Olive

• Matilda Fullager, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

Memories are powerful things. Sometimes they make you laugh and smile and others you want to forget. But you can't. It is embedded into you, like a scar from the past that nothing can cover. Well, this is mine.

Run, rip, tear, destroy. Not that hard. I run with the roar of the guns in my ears doing exactly that. As I run I think of Olive, standing there in her nursing uniform wiping the blood from men in agony, a suffering that not even chloroform can cure. I raise my gun and fire at the men in the trenches, each bullet I fire is for Olive, who is suffering more than these men.

I see Johnny fall beside me, crying out in pain. I wish I could stop and help him but then I will die myself. I cannot risk it. Sergeant Cole has us stop in a ditch. I look at the dirt beneath me. Every crease tells a story, like the wound in my arm tells mine.

A grenade comes hurtling through the air and lands in the center of the ditch. Everyone is dead. I am the only survivor. I just stay there with them, I know they're dead but I can't leave them they're my mates. I can't go. Not now.