Sanity
Heaven is a forest: a forest like no other. Trees as big as houses tower into the cloud-ridden sky and watch, impassive, as souls flicker to and fro. The sun rises as it does on Earth, generously lighting the way for those brave enough to walk her paths. For everything goes to heaven, my son: even the wolves.
Pile tried to rise, but was stopped by white-hot pain lancing across his ribcage. The sniper gasped, dropping his pistol, and laughed quietly to himself at the confusion all around him. He didn't know if he was alive or dead. All he knew was that he hurt.
Do not listen to the priests, the politicians, or your mother, Dimitry. I've seen it with my own two eyes. Heaven is a forest, my son... a forest in the dead of winter.
Carefully, Pile turned on his stomach, using his uninjured arm as leverage, and began climbing the twisted rebar and concrete he had once used to hide himself—now a platform from which he could watch the show; witness damnation.
Slowly, painfully, he made it to the top, ignoring the whining sound of German bullets grazing wood and stone. A body, clad in grey, tumbled overhead, firing wildly into the pinewood canopy. Somewhere behind him, Pile heard a loud, crunching impact, but he didn't bother to look.
He was busy watching the lion.
Or, at least it looked like a lion: mutated and distorted by his clearly diseased mind. It was nearly twice the size of a zoo animal; with proudly displayed leather wings and a grotesque armored tail. Five German soldiers stood around the creature, peppering it with bullets from their submachine guns while trying to dodge swipe after swipe from the creature's powerful paws and sharpened tail. Two were not so lucky, it seemed, as a pair of blood-curdling screams rang out into the trees.
A brown shape rose from the snow to Pile's right, and he just barely caught it in the corner of his eye.
Another lion, much smaller than the first, was loping toward his hiding place. Quietly, Pile slid back to the snowy pavement—odd thing to be in a forest—and waited. He was uncertain what he waited for. Whether he was to be saved or to be damned, perhaps? The inevitable?
He flipped over with a low groan and listened to the sounds of men meeting their fates at the hands of the forest's guardian and closed his eyes.
Maybe he would be skipped over.
Maybe.
Pile felt the presence of another over him, hot breath wafting over his face and causing him to shiver in anticipation. He opened his eyes once more, and stared into the snarling maw of his end.
So it was damnation, then?
Fine.
Thoughts unbidden came and went in the span of mere moments:
A fire, casting shadows. His mother making porridge and black-bread for him and his sisters on a cold winter's morning. He could smell it. Oil from the soldier-boats. Foot traffic down the muddy road to his home: running from something or someone. Beer with his father in a dark room. The Den. The Train. Stalingrad in summer. The woman with the black eye, sniffing in the damp cold. Beauty of life amidst death and a forest of tall, tall trees.
Now when you go there, Dmitry—ah! ah!—I know it won't happen for awhile, boy. Just listen. When you go there remember this: death isn't the end. Walk the land. Explore. Remember. And when you're ready…
Pile wasn't ready. He wasn't.
When you're ready, just let go.
The Guardian lunged, and everything slowed down. He could see every detail clearly, and everything made perfect sense. Cold breezes ruffled every little hair on the lion creature's body, swaying gently like wheat. Short, underdeveloped teeth drew closer, surrounding a slick, studded tongue as it closed in on Pile's throat.
Not yet.
The man called Dmitry Vetrov found his hands again: clamped around the creature's feline head, holding shut the gaping muzzle that was to end him. The beast struggled, but the Siberian held it close, looking into its rheumy, red eyes. With a start, he realized the beast was just smaller than he was—a frightened whelp, or a cub. Fearfully, it pulled and shook, trying to claw at his belly through his wool uniform. Pile tensed… and acted.
If one had listened carefully, picking through the sounds of gunfire and angry, feline roars, one might have heard the sound of a neck snapping.
No one was listening carefully, and Pile, bleeding more heavily now, crawled through the snow further into the forest: away from the fighting and the losing and the noise.
