Bullet

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

One bullet was left in his gun. But neither of them were looking at it. The dusty battlement was strewn with the bodies of the dead, covered in the thick mud of the earth, almost as if to return to their creation. But neither soldier could see them. Their eyes were locked onto each other’s… questioning. Nothing existed; nothing was ever as real as one another.

They had names, but they had almost forgotten. Your name didn’t matter much anymore. When you’re on the front, every day life walks a tightrope and there’s no distinction between what you had, because it doesn’t change what will happen. They thrust a gun into your hand, they tell you to be brave because you’re a man, and they tell you to kill for your honour. “PULL THE TRIGGER!” they’ll tell you, but now you stand alone, staring at a man who’s been told the same. The voice is ingrained in both of you; load, shoot, kill.

But something makes you stop.

The man’s eyes flicker and for a second he lets surprise break his resolve, SOLDIER HUT! The unflinching steel is back. But sometimes for a second you’ll see the emotion escape, and you’ll witness the grief that he’ll lock inside – because he has to, because he’s a MAN.

The soldiers are still erect, each reading the other for clues… of deception, of menace, or a trick. They can’t believe in the humanity they cling to anymore, they’ve been told it’s a lie, how else then can they bear to break it every day? How else then can they rationalise what they do?

Dark, foreboding circles line the soldier’s eyes and there are contours that are newly creased upon their faces, but somehow if you look closely you can still see a child. Yes, that’s what stopped the soldier – a child. At that moment, the soldier could so lucidly see the dirt graced streets, and the vibrant personality of his neighbourhood… and his quite, mischievous friend laughing at their adventures. But that child was gone. Replaced with the ghost of a starved, broken form.

For a second you think you can see your friends and your family in each person that you take. Each life can be imagined passing with the same grief and familiarity of someone you love. Perhaps it’s the fact that we act without knowing, and the guilt of taking life so lightly makes our imagination sway. The screams at night that each soldier hears are real. They’re the souls fleeing, the inner emotions soaring, and the hell that is the price of a human’s life.

The soldier paused, he thought and he didn’t pull the trigger. So his fault would be his rebellion, and his life would end via another meaningless bullet. And as the dust settles is he remembered as a deserter or a hero?

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