Writing Prompt Challenge 1

The_Gatsby

So I thought this would be a good way to generate a bit of traffic in the forum. Maybe one of the mods could sticky it.

Similar to the photo challenge over in Photography, I thought we could do a writing prompt challenge.

The rules:

• You have two weeks from today to come up with a short piece of writing based on the prompt that will be given below. It is open to interpretation and you can write anything that comes to your head.
  
  
• Constructive criticism only. We want to encourage people to post
  
  
• Content must be your own work.
  
  
• Content must be posted within 2 weeks of the day the task was set. So the closing time/date for this challenge will be 17:30 on March 3rd.
  
  
• Submit as many entries as you like but be sure to keep them in separate posts.
  
  
• The next task/subject will be chosen by the person who has the most thanks after their post at the closing date.
  
  
• There is no word count limit but I think around the 500 word mark would be a good guideline.
  
  
• If anyone has anymore rules they think would be good then feel free to suggest them below.

So, this weeks prompt.

"A soldier meets the men he's killed, in the afterlife"

The_Gatsby

Had a spare half hour and thought I'd kick things off

The whistle blew and I scrambled over the top as fast as I could. I tried to keep low to make myself as small a target as possible for the German machine gunners. Not that it mattered too much, this was a game of luck and we knew it. The bullets zipped past my feet. There were dead men as far as the eye could see. Some were face down in the mud; some didn’t even have faces anymore. Whatever came next had to be better than this.

By now my legs were filling with lactic acid and it felt as if my lungs were about to explode. I jumped into the nearest shell crater. I looked to my right and my heart sank.

“Stick your ****in’ bayonet on the end o’ your rifle and get the **** out o’ this ‘ole”. That was all CSgt Holmes had to say to me. I did as he said. Somehow I made it to the German front line and jumped down into the trench. Stood in front of me was a German officer. I could tell he was an officer because of the pistol pointing at my face.

I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a field looking up at the empty blue sky. The sun warmed my skin and the golden knee high grass was gently swaying from side to side. I knew I had been killed by that German officer but I didn’t care, I was glad it had been quick and I was thankful to him for it. Besides, being killed didn’t hurt and it had come as a relief. I was finally out of Ypres. No more rain, no more mud, no more cat sized rats or CSgt Holmes. I sat up and immediately noticed a figure coming towards me. He was wearing the grey uniform that I recognised only too well. As he got closer I noticed the German soldier was smiling at me.

“Ah hello,” he said, “you must be Private Thomas Langley”
“Yes I am. Who are you?”
The man smiled and snapped to attention “Obergefreiter Josef Heinrich reporting for duty. You killed me 3 days ago; I’m surprised you don’t remember”
“I killed you? I’m terribly sorry.”
“Yes, I was the man you stabbed in the chest when I jumped down into your trench. You did not look like you had wanted to kill me so don’t feel bad. You see, we are all victims of circumstance in this war. Come, gather your things. We have a lot to talk about.”
I picked up my notebook, my pen and the stack of letters my mother had written to me and followed Josef across the field. I did not know where he was leading me but I was sure that I wanted to follow him.

And I’m glad I did.

Achillles

I said I'd try my hand at this, see how I get on! Here it goes...


One had a bullet hole smack bang in the centre of his forehead, another was riddled through his belly, this one was pregnant, her neck heavily bruised-that was a bad act, that one, but she’d had a knife. So many methods, but just one end result. They say nothing; point no fingers (those of them that have fingers to point). They just stare, nothing behind their eyes. Myself, I have no outward signs of what brought me to this place. Why am I here? I seem to have a mental block, maybe I’m in shock. Come to think of it, where is here?
For the first time I take stock of my surroundings beyond the mass of swollen, broken, bleeding bodies. Grey. Everything has taken on a surreal haze, as soon as I focus on one place, the haze seems to thicken. It is neither hot nor cold. Neither dry nor wet. There is just a sense of…being. I don’t like it. One man with a slit throat, blood from the grinning wound still spluttering in an entrancing rhythm, looks at me with unreserved malice. I can’t stop staring at my handiwork. Well this is awkward.
‘Sorry’ I say. I inwardly cringe at this pathetic offering.
More silence, but the rest of them-twenty three by my last count – turn and join in his malicious stare. ****ing ****. This is some scary zombie type stuff. I don’t like it. Then gushy throat cracks a smile. And laughs. Hysterically.
‘Bit ****ing late for that asshole!’ More maniacal laughter and the rest join in. ‘Did we scare you? We’re sorry too but there’s just not a whole lotta fun to be had here. Look around for God’s sake.’ For God’s sake? More like Godforsaken. I have a host of questions competing to blurt out. Why are we all here? Why no one else? I know I’m dead but is this the afterlife?
‘Is there a bathroom?’ is the question that pops out. Inpsired. Ok at this stage I’m thinking I must have overdosed on some lethal drug concoction. I’m talking ****e, plain and simple.
A shake of the head serves as a response. ‘You’ll find that bodily functions won’t be a worry anymore. Before you ask, no I don’t know where we are, no I don’t know why we are where we are, and no I don’t know if we can ever leave.’
My head hurts. But I’m a bit more relaxed now; the wheels in my head are starting to turn again. My mind jolts and suddenly I’m biting on the end of a rifle stock, heart thundering like big bucks’ hooves down the home straight. I don’t want to die but the turban wearing, jihad invoking fanatic on the other end of the rifle has no choice. Just like I had none. Pop goes the rifle, bullet ripping out through the back of my throat and I lie down in my own blood and piss and filth, dying.
So that’s how it happened. Back to the…erm…present; I reach around towards the nape of my neck and sure enough there’s a yawning chasm under my probing fingers. I don’t like it. Time goes by-I think. There’s no sense of hours or days or years. As I said…just being. Turban wearing jihad invokingfanatic pops into existence, arm amputated and face full of rot. He looks around oafishly, beleaguered. After a time he looks at me.
‘Sorry’ he says.
It’s my turn to present the awkward malicious stare. Finally I break the stand off. ‘We’re sorry’ I say. ‘We’ve got no virgins here.’ Cue demented laughter.

