August

The hero returns from war

August

For three days and nights he suffered and struggled against death but eventually he succumbed and his wounds took him. For a further three days and nights his body lay propped up against the low stone wall he had rested against in his dying. Once upon a time it had surrounded an orchard and secured a private garden from the world. Rows of ordered trees and beds of flowers in reds and blues. Every fruit man could wish for. But now as man and garden had been left to decay the frontline was many, many miles away and both had fallen behind and were obsolete. The body lay empty and cold but on the seventh day a form of life returned. A spirit rose from the body and turned to view the destruction. He remembered the agony that twisted his body and rent his brain. Now the foreign body looked so peaceful, like pain could not ever have existed in such a being. The orchard behind the corpse was a chaotic landscape filled with craters, tire tracks in the mud, and burnt tree stumps but it was finally filled with a stillness that the land had begged for for many months. He gazed across the deep brown mud, up into the emerald branches, and out at the grey-blue sky that hid in small pockets between the leaves but did not recognise it. All of it was mist-wreathed and muted. A fog covered all the world and choked all colour and vibrancy from it leaving only pale shadows. Instinctively he picked up the rifle from his corpse’s deathly grasp and began his long march home.

Distant birds heralded him along the first stretch of his journey through the evergreen woods full of darkness, omens, and destruction but wherever he walked nature grew silent and did not welcome him joyfully. He followed the muddy tire tracks of the supply convoys that had once filled the forest with mechanical life but now left only hints at the giants and the destruction they wrought that stretched many hundreds of miles away to the north and south. The birdsong echoed through the endless rows of colossal trees as the small beasts of the forest went about their matures around the burnt out shells of war machines and under the fallen logs. The Songs did not sound as sweet as they once had and the animals playing mustered up no emotions within him. The image two young foxes he had seen was recalled into his mind from the past life when he had sat in the back of the truck as he took the first journey through the forest. One had chased the other around the moss covered tree and both had yelped and made cried for attention to a mother who did not answer. The men in the trucks made no answers either as they watched the play from a distance and slowly rumbled by. The yelps blended with the distant gunshots, the low hum of the archaic engines, and the fine whirrs of the drones as they tried in vain to penetrate the vast canopy noises that grew to be the soundtrack of the brothers in arms for the coming months. Now he walked on alone by day and lay alone by night.

The journey had seemed short on the way in but now he walked day after day through unending forest and all the sights and sounds blended into a fog strewn blur. At first he thought the journey tired him but as he lay down each night rest would not come and soon he realised that it was not the walking that tired him but this was simply the lot he had been given, the new life that was his. Food and drink also now had no effect upon him and brought no comfort yet the desire for them remained just the same. Just one final glass of crystal water to feel the sensation as he once had and he could have peace. One final bite of food and now he could be satisfied for a lifetime. But he cold not be filled. He lay at night only by force of habit and consumed food and drink only to give him something to do.

After days of mind shatteringly tiring walking he finally left the woods and in front of him lay the open patchwork of hedge bound golden fields of corn and meadows of rainbow tinted flowers. Between these were nestled the villages of red rooved houses and the spires of grey stones churches silhouetted against the perfect blue skies. All these were muted and hazy through the thick mist that surrounded him as plodding footstep after plodding footstep dragged him down sun soaked country lanes and ever homeward. In quaint villages curious children would wave and smile at the passer-by and mothers and fathers greeted him with kind words but in response he could only contort his face into something hinting at a smile and left them feeling only pity for the outlander.

Once he tried to spent the night upon the green in the centre of the village. An elderly couple returning home from church took pity upon him and came over to talk to him and though he only sat in silence he attempted to enjoy it as he once would have. They took him into their home and gave him food and drink but still it would not sate him. He bathed but it did not remove the stain that clung to him. They sat up with him and talked but he could say nothing and the awkwardness of the room only thickened the fog. The phantom amongst the living. And as he lay awake that night in a plush bed he did not deserve he gazed upon the photos of the smiling families and once again remembered his death and what he was. He left without making a noise. His hosts were too kind, too generous, and he simply would not be able to repay them so he must leave before he incurred any more debt was the only option that came to his mind. No longer did he sleep around towns and villages but instead kept himself to hedgerows and abandoned farm buildings. It was not worth the risk.