Away from the letting go.
"The silence of a forest in winter is incomparable to anything else in all of the Soviet Union."
Comrade Zaytsev told him that once.
They were on a rooftop in the residential district: Pile serving as a spotter for his more experienced compatriot. "Waiting for the motorcade," he said… It never came, but the quiet hours spent on the roof, swapping stories of better times—Vasily, of his childhood in the Urals; Pile, his home south of Yakutsk, on the banks of the reka Lena—were entertaining to say the least. Nostalgia at its finest: not a sad memory to be had.
"The snow blankets the ground, like a thick, woolen sheet: unbroken as far as the eye can see. Everything is asleep, and your only company is your horse and the sun."
Pile leaned carefully against his wooden shelter, grimacing at the low, throbbing pain that surged up his body. He stared out of the small hole he had crawled through, marveling at nature's skillful painting. Sunlight bounced and blasted across the snowy ground, reflecting off every scintillating, icy crystal that blanketed the land. Trees jut out everywhere, spread just far enough apart for Pile to see where the forest ended: a sudden void of unbroken white. The occasional bush or leafy plant, doused in shimmering ice, cropped up here and there—like patrolling watchmen. One such arboreal guardian spread itself nearby, serving to conceal the hollow that Pile had so quickly claimed as his own.
It was small, but it was dry, and, for now, it was safe.
Still looking outside, Pile felt around for the large duffel he was supposed to deliver to Pavlov's House. Finding it, he turned his attention away from the wintry expanse before him to the simple, burlap duffel he had carried all this way.
He decided it was a powerful thing, to have traveled with him to Heaven.
Pile ran his hands around its cinched opening, letting the coarse material abrade his fingers. He touched his side, feeling the cooling liquid that soaked into the lining of his coat and frowned. Should he open it? Could be first aid supplies inside, and he wasn't exactly going to be delivering it anytime soon. Making a decision, he fumbled with the buttons on his faded, green uniform, stripping it off to reveal a simple woolen shirt. The white fabric was soaked through, the red blood pooling on the ground. A small hole could be seen, torn from the front of the ruined clothing.
Good. The bullet passed through.
Avoiding getting too much blood on his fingers, he lifted up his shirt, wincing at the sight: the slug may have passed through his side, but it took twice its weight in tissue along for the ride. Blood oozed freely from the meaty divot just below Pile's ribcage, rolling and flowing down his pallid skin and into the loose crease of his pants. Panicked, the sniper let his shirt fall back down, tearing through the burlap sack and fumbling through its contents. He paid little attention to what he removed, focusing only on what he needed. Antibiotics, bandages, sutures… anything, really.
His arm throbbed where the dog bit him, but he ignored that pain as well, searching with frantic darting eyes. Finally, after several minutes of aimless sorting, he found what he needed: a single shotgun shell, a bent book of matches, a roll of dirty, white gauze, and a half-full bottle of penicillin-based… stuff. Pile couldn't read the label: it was in German.
Using both hands, he pried the casing from the shell, tossing the brass pellets to the side and pouring the powder charge into the wound. He packed it in as best he could with his thumb, riding out the pain of each twisting press with a clenched jaw and teary eyes. His hands were shaking as he reached for the matches, bloody fingers slipping once on the cardboard packet before he could get it open. It was a full book. Happy day.
Careful not to get blood on any of the match heads, Pile tore off one of the cardboard fire-starters, steadying himself as much as he could for what came next.
He'd only heard about doing something like this once while listening in on to corpsman chatting on the boat into Stalingrad, and he was pretty sure it had been a joke between medics… but he had very little else to go on.
Pile had to stop the bleeding and move. The Guardian would surely try to follow him, and the trail of blood he had left behind would make him far too easy to catch. Briefly, the injured man reveled in the fact that he was most definitely insane, and he thought of home.
Steeling himself, he lit the match.
A bright flash lit up the small hollow in one of the towering pines of the Forest of Souls, and Pile screamed.