sdevine89

I went over the word count guide slightly.. 1,200ish, and I've just included the link to Medium which I hope people don't mind.

The Only Friend You'll Ever Need
https://medium.com/p/bd21e44e0b3

Lazarus2.0

I was dead a long time before I drew my final breath. Long before our guns were buried I'd burned the trenchcoat and prayed to lose the memory of the things I had done in the name of Freedom. 'Up close and personal' isn't a Hollywood fiction but it leaves out the most important keyword of all. Up close and personal is also horrific. Nothing glamorous about watching a man die. Even before the trigger is pulled you see the light go out in their eyes. Over many years I saw that look and could easily ignore it. The 'cause' consumed me in those days and while I consoled myself in my later years with the thought that "Ah, sure I was young then and was easily led" I look back now and see that I never really accepted that what I did was wrong. Even now that I'm gone I get to thinking back to those days with a lingering sense of pride. The camraderie, the pats on the back, the sense of achievement when a kill made the evening news ... I cant say they weren't happy days if I'm honest. But I grew up. The endless cycle of new recruits to the cause demoralised me too. Yeah, I know I should have been heartened by such enthusiasm as I once had but I'd reached the stage where the lost hope in my victims' eyes was haunting me by day and by night. I stepped back, ostensibly to give the young guns a chance but in reality I had no stomach for the fight any more. I had the ghosts to fight with.

Cancer got me in the end. Passing felt like a merciful relief at the time but I suspect now that Karma was only hastening it's own fulfilment...

I passed away four years ago. January 12 2010 to be precise. Since that day I've been dealing Blackjack to the guys here. The game never stops and every card I deal I look into the player's eyes and see that terrible hopelessness. By now we all know that under my Jack there lies an Ace and I'm doomed to win this game through Eternity...

Rubecula

"Hello" I said politely to the strange dog as it approached me. It sniffed at me nervously.

"Who are you?" it asked.

"I was called Trojanus Usurus, and I was a soldier of the 23rd legion, but now I am known as Rufus." I replied. "How about you?"

"I was called Dalmin and I was a druid of the Iceni."

I pondered this for a moment. "You were from Brittania then?"

"Indeed we faught the Roman's hard back then. How long ago it seems."

"I was stationed in that area, the cold wet weather was miserable. I think I caught a chill and died." I told him.

"For me it was a Roman spear."

"I am sorry about that." And indeed I was truly sorry. That had been a bad conflict in the earlier empire days.

"There is no need to say sorry. it happens for humans that we kill each other needlessly. I never met the Roman who killed me, but he was from your legion. The spear was the coupe de grace as they sword hacked both my arms off first and would have continued but for the Roman who gave me peace with that merciful spear."

I was now shocked, it had been me who had carried out that act, I could not have saved him but I had had no intention of watching the bloody butchery of a living man. As I told him this, he wagged his tail. "I know my friend, after 2000 years and many reincarnations I have finally found you to repay the debt."

"And how will you do that?"

"Like this."

In a flash he had sun around, bared his impressive canines, much better than my own I saw. In moments my throat had been torn out and my whimpering form lay still, eyes going cloudy. "You see how I repay you Roman, no matter what form you take now I have your taste, come back anyway you like I will find you again, and again to the end of time itself. I am and always will be a druid of the Iceni, and we will always take revenge for the rapine, slaughter and genocide of your people."

alfa beta

okay - here's mine - sorry folks, I'm sh**e at trying to stick to any suggeted word count!