He walked across the land looking for the vague flashes of memories that reminded him of the way to go home. The momentary beams of light from the towering lighthouses above the fog blinded him with their brilliance but still they called him onwards with a greater clarity than the fields and hedgerows. Though uncaring for his surroundings they cared about him. A lone man in uniform with a rifle who had come from the forest and wandered aimlessly around caught the attention of many. So scouts were dispatched to look for him and he was not hard to find. Neither the idea of returning nor of hiding had occurred to him, it was a past life and returning to that which did not belong to him was impossible. Top brass did not see it the same way though. He was theirs until they said otherwise. Once found he was taken to High Command at Lowbrae camp and held in confinement until they could work out what to do with the survivor. One day the door opened and three people entered. They sat down on the sofa and beckoned him to sit opposite them. As he sat, the guard outside swung the door shut and the locks slotted into place with a metallic clunk.

“We understand you’ve already been briefed on the severity of our loss at the front through forest on the day of the assault. We just need to ask you a few questions. Work out what went wrong, how and why you’re alive, what might happen next, those sorts of things”.

The two women in suits smiled widely and full of saccharine while the man in uniform remained stoic and professional.

“We’re sorry to be keeping you like this but we need to find out what happened. It’s vital to national security you see. You’re the only one who witnessed what new weapons our enemies possess, the only known survivor”.

“I shouldn’t be here. I’m dead”.

“We’re glad you understand. Just give us a rundown of what you saw and we’ll discharge you and send you home. How did the day start?”

“I need to go home”.

“Thank you. We understand the command to assault came at 0912. Then what happened?”

“The suffering, it’s endless”.

“Interesting”.

“The screams. The land. They’re all dead. They all suffer, can’t you see it, please listen to me”.

“You’ve done us a great service solider” spoke the man in uniform, “We’ll send you home. Full honourable discharge”.

And they were gone, leaving him to stare with dead eyes at the empty sofa they had sat upon. And so he remained for two days until the men came to collect him and take him home. They offered him transport but before they received an answer he left on foot, rifle gone but still wearing his uniform.

For days and nights uncountable he trekked through every terrain and every weather never seeming to draw any nearer until one day it appeared before him and he stood on the edge of the home town he had left many seasons ago. He had tried to leave it before but he always ended up back here. It was a prison. A damn nice one, but a prison. Even in death he was here again. The streets look the same as they always had except the people who tended the gardens and flowers were all newcomers and outlanders. The streets were changed beyond recognition except the same vagrants loitering around the same grotty pubs. Soon people recognised him. Both as the local lad returned and as the survivor. He made a stop at his parents house where he was met with an overabundance of tears and fussing but was one his way as soon as he could. They had missed him greatly and were greatly relieved at his return but he had to be on his way from the loneliness of the childhood home and continue to the next home he did not belong to.

He pushed open the door to his flat and entered in, it was as empty as he had left it. All the decorations as they had been but seeming foreign through new eyes. He lay down upon the familiar dishevelled bed and stared at the ceiling with numb eyes as night passed and morning came. As he walked the town in the morning people came to greet him with congratulations and joy. The local hero returned from war having done the town proud. He had nothing to say to them. Each saw him as he had left not the shade who returned home. No matter how he tried they could not hear him, no matter how he tried he could not feel their touch. Life continue at this pace ever fluctuating between wandering the streets and lying in bed.

One morning three sharp knocks came at his door and opening it he stared blankly out at the visitor.

“Welcome home hero! I’d heard you’d returned from Anderson. It great to see you , hope you’re doing well”.

It was the pretty blonde neighbour with beaming smile and the always ever so kindly blue eyes. They had been friends once he thought. Two young children played behind her giggling, entranced in their own game and oblivious to the world of adults that they swam in. She had always been so friendly, always polite and lovely. Time and time again she offered to help in any way she could and went above and beyond in her care for others. As he stared back at her with vacant eyes she stared back with eyes creased from smiling. He had spent so long without the words but finally they came and he responded only as he could.

“Where am I? It is so dark”.

“That’s great to hear you’re doing well, being the lone survivor of the forest must be quite the experience, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like. These two? Don’t worry you haven’t been away that long, I’m baby-sitting for number 12. They were so excited to hear you’d returned, you must visit them some time and tell them your stories. And you’ve got to come round for dinner sometime with me too so I can properly hear about all you’ve done”.

“Please help me”.

“Wednesday would be great, yeah. See you then, and if there’s anything I can possibly do to help just let me know and I’ll do whatever I can”.

“I can’t do this, I can’t go on like this”.

“Aw thanks”, she drew her smile even wider and her eyes shone, “You’re still as sweet as you always were you know. If only things had been different...”.

