Taste
He felt it first, against his cheek: a drop of water from somewhere above his head. He felt too weak to turn and look, to see the water's source, to brush it from his face, so he let it drip and pool in the crease between his nose and cheek.
Jim made a game of it, counting the drops, guessing how many more it would take before the water ran down his face and into his mouth. He realized suddenly, that he was so incredibly thirsty.
The water felt oddly heavy against his skin; thick and viscous. He wondered, for a moment, if it might be sugar water. Jim remembered how his Mom used to put sugar water in the hummingbird feeders around their house.
He waited impatiently for it to drip down his face. He wondered if there were hummingbirds in Peru.
On the thirteenth drop, the pool of water between his cheek and nose quivered and then finally, finally, slid down his dimple and beaded on the jagged skin at his lips. Jim licked out and tasted with his tongue.
He jerked immediately at the first hint of bitter, metallic flavor. The sudden movement of his head caused the rest of the pool to run down his nose and into his mouth. Jim's tongue was suddenly covered in thick, gummy liquid. Salt mixed with iron against his taste buds and Jim reached up with his hand to clear the taste from his mouth. He pawed at his tongue and lips, nearly gagging with the effort of trying to un-taste the fluid that coated his face.
When he took his hand away, it was smeared with red.
Jim looked up into big, dead eyes. Hanging above him, still half-way strapped into his harness was Private Daniel E. Dinkins. He'd been sitting next to Jim before...
Private Dinkins was nineteen. He'd gone into the army so that they'd pay for his schooling. He had wanted to teach kindergarten.
Jim had stared at him. Dinkins left eye looked out, sightless. His right eye was gone. It'd been gouged out by a steel rod. Jim could see pink, mushy bits of Dinkins' brain spattered on the metal wall behind his head. He realized that the rod must have gone all the way through. Despite the severity of the wound, it hadn't bled much: just a slow drip from the mangled eyelid, off rust colored eyelashes, and down the steel rod to land gracefully into the crease of Jim's cheek.
'Gross.' Jim thought.