---

This is not what I expected. This is not it at all. My God, the ground is dry and arid. The dust swirls in the air and catches in my throat and makes me cough. Over and over. A rasping, pointless, useless cough. My lungs are filled with fire and pain. And every step I take is an agony beyond compare. I stoop down to stop myself from falling. My head is spinning, my body weak. My palms press against the brittle surface of a dirt track beneath me - tiny, sharp stones piercing the weathered skin on my fingers. I am gasping. Gasping for air, for water, for anything that can bring relief. But there is nothing. Nothing. Just an endless horizon, drawn straight between the intense heat of a colourless sky and the desolation of a barren land.

I am nowhere.

This is not what they promised with their prayers and their incantations. This is not what they said awaited the righteous. This is not it at all. How could they have got it so wrong?

I force myself upright and I stumble on. I have no choice.

In the distance I see a lone tree. It points towards the sky like a crooked finger. It is leafless and lifeless, a mere skeleton of a thing, silhouetted bleakly against an endless grey-white curtain of light. It is, however, the only point of reference in an otherwise deserted world. It is where I feel i must go. I walk. I crawl. Sometimes I give up and I let gravity pull me to the ground. I lie for minutes at a time on my aching back and wait for my heartbeat to subside, for my wretched muscles to recuperate. And then slowly I try to stand and walk again.

The tree is closer now. And at the base of its weathered trunk I see roots that have erupted through the ground. There they lie like thick tangled ropes. Mottled with moss. Cracked with age. Silent and still, yet insidiously imposing. Like the barbed wire we once used to fortify our meagre defenses. Our buildings. Our outposts. Our country. Our people.

Against the enemy.

For that was what they told us to do.

‘Defend our people against the enemy’

For that we would be rewarded, they said. We would be respected. We would live in peace and prosperity, and when we died we would be seated at the right hand of our Lord God the Father. Amen, they said. And we all repeated the word. Amen.

I died a relatively old man. Seventy seven years to the day since I’d first been held in the arms of a midwife and tasted the freshness of the earth’s blanket of clean air. And when the moment of my departure came, I lay silently and comfortably in my hospital bed. Surrounded by family. Some of whom wept. Some of whom didn’t. My wife had long since passed away. My final thoughts in life were of her. Indeed as I floated above my own deceased remains I genuinely relished the prospect of seeing her again.

She was the only one I’d ever truly loved. And, I believe, the only one who’d ever truly loved me. She’d given herself to me, body and soul. And in return, I’d done all I could to make her life a comfortable one. She was the only one who saw me laugh and who saw me cry and who knew exactly the reasons why - the real reasons. Who listened to me when I spoke about the ugliness of war and the horrors of combat. Who accepted my weaknesses for what they were. And my strengths for what they could be.

Yet here I am now. In this barren wasteland. And she is nowhere to be seen. My love, my dearest, most precious love, is nowhere to be found. This is not the heaven they promised. This is not even the purgatory they spoke of in their sermons and their readings and their cryptic gospels. This is nothing and nowhere. This is death.

The roots of the tree are not roots.

I see that now.

They are limbs.

They are the limbs of men. Broken and twisted. Wrapped in grey and tattered clothing. Torn and stained with dirt and blood. They are the arms and legs, the hands and feet, the hips and ankles of men. Dead men. Where skin is visible it is stretched like a thin, muslin cloth, pulled tightly around bone, ancient and pallid, anemic, bloodless.

My rational mind tells me to turn and flee. But I find that I can’t. I am instead drawn closer. Something is drawing me closer. Something in me that I can’t explain. A need to know. To understand. I stumble to within mere feet of the tree. And I see it all now. I stare in slowly dawning dread and disgust. The limbs are attached to torsos and the torsos to heads. And from the mouths on the heads emerge sounds. The sounds of pain. The sounds of suffering. Sounds that swirl above and around me in the dusty air. Guttural, rasping and inarticulate. Together the sounds merge to form a tuneless, constant groan. Harsh and grating. Delivered to my wearisome ears on an undercurrent of seething, threatening anger.

I am fearful. Terribly so.

More fearful than I’ve ever been.

Suddenly there is movement. Eyes spring open. I have awakened the beast. The beast of limbs and torsos and heads and anger. It rises before me and dwarfs the burnt husk of the tree. It looms over me in the grey sky, swaying violently in a gust of hot, dry air. I fear it will collapse onto me, burying me in its mass of bone and dead flesh, crushing me under its skeleton of fused men. Of dead men.

Of men I now know I killed.