She reached out both arms to hug him and clasp his body tight in friendship. He put his arms out around her but they passed right through her. He stood surrounded by love but felt no warmth or joy. Ephemerality ruled all.

He had been amongst the first drafted. Once they realised that the war would not be over in a matter of months and that the highly publicised technological advantage was only their own propaganda they needed boots on the ground. As always war required men to push buttons, pulls triggers, and plunge knives. He was young, fit, and had nothing in life to hold him back, so when he received his summons he did not protest. Three months later he was on the frontline between no man’s land the orchard.

For many weeks now he had huddled at the bottom of the rain drenched trench he called home as it wound its way through towering evergreens and cut through open glades. Beside his comrades he lay waiting for the stream of bullets over head to finally stop as he had done many times before but this time their ceasing signalled action and he thrust himself up over the edge of the trench with a martial yell. They rushed into a storm of steel across the mud soaked open land of the forest rifle in hand. From behind them the roar of their own artillery burst forth and rained glory down upon the enemy trenches that lay a lifetime away. Men around him died but still he ran and yelled and all the world seemed distant and unimportant, this was all that mattered now. If only he could have spent eternity in this moment. One foot in front of the another on nothing but pure instinct. The jolt of the rifle in his hands and the figures that fell before him. The knowledge that at any moment it will all come to an end and paradise will be lost. Only the perfection of man and his instincts and the providences of the Lord meant anything here and each time he had gone over the top it had been greater than the last. But this time as he reached the enemy trench paradise was lost, he was not enough, the Lord brought about his allotted time. He fell backwards to the muddy ground strewn with dead undergrowth and miles of spiders web like optical fibres as his comrades ran past him in the rush of glory. His vision went to black and and whilst he lay away from this world the artillery stopped and the gunshots grew distant as the assault continued and those who had fallen were forgotten in the headlong rush into victory.

It was the crushing silence that carried him back. He brought himself to his feet but fell back down to the mud coughing up blood. To his right and his left he looked into the peaceful faces of his brothers in arms as their blood flowed into the ground and ran deep into her body. He did not want to end like them, not here. He rose again but this time used his rifle as a crutch and slowly made his way across the land back to the only home he had known for many months. Artillery on trailers, divisions held in reserve, and medics, cooks, and radio operators, all hurried past on the newly opened highway through to the heartland paying little heed to what remained behind. He found the wall of the orchard and laid down to wait to be found. He had gazed longingly at the walled orchard many times and wished for another time and another world where he could have walked through the orderly rows of trees and eat the fruits they bestowed him. One day it had been gone. The trees were cut down to fuel the fires of war and in their place were raised artillery pieces. Alone and the orchard gone, he waited to die.

The land cried out in silent agony. Her beautiful face now scarred and pockmarked, twisted beyond recognition. So, so much suffering and anger and hatred had been poured out upon her and she could bare it no longer. The pain grew and grew but it had to go somewhere and when the dam finally burst the torrent rushed out and swept away all as it had poured into the dying man and so full of the energy of a land destroyed by those who had commanded him to fight he found himself between life and death and unable to reach either.

Wednesday crawled around with sclerotic pace yet too fast all the same. Enough time to dread it but not enough to escape it. He was sat in the beige room beside the anaemic leafy palm and below the hand painted cluster of flowers framed and in the centre of the wall. Two black cats stalked between the scratched furniture and the legs of his hostess as she walked into the room smiling and handed him a bowl of pasta. He took it into his lap and waited on her to begin eating.

“It’s your favourite. I made it like I always used to”.

It tasted of nothing.

“So, how are you finding it being back home? A bit of a shock? It must be so different to how you were living for so long. Not to mention how different the town is now”.

“I don’t belong here. This is not my home”.

“Sounds very difficult, sorry you had to go through it, but I’m glad you survived. You should take pride in that. And no, I suppose the town hasn’t changed that much, I forgot how short a time you were actually away for”.

“Stop, please, can’t you see”.

“Yeah, I’m doing well thanks”, she paused to giggle and fix him square in his dead eyes, “I’ve missed you, you know. We’ve all missed you. You’ve been very kind to me before. I wish I could repay you”.

“Please help me. Make it end. I can’t go on like this”.

“Yeah, I suppose. But things have changed though. I’ve done so much since you were last around”.

