Chaotic Onslaught
by NinjaFluffySocks


I watched as the leaf blew down the street. I’d always remembered that area as bustling with people, but today the main road in my hometown was empty. I could hear nothing but the wisps of the dry, hot breeze as it carried the swirling leaf past the deserted houses and shops lining the dusty pavement on either side. It was unnatural; where was everyone? Suddenly my heart lurched as a foul stench hit my nostrils like a smack in the stomach. It was the unmistakeable smell of death.



“Andy?”
I woke up with a gasp. Immediately the empty street was replaced with a dim and earthy hollow. I glanced up and peered into the long trench that we had dug with our own hands only weeks before. The familiar buildings of home had transformed into walls of gravel and mud, supported by bags of sand or scavenged planks of wood. Only the smell was still there; grisly and repulsive, a constant reminder that home....well, home was a long way away. It was still dark, but a lone bird warbling in the distance told me the it was just morning. Blinking, I tried to focus my eyes on the person crouched opposite me. I clutched my dirty blanket tighter and realized that my uniform was drenched in sweat.
“How long was I asleep?”
Roger shifted his weight onto his right foot and leaned against his rifle. He seemed more tense than usual and didn’t reply at first. I tilted my head and listened. The continuous bombardment of shells suddenly didn’t seem so distant as they had over the past weeks.
“Three hours.”
I rolled over and stretched my cramped legs.


“Did you sleep?”


Roger shook his head.


“It’s not easy with that...” He nodded in the direction of the explosions. I could tell that something more was bothering him.


“Andy, I know it’s going to be soon. We’ve been stationed here for weeks. We’ve neither gained land, nor lost land, but this stalemate has continued too long, and there’s no doubt in my mind that an order will be given to attack very soon.”


I stared at Roger in silence, but knew he was right. It was the only option the Allies had. This line had to be held, and the longer an attack was delayed, the less chances we had of holding it. Perhaps rushing the enemies in waves would get us through. But whatever the strategy, I knew my brother was right. An order would be given soon. Very soon.




***


On the eerie morning of July 1st, 1916, the order was given to attack the enemy lines. I fixed my bayonet and crouched in the trench, waiting for the signal to charge. We hunched in the dirt amongst our comrades and friends in the battalion, waiting for the single word that could mean the end of thousands of lives. As I lay listening to the explosions of shells and the formidable rat-tat-tat of the machine guns, I realized that I was shaking. Roger, who was hunched down beside me, gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but still the question hammered in my mind. For how many of us would this be our last battle?


Then it came. Clutching my rifle, I scrambled over the ridge and onto the battlefield. No matter how often I see it, I’m never ready for the loathsome sight that greets me every time. No Man’s Land; the expanse of horrendous ground that stretches between the trenches, the human slaughter house, Hell itself on Earth. Littered with the gory bodies of men killed in recent battles, the broken and distorted landscape lay just as dead and foreboding, splattered with the blood of the men who so bravely sacrificed their lives for their causes. The air was heavy and dry with dust and smoke, so thick it blocked out the light of the sun and turned it blood red, as if the sun itself was sharing our horrible plight. It was dark; but through the shadows and smoky haze you could see the flashes of the guns and cannons as soldiers from both sides fired desperately into the opposite lines. Every now and then the addition of a flare from an exploding shell blazed and burned through the dust, making it frighteningly surreal and unearthly.


The sound was terrifyingly worse. The dull booming of the cannons from the enemy lines functioned as a background noise to the sharper cracks from the rifles and machine guns. The explosions from the shells added to the pandemonium with loud peals of thunder that rang and echoed all around; one after another after another, each one bringing on someone’s death or other one’s torment. And that was the most harrowing perception of all. The horrible, unbearable screams of the dying. The tortured cries of the injured. The anguished moans of friends who had just witnessed the bloody slaughter of comrades to whom they had spoken only minutes ago. It was impossible to shut out the sound of that unendurable terror.


It only took a few seconds to take all this in; the explosions, the gun shots, the stench, the dead bodies and wounded soldiers, the blood red sun, the filthy air. I stood frozen; I knew I was terrified. My legs would not move, and I felt sick.


I began to choke, the horrible atmosphere stinging my eyes and making every breath painful and rusty. My instincts kicked in at the moment and I pulled out my handkerchief and tied it around my mouth and nose to secure a makeshift gas mask.


“Come on!” I whispered to myself. “You can do this! You have to.”


