it is surely facing death alone. Alone and swallowed whole by an indifferent darkness a thousand miles from home. I childishly wish it were all a fantastic and twisted dream, one that would soon draw to a close and take me back to the safety of somewhere far, far away, but it only sharpens the dull ache in my stomach.

    My mind screams in wretched, tortured agony as the obvious and inevitable churns over and over in my brain. I'm finished. I can't possibly survive this. No ammunition. No comrades.

    No hope.

    I have nothing but an exhausted shotgun, a combat knife and a broken mind.

    Maybe I should just kill myself now?

    Instead I just sit aimlessly, trembling with dread at the anticipation of what comes next.

    I try to focus on the current situation, but my mind keeps falling victim to escapism, drifting to the fantasy of what could have been.

    I shouldn't even be here. The fact that it took conscious and most deliberate effort on my part to find myself in this position is haunting.

    Sarah.

    Even as I find myself thinking about her, I almost forget she's gone. The pillars of my world, the very source of my being, the basis for every decision, hope, dream and aspiration for as far back as I could remember.

    Dead.

    She dropped pretty early back. Her helmeted head and spine ripped from her body and tossed aside like mere foliage. Her slender, heavily armoured body crumpling as the gory, exposed stump of her neck jetted large gouts of thick crimson blood into the air under the illuminative flash of a Grenade round.

    The stars are shining brightly in the dark sky. I think I can vaguely see Earth from where I crouch.

    How insignificant we are, mere grains of sand in an infinite wasteland. How absurdly and decidedly unfortunately insignificant we are. Here I am staring into the jaws of death, and I mean nothing. I know I am going to die.

    Do I?

    It is inevitable, but yet it is hard to truly accept it.

    I start to wonder again if I should kill myself. It seems like a bit of an indulgent fantasy.

    I didn't even bother to pick up extra ammo from a fallen comrade. Would it have made a difference?

    Strangely, they are almost lucky, those fallen comrades. Their part in this is over. They are gone, but I am still here, and not entirely sure I'm all the more grateful for the stay of life I've carved out for myself.

    I am still here.

    And I am ****ed.

    A faint, hollow screech drifts on the breeze. It sends a chill down my spine. For an eternal moment, there is nothing. I swallow hard and close my eyes.

    The air suddenly fills with innumerable ragged screeches of variable frequencies, much closer this time.

    Much closer and all around me.

    My motion tracker hangs uselessly from my vest, shattered, but I know what it would tell me.

    I am surrounded.

    I am surprisingly calm. I stare into the darkness, slowly removing the last of my high explosive shells from my perforated combat vest. Seven shells; a shell for every man down. I feed them slowly into the shotgun.

    I hesitate at the last one, rolling it around in my fingers. The duality of this particular shell is not lost on me.

    This shell is for Sarah.

    It could also be for me.

    I push it in and pause for a few seconds before racking a round into the chamber.

    No more screeching, but they are close enough now that I can hear their elongated limbs dragging across the sandy ground, teeth chattering together mechanically as they come hungrily for me.

    I rack the shotgun and there is a distinctive and slightly reassuring heavy metallic clink as it cycles.

    There are more than seven of them, I'm sure.


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