Only a Matter of Time now

TerrorFirmer

I wrote this when I was about 15 I believe, and now I want to expand it but am not sure how...any feedback welcome!

---

It is only a matter of time now.

They cannot be too far away.

For now there is only stillness, but I know that in a few moments they will be upon me. I am the only one to have made it this far, but I almost regret my initial decisions of determination and aggression.

I am almost out of ammo.

If there is anything worse than dying, it is dying alone. I childishly wish it were all a fantastic dream, that I was back on the Barrack II with all my comrades, but it is only foolish ignorance. My mind screams in agony as my repeats the obvious over and over.

I’m finished. I can’t possibly escape.

No ammo. No comrades.

I have nothing but an exhausted shotgun, a combat knife and a doubtful conscience.

Maybe I should just kill myself now.

I try to focus on the current situation, but my mind keeps drifting to the memories of what was or indeed what could have been.

I shouldn’t have even volunteered in the first place. What was I thinking? Was I thinking? All this could have been avoided, so easily, if I had only been myself.

And all for what? A momentary burst of false courage, a stupid, totally irresponsible act for something so distant.

I’m sure you know the feeling. Eager to impress somebody, despite the lingering knowledge that they don’t care, don’t even see it for what you believe it is. Hope that never really gains a foothold in your mind. Mere possibility.

Lieutenant O Connor.

Even as I think about here, I almost forget she’s gone.

Dead. How ironic…

She dropped pretty early back. Her helmeted head and spine ripped from he body and tossed aside like mere foliage.

Stumbling body, bloody stump jetting large gouts of crimson blood in the illumiative flash of a Grenade round.

How pointless. The whole principles of my volunteering gone instantly. I almost forgot that.

The stars are shining brightly in the dark sky. I can vaguely see Earth from were I lie.

I know the Barrack II is up there somewhere. Our deaths will be a loss overlooked in minutes. We are twenty among a thousand. The Barrack II is one among thousands. How insignificant we are, yet to think every person matters to somebody, has their own individual structure and personality.

How strange, to think that for several billion people the universe is no different. Here I am, facing inevitable death, and there are people out there eating food, laughing, doing everything a normal person does every day of their relatively uneventful lives.

Doing everything I did until today. It frightens me to think that I will never eat again. These little things that serve to remind us of the truth, always there but never really comprehended.

I know I am going to die. I do and I don’t. It is inevitable surely, but yet it is hard to accept it.

I don’t know what to do. I wonder should I kill myself. I realise how foolish I have been. I didn’t even bother to pick up extra ammo from a fallen comrade.

A fallen comrade. Strangely, they are almost lucky. Their moment is over. They are gone, but I am here.

I am here, and I am ****ed.

****ed.

There is a sharp rustling to my right, agile streaks behind a rocky shelf.

I am calm. Ready. I keep my eye on the shelf, slowly removing my last seven high explosive shells from my torn flak jackets left pouch. I feed them slowly into the shotgun. When that is done, I wait deliberately for a few moments before pumping it.

There is a distinctive, heavy metallic clink.

I can’t really see in front of me. It’s dark, and my flashlight is drained.

My motion tracker is broken, but I know what it would tell me if it wasn’t anyway.

I am surrounded. The rustling noises grow louder.

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