I suddenly woke out of my stupor when a bomb detonated close off to my right. I was too far away to be seriously injured, but a piece of the shrapnel stung my calf and I felt warm sticky liquid oozing through my trouser leg. I gasped from the pain, but it was the wake-up call that I needed. Adrenaline surged through my body as I raced in the direction that I had seen Roger go. As I ran, I glanced over to where the shell had exploded and realized how lucky I have been. A few meters closer..... I felt another violent bout of nausea as I saw a boy barely old enough to enlist writhing in agony, his body shredded into ribbons and drenched in blood from the knifelike shrapnel that had ripped through his body. I shuddered and tried to shake the image from my mind. I had to focus.


Suddenly, an agonizing pain gripped my left shoulder, and I bit my lip to hold back the tormented scream which was forcing itself between them. Glancing down, I saw that a bullet had ripped into my flesh and dark red blood was seeping through my uniform. I tore off a piece of my garment and tied it tightly around the wound with the intention of slowing the bleeding. My vision began to go hazy, but I shook the dizziness from my head and pressed forward. Then, without warning, a shell exploded nearby, the full force of the blast hurling me sideways into the mud. I cried out in pain as my injured shoulder smashed into the ground. I was stunned and winded – my vision was red and blurry. Dazed, I stumbled to my knees and clapped a dirty paw over my brow; when I took my hand away I saw it was dark and sticky with blood.


I could feel an intense tightness growing in my chest as if my heart was swelling and trying to choke me from the inside. I couldn’t breathe, and every movement was torture. I gave one last desperate attempt to struggle to my feet, but it was no good; my head was throbbing and I couldn’t focus. I could feel myself slipping away into unconsciousness.


Time seemed to slow; those few seconds stretched out into hours and the confusion and chaos around me appeared to haze out into simple grey shapes. I could make out the gunshots and cries, but they sounded distant and distorted. Over all this I could hear the noise of my own breath, the sound magnified a hundredfold. My pounding heartbeat, each pulse overpoweringly loud. Everything was spinning. Darker, it grew darker...


As thepandemonium of the battle faded into nothingness, I was vaguely aware of Roger shouting out my name somewhere close by, and in a despairing effort, I groped out into the closing darkness, grasping his arm. A single dry leaf gently sailed overhead as I sank down onto the blood-soaked ground and remembered no more.

The Storm

I watched as the leaf blew down the street, pelted by heavy drops of rain. The rain had been relentlessly battering the city for days now. The clouds, angry and dark, reflect the people long torn by war. Peace was never a constant thing within my country, and death was all too constant. But you just move forward with your day, go to work, come home to the family, eat together, tuck my kids into bed, go to sleep, and start the routine again. It’s all we can do to keep the fear from escaping its bindings.

The missile strikes had begun a few months ago, leveling several blocks of the outskirts of the city. Soldiers walking the streets were all too common these days, and the faint sounds of gunfire are almost drowned out by the constant movement of people just trying to forget the turmoil just a few miles from them.

Since the storm had come in, the strikes had been less frequent. Maybe they were having difficulties in this monsoon, or maybe they were biding their time. Either way, the only banging I could hear wasn’t of gunfire, but the heavy drops panging against the metal roofs of my neighborhood.

I grabbed my briefcase, my coat, kissed my wife goodbye as she got the kids ready for school, and I headed for the bus stop a block from my apartment. Shielded from the waterfalls from the sky, I waited in the cold. The bus tore through the fog, its headlights piercing the heavy darkness, and the engine cutting through the constant pang of the rain. I stepped on, paid my fare, and found a seat nearest the back door.

I looked out the window, and the rain continued to pound the city. This city had been through so much. So many wars had leveled it to the ground, and once again, we face another siege. But now the enemy was cleverer, or at least the weapons were, and no longer could our borders protect us.

The bus stopped to pick up an elderly woman and a teenager with music blasting from his headphones. I could clearly hear it over the barrage of water against the bus. A flash of light peeled the city from its darkness for only a moment, illuminating the ruins of a block of apartments a hundred meters away from us, and then it faded back into fog, and the city shuddered with the clap of thunder echoing down its streets.

We continued towards the city center, picking up passengers on their way to work or school. Another flash illuminates the financial district briefly. What optimism this city has, beautiful towers of glass stretching for the sky and a few cranes pepper the skyline, a symbol of the strength of our economy. They must feel safe being this far from the fighting. Thunder once again bellowed through the streets, shaking the windows of the bus.

We stopped again to pick up a woman dressed in a black hooded jacket and camouflage pants. With her head down and under the hood, she flashed her bus pass to the driver, and continued to the very back of the bus four rows behind me. I caught a brief glimpse of sorrow in her eyes. A third flash of lightning illuminated the reason. All I could see in that brief second of light was the still smoking rubble of several blocks of concrete housing laying in ruins. Looking at her clothing, they were tattered and filled with the dust of rubble, still prominent even though she was soaking wet from the rain.

