In Continuum.

Like Blood and Dirt

Air, I thought. I needed air. I opened my eyes, gasping for breath with my eyes wide opened. The tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, a little different from all the other times. They were real tears, tainted with the touch of sorrow and fear, unlike the morning tears I usually have at that hour of the morning. The youthful sunlight filtered through the new set of curtains I hung over the old ones in my room, and my room - like what my mother said - was indeed darker than before. But I needed air, I told myself. I needed air. I pushed the window open, a gush of salty air rushed into the room. A door slammed, the rain was falling down. Still, my eyes were wide opened, and better and better and better I felt...

I had a dream, a terrible dream.

*

It was a forest, tall trees towering above our heads. Rain splattered through the canopy above, a constant hissing sound of the raindrops hitting the ground resonating between the tree trucks, and deep into the hearts of the men. We were squatting behind the bushes with our guns, knees deep into the mud beneath our feet. The raincoat we were wearing provided no comfort or protection from the bone-piercing rain that was falling down. It has been raining for so long, what is this war we are fighting? I recall not the purpose of the war, the reason to fight, to fight for anything. Commands and more of those, somebody shouting for cover while others waited dreadfully. The rain kept falling, the hissing never seized.

Then, it broke out. The battle upon the knoll exploded. A veil of rain shrouded our enemies, and we squinted our eyes to see, as we took aim into nothingness. But as I advanced ever forward towards the source of the bullets, the screaming of my friends from all around dominated the sound in the air. Everybody was crying, everybody was screaming for something, mourning the loss of hope and the coming of death. Some of us kept of fighting, while others buried their faces in the thick mud, crying into their chests and palms, grabbing at their stomach or what was left of it, as others tripped over their spilled intestines and other insides.

There was an understanding without the need of a command this time. We retreated back from where we came from as the enemy continued their firing. More casualties, more friends of mine fallen behind. Legs blew, heads exploded. Blood spilled, blood shed. I ran and ran, down the muddy slope through the woods and then up again. Up, up towards the headquarters, back towards safety. The enemy's merciless firing died away in the background, but the pair of legs that were carrying me through the muddy forest wasn't running because of the bullets or the explosives, but rather for the blood drenched pants of mine with the taste of blood still lingering in my mouth. I was trying to outrun those, outrun all of those. What are we fighting for? I asked myself, what are we fighting for?

The base was located at the top of a muddy slope. Seems like it's been days since the battle upon the knoll, and this time the mission plan changed. Rescue mission, to seek out the wounded and the dead and bring them back to base. Army ambulances rumbled through the muddy roads, making deep tracks that wounded the red land. They coated the wheels of the vehicles, and the black body backs were brown as well, all of a sudden.

We made our way to the battle ground, the enemy's firing gone, and the whole places shrouded in a mysterious cloud of mist and death. Silence, with no more hissing sound of the rain or the terrible screaming from the soldiers. There was a dead calm from the dead bodies, corpses strewn all around the woods. Up and down the slope, bodies laid with their life torches connected to their chests. The wounded had dimming lights shining from the torches, while the dead ones had their lights extinguishes. I stood in the hill of dead bodies, my leg sinking slowly into the thick mud once again. Water swirled around my knees this time, and with it the dirty water from uphill and the blood of my friends...blood of my friends flowing into my boots. The taste was in my mouth again, blood and dirt coated my own pair of hands as i tried to pull a person out of the mud. His hand stuck out from the ground like a dead tree branch, and with much ease he came out with his body covered in soil, but not his legs. For his legs were nowhere to be found, still buried underground and his insides spilling out from everywhere. His face spelled pain and agony, the remnants of the battle upon the knoll still written upon his face. But it was disfigured, blood and dirt covered his features, reckoned him nameless. I ran my palm over his eyes, and yet they refused to close. They refused to close...as i dragged the body and piled them onto the trunk.

I found a lighted one, a lighted torch. He gasped for air as i came to him, and smiled to me as i yelled for help. I was so tired, i was too exhausted to carry this man back alone. I already carried so many, my hands were numb. The colour of the skin faded and disappeared under the layer of blood, not mine but my friends'. The rain started falling again, and this time they weren't the usual raindrops but blood rain ones that came down from a darkening sky, dyed red by the broken veins of the dead people. The hissing sound of the rain, slowly faded to become the endless chanting of the lost souls. "Death, death, death..." they chanted, and the truck rumbled away with the bodies inside, the rotten smell of dead flesh creating a poisonous fume all around. I choked, at the air around me and my own tears that i swallowed back.

There were so many dead, and still i could smell them. I washed and I washed, I washed until my skin came off at the white sink. But the blood remain, and so did the smell. The window to the right of the mirror had a view of the muddy round outside. The dead bodies were placed into black body bags and then piled up at one side, labeled and then forgotten. Another pile of trash was piled on the other side of the road, and they looked all too similar. The bodies and the trash, two black hills of rotting things. I stripped off my clothes and sat at the bench facing the black hills, a friend of mine comforted me. "They look like trash..." i sobbed and choked on my tears. "They look like trash..." My friend said nothing, the lights darkened and he still said nothing. I kept crying and crying, burying my face in my palms, the smell of my dead friends filling my nostrils, what's left of their life remain in between the cracks in my palms as red smudges of death.

*

Sleep, it is still early. It wasn't even eight in the morning yet, I told myself. I climbed back into bed from the window, the sheets were pulled up to my chin. The fan quietly spun behind the metal grill, and the dried tears upon the pillow somehow still felt warm against my chilly face. The eyes were closed, but yet in the dark i still saw those bodies, piled up high against the backdrop of a setting sun. The look of anguish in my friends' faces as I pull them out one by one from the dirt. Arms broke off, faces were twisted, blood drenched and exhausted. I could almost smell the blood still, but it was a dream, merely a dream. A dream...of blood and dirt.