Author's note: Germany, WWI.
And the blood
Blood.
His heart aches and his eyes itch and his skin suffocates beneath mud.
And the blood.
And the blood.
God, there's blood everywhere he turns.
He's lost.
They're all lost.
More lost than those lost to their wounds; the men who had made their permanent surrender were done.
Those who did not have strength enough to die suffer on.
And the blood.
When he comes to he's on a make-shift bed, a beautiful but thin woman leaning over him. She tends to his face as he blinks at her.
"Ah! Vous êtes finalement réveille," she sighs, smiling at him. He shakes his head, trying to scramble to his feet, to flee, but she pushes him down gently. "Non non, vous n'avez pas compris, c'est bien, vous êtes ici pour une raison. Oh, zut!" Her hands still pinning him down she looks around for someone. "Où est M. Bonnefoy?" she inquires to her neighbor tending another man.
His head turns on his hard pillow to take in that poor soul beside him.
The blood. Oh God, the blood.
In her arms he weeps, his Hungarian protector holding him tightly. It was unmanly to shed such tears, yet over his shoulder he sees his brother and her husband crying too.
They're both covered in blood.
They're all stained with it.
"What do you remember most?" the reporter asks in practiced German, a young Swedish thing with her hair pulled back as tightly as her skirt hugs her body unravished by war.
"Of what?" he sighs.
"Of the war," she says as if that were obvious, placing her pad down in her lap. His eyes dart down for just a moment to see she's sketched him on the blank page, his strong jaw and straight nose and wide shoulders.
What does he remember most?
He remembers the bombs, exploding, shaking his body.
He remembers the horses, beautiful creatures destroyed by man.
He remembers the fields, sunny in summer but on days of battle littered with the remains of what mothers had once called sons.
He remembers the fear.
He remembers the shaking of his brother in bed.
He remembers the screams of agony of a man who had lost his wife, the only spouse he had ever so loved, the only thing he had ever loved more than his land.
He remembers the sightings across trenches of his enemies, men like him but so different as well.
He remembers the propaganda.
He remembers the idiots who had believed it.
He remembers the ones who knew better though they faired no better.
He remembers the bodies, the small bodies he'd helped bury.
He remembers the blood.
For three days now he's been awake; each time his eyes close the blood comes back, filling him, consuming him.
Blood, everywhere.
His heart aches and his eyes itch and his skin sweats beneath the sheet.
And the blood.
And the blood.