I pulled out the newspaper from my briefcase, and spooled through a few of the stories. The first three pages were of various attacks that had happened over the past week and their subsequent investigations and rescue efforts. When did war become this savage? I went through the next couple of pages, some warning of possible attacks, a report of an apartment complex in the city suspected of harboring enemy insurgents, plans of a union strike among the workers of the underground metro, protests on the university campus, politicians running for office, last nights football scores, and finally, I reach the part I look forward to, the crossword.

I pulled my pen out, and began. It had long been a source of distraction for me. As the bus passed through some of the more damaged areas of the city, I tried to steel myself away with my trivial knowledge. One across, little darlings, five letters. I have no idea. One down, outburst from Homer Simpson, three letters. D-O-H. Seventeen across, they were created “in the beginning,” fifteen letters. Well, it’s a bible reference to Genesis, Heavens and the Earth? No, too many letters, Heavens and Earth maybe?

A few more stops, and the bus was filled. We had left the ruinous outskirts, and had begun to approach the university. I put my newspaper away. The stop nearest the coffee shop on the corner opposite the university let out two dozen young people looking for their daily caffeine fix before tackling their morning classes. We continued on and the sky lightened. The rain receded back to a gentle misting, and I could hear a roar of chants. We approached the main entrance to the university, and I grabbed my briefcase and stepped off. There were hundreds of students holding up signs protesting both the raising of tuition and the war effort.

I then heard a muffled scream as I look back and could see the woman in the hooded jacket run towards the bus driver. In a clean motion, he saw her in the mirror, turned around, drew his handgun and shot her twice, once in the chest, and once in the head. She wrenched backwards, her right hand flew upwards and I caught a brief glimpse of a red LED in the window. As she hit the ground, the bus peeled open as the explosion ripped it apart and teared into the crowd. My vision went as dark as the sky was and the world drowned in silence.

I regained consciousness with a paramedic over me giving me CPR. Sound slowly leaked in and the constant ring filled my head. I could barely hear the paramedics command to remain still, but I heeded his warnings. The bus was nothing more than a charred chassis and torn sheet metal. I could see around me many more paramedics tending to the injured and dead. Tarps covered many bodies scattered around the university entrance. I looked down at my abdomen, at my legs, as the paramedic tended to the injuries. Steel nails had impaled me in several places, no doubt from the bomb, and there were pieces of sheet metal imbedded in my left leg. I didn’t feel any pain, though. Either the paramedic had given me something, or I was still in shock, and I would have guessed the latter. I fell out of consciousness with my last thoughts being of my family as I heard more explosions echo around the city. And the world went dark and quiet once again.

Red

I watched as the lifeless leaf ceremoniously blew down the street where I stood. This leaf was to graciously drift to a narrow lane where once set foot a man as lively as can be. In the lane lay a body, in a pool of a deep dark red colour, similar to that of the water which Jesus turned to wine. His surroundings had matched the characteristics of his cold body, lifeless. The place appeared to be abandoned and there wasn’t a soul in sight.


I sat down on an old, withered chair and began to wonder to myself “What might this man be leaving behind? A family? Kids?” Bewildered by the thought of the effect this might have on his loved ones I began to think deeply about the situation my family would be left in if I were to die. My wife Juliet, with her dark red hair, almost like that of a robin. The two kids, Julie and Matthew, both 6 and 7 years old. All three of their lives would be affected dramatically if I were to die. Matthew would grow up without a father figure, Julie would have no one to play dress up with on those dark winter nights and Juliet... well Juliet would be completely lost and alone in this dark and confusing world.


The time passed as I sat there thinking and thinking. It was almost selfish of me to be thinking of myself whilst a man lies there in a pool of his own blood. Caught up in all this I had never thought to look at who this man might be, what might he look like? Not that knowing what he looked like would give me any details as to how he had perished but it may enable me to sympathise with him that little bit more. I shimmed over the cobbled street, the pitter patter of my feet as they gain momentum and further bring me closer to the figure that lay on the ground. Upon reaching the body I soon realised he was face down on the ground.


I turned over the body; I paused as I looked into the face of the deceased man. My heart dropped into the fiery depths of hell. This man, this poor poor man... I dropped to my knees, placed my head on his chest and let out a scream which contained both stress and agony. Everything I had thought up to this point had been both untrue and sadly mistaken. I had not been selfish, I had been thinking of the man. Because this man that lay in the uninhabited street was in fact me. I could not believe what I had seen. It was as if the world and everything that inhabited it was a lie. I began to contemplate how I was seeing this but before I knew it the world began to disintegrate around me. Only to reappear a few moments later. I watched as the lifeless leaf ceremoniously blew down the street and it had now became clear to me that I was now stuck in the depths of my own personal hell, forced to relieve my death over and over and over and ov...