She broke eye contact and stared off out the window as, after a brief pause, she began to tell him of all the events that were of great personal import to her. This is why he was here. Neither were conscious of it but this was why he had received his invite. The demand for closure eclipsed all else and so she would talk and he would attempt to listen and the night would draw on and nothing would come of it all. Across the room the cats skulked behind the unit that held the TV and glared at him. They hadn’t approached him all evening and let out regular cries of dismay whenever their owner went near the newcomer.

“Now that I say it out loud it all seems so trivial compared to what you’ve been through, but I thought it needed said. Thank you for listening. I do hope I’m not boring you”.

“Am I simply mad? Why is it like this? I don’t want this”.

“Thank you”.

She smiled at him and narrowed her kindly blue eyes and reached out to stroke his deathly cold hands. She poured herself another glass of wine and the evening continued in this fashion until the bottle was empty and the words were gone. He did not want to think why he thought this evening might have gone differently. Hope was the greatest curse he had been given and once again everything he had hoped for and desired from the evening was thrown to the fire and he was left lying in only the ashes of his life. Eventually she grew tired of his company and he returned to his home to wait out the hours until morning.

Thousands of miles away from the remains of a dead land, he sat on a bench beside the peacefully rippling sea that stretched away indefinitely towards open azure sky, the suffering clung to him like a fog, like vines, like mud, like briars and thorns. The children that played on the beach, the young couples that walked the dunes enraptured, and the swimmers bobbing up and down between foaming waves. They all lived; he did not. So close yet so far, he reached out his hand to grasp at what they held so concrete but it was not there, it was not his. The finality of life and death was withheld from him.

The stranger sat down next to him, an event not out of the ordinary for a local celebrity but when he felt the hand placed upon his shoulder he felt the familiar cold chill of death flowing through his body from the solid touch.

“Brother”.

He turned to see a man in enemy uniform staring at him with deathly eyes. The hand on the shoulder weighed on him more strongly than the even the fog that drained the world. It seemed to press his ever downwards, down towards the Earth herself, returning him home. In the whole world this newcomer, this outlander, this foreigner seemed to be the only one not wreathed in mist.

“She had done this to us both brother. Listen to her cries, I know you hear them too”.

He knew the stranger spoke truth.

“Why have you come to find me?”

The foreigner smiled and laughed as he raised his jacket to show the knife at his hip. In and instant the instincts of a life at war returned and the two ghosts between life and death grappled one another and both rolled to the dirt but none of the passers-by paid them any heed. The parents still watched their children with quiet joy, the elderly still shuffled by on their walks, and the tourists still posed for their selfies.

As they rolled upon the dry dirt of the land the outlander pulled his knife and thrust it into the side of the survivor. The shock of pain ran through him as agony ran down every nerve and across every neuron. Pain. Glorious beautiful pain. He could feel. He was back on the field of battle. Back in the trenches. Back with his comrades. In the pouring rain far beneath the branches of emerald evergreens, in the enemy trench he lay in mud and worse with a foreign soldier looming over him brandishing a dripping knife that had just been wrenched from his side. He scrabbled backwards through the mud to try to escape but his arms gave out beneath him in the rain slicked bottom of the trench and he fell backwards into a puddle. With vision drowned in the viscous muddy water and his lungs obscured with the same he was unable to defend himself against the next stab that came to his other side. His legs flailed out instinctively in the pain and hit his assailant but this only gave him space to pull himself from the water and take several hasty spluttered breaths. He tied again to retreat but his foe was on top of him once again before he had time to escape. A knife blow came at his leg but only caused a small wound and in return he landed a kick in his foe’s stomach. Whilst the enemy gathered his breath and prepared to make a final strike the survivor reached frantically to the right and to the left for anything solid to grab onto before the next thrust came. His left hand caught at the heavy wooden planks of the side of the trench and in a moment of pure instinct he wrenched it from its place and swung it towards the foe. It caught his knife hand mid-swing and twisted it back upon itself with a vicious crunch as the knife dropped to the mud and a cry of pain escaped his lips. Throwing himself to his feet, the wooden club was raised again then swung down hard upon the enemy’s face, then raised and lowered again, and then again, and again, and then again. A distinct reddish tint mixed with the streams of mud that ran along the bottoms of that rain slicked trench but the blows kept coming and soon chunks of flesh flowed too. And only when the rain and mud and trench and gunfire were replaced by the sedate seaside town did he stop to look at his bloodstained hands and the bloody mud stained pulp in from of him. The world carried on as he returned to his bench and the lust for survival faded and the mist descended.