The Death Bed

• Sneha Mishra, Grade 11, Bunbury Senior High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

The rays of sunlight reflected an incandescent glow off the white, sterile pillars of the hospital. The ailing arrived in utter anguish and forlorn misery. Some left in quietude, finally freed of the inexorable burden of life, and others recovered, forced again to face life’s challenges. All the while, in one bed, lay a young soldier watching inertly, enveloped in bandages and rendered hideous by the wrath of war. He’d been here for just two months, yet they seemed like decades.

He gazed blankly at the blurred figure holding water to his mouth. He had lost count of how much water he had had that morning as no matter how many he had gulped desperately, the water did not quench his thirst. Instead it left him feeling as though his throat was more arid than ever before. Death itself did not frighten him. However, the agonisingly slow process towards it did. His condition was worsening by the hour; his face so wan, and eyes so wearied and glassy. In an effort to distract himself from the tormenting pain, he allowed his mind to reminisce the events of the past.

The deafening salvoes of the war moulded a frame of memories in front of his closed eyes. He hated it; he always had. The so alleged ‘pride of war’ that had rallied his beloved friends into its arms, seemed merely a lie to him. Yet it appeared to have elusively entangled everyone else with the propaganda posters laid out on busy streets and young children naïvely waving flags and patriotic emblems, in support of the atrocious process. It had become the ultimate objective of every young man, to fight and die for their country. It was believed fighting in the trenches that now constricted their nation would bring pride and honour.

The trenches. Tight mud-filled spaces, six feet wide and seven feet deep that echoed the never ending spiral of heavy artillery and sound of gun fires, leaving the soldiers exhausted to their utter limits. There was no sleep, but only death that acted with grim finality on their lives.
So many. So many lives wasted in the vitriolic combat of nothing but outraged pride. It disgusted him.

Fire gleamed in his eyes and blood rushed to his pale, sunken cheeks. His hands groped over the bedclothes. He was writhing with pain, wasting with disease. He shifted restively in the uncomfortable hospital bed laden with springs. His breathing was short and heavy; it was evident he was dying. How appropriate. He hated violence, yet his demise was destined to be in sacrifice for the wrath of war.

With each little gleam-drop of silver rain on the windows, the young soldier’s breathing grew heavier. He wildly beat his clenched fists on the coverlet, in agony. He closed his eyes and embraced life’s final farewell.

Death folded him in its soft wings as he now forever slept, in the deathbed.