For I see for the first time the emblems on their shoulders, dotted about the upper half of the massive beast. Broken, disfigured crosses set in white circles. Swastikas.

All of a sudden the groaning sound intensifies, transformed into a high-pitched scream, an inordinately loud, distorted scream. I lift my hands to each side of my head, trying desperately to block my ears. But it’s no good. The sound is already in me. Growing ever louder within my own being. Piercing me from within. Filling my head and my body. Sending spasms of pain through my entire person. I stumble backwards. I have to get away from this thing. But there is nowhere to get away to.

‘We are the ones you killed,’ the scream seems to say. Articulating what I already knew. ‘We’ve waited so long.’ The words - if they are words - reverberate with malevolence. Resolute, tangible malevolence.

I turn and try to run but instantly I slip and fall to the ground. I lift myself breathlessly into a crawling position and scramble forward in the dust and the dirt. My fingers dig into the dry, scratchy soil but already my body is being pulled back. Something has wrapped itself around my foot and is hauling me backwards. I imagine a giant tentacle of molten, disfigured bone. I feel a vice-like grip on my ankle firstly and then my shin. But I don’t turn around. I cannot afford to turn around. Instead I try to dig again into the ground. Try to anchor myself in place so I can somehow gather enough strength to pull myself forward.

But it’s pointless. My attempts at escape are futile. My arms are too weak and my fingers too old and frail. The screaming is louder than ever now. I can’t hold on. I am succumbing to the beast. I am already being consumed by it. It is above me. It is all over me. Its longed-for vengeance is about to be realised upon me. I cannot help myself any longer. I let go. I am too weak. I stop trying to pull myself away.

I give up.

‘We’ve got him,’ another voice says now. Different somehow. ‘He’s back.’
A white coat. A single human face. An anxious expression. A blurring of florescent lights and a hushed, expectant murmur. The scream is fading. The grip of the beast is weakening.

‘Okay, okay, wait for it to steady.’ More faces now. All looking towards something. A monitor. A screen. A regular spike in a green horizontal line. A beep. And then another beep and another.

I know where I am now.
I am alive.
Again.
I am back.
Like Lazarus. Returned from the dead.
To the relief, I sense, of those around me.
But I feel no relief. Only desolation.

Why did they bring me back here? Why did they not leave me go? I am old. This serves no point. No purpose. What are they trying to prove with their medicines and their machines and their degrees? Why did they let me taste the afterlife only to bring me back to earth?

Because taste it I did. But like the taste I most certainly did not.


And now the prospect of dying fills me with more dread than I could ever have imagined.
Because now I know what awaits me when my time comes in ernest.

FunLover18

NEWBIE ALERT!! So I've bee to post on the CW forum fr a while haven't got around so here goes; just before the deadline.

---

A soldier meets the men he's killed, in the afterlife.

“Was it worth it?”

Private Graham Hawkins turned to the man sitting on his left. He wore a German uniform; his accent was subtle and his English was perfect. Hawkins hesitated; even in death’s waiting room he found it hard to forgo Earth’s politics. “We’re all on the same side here,” the German said calmly. “Besides, what are you going to do; kill me again?”

This caught Private Hawkins off guard. “Again?”

“Who can say who killed whom across no-man's land,” the German remarked with a shrug. Hawkins looked around at the other men, remembering the smoky trenches, the sound of the artillery near and far, the chaos. He realised that any one of these allied soldiers could have been standing next to him. Any one in enemy uniform could have been killed by one of his bullets ... and he could easily have been killed by one of theirs. “So,” the German said, “was it worth it?”

Hawkins thought about his home and his family, he could barely remember his mothers face but he remembered the comfort it brought, the warmth. He thought about his father; the last time he’d seen him he had been bed ridden, pale, and sweating. They would meet again soon, Hawkins had no doubt about that, and his mother would be alone. Maybe Jane would visit her from time to time, and they could comfort each other. A tear rose in his eye as he realised that he would never marry Jane. He would never hold her again, never kiss her. She would bear someone else’s child, grow old with another man, a lucky man. “I would die a thousand times over,” he said remorsefully.

“Once was enough,” the German replied with a smile. “We all died for something. That’s not quite what I meant, though. Was it worth killing for?”

Hawkins was confused. “If a man threatens the people you love; your family, your friends, your country, would you not kill him?” Hawkins asked.

“When did I, or any man here, make these threats?” Hawkins hesitated. “What man here, held a gun to your family?”

“Well,” Hawkins began, “none of them, but they fought for-”

“Their own families, and their own countries.”

Hawkins stared around the room once more and he saw that they were all men, just like him. He pictured his own mother once more, only this time she was not alone. She was one among thousands, and every one of them was in mourning. None of these men would ever hold their Janes again.

“You said you would die a thousand times; how many men would you kill?