I Am Free

• Tina Abou Fram, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

There's a women. She walks further into the smoke. I follow her. The smell of rotting bodies, burnt flesh and burning explosives are hung in the air. Gunfire and shouting muffled voices were the only other sounds from our heavy breathing. I see an unfamiliar man between the shadows. I stop, struggling to identify if he’s one of ours. The next thing I know there’s a gun pointed towards this woman's head. He pulls the trigger.

Hesitating I threw a grenade, exit the abandoned building and run back to our trench. Everything is gloomy and dark. What once was silence became a deafening sound of gunshots and loud screeches of injured soldiers crying out for help. On the dark silent nights we would lay in bed. They would warn me about the rivers of blood, the sickening sight of men drowning in a green sea and men's hanging face like a devil's sick of sin. Yet this was nothing like I had imagined. I come back to reality. I look at sargent James and all the other soldiers and I realise the fear in their eyes. Sergeant James shouts ‘Retreat!’

Many died that day. That was the day I realised how much I miss my wife and my little girl. How much I regretted signing up. Private Jones advises me that I have to learn to get used to the smell of rotting bodies, burnt flesh and burning explosives. But how is that possible. The smell ached my insides. All I could think about was getting out of this hell hole. Privates Harry, Jeffrey, Jeremy, Tom, and many others were piled up. My friend, nothing hurt more than seeing those who I spent every second of my journey with die.

I wake up to fatal explosives. Never once did they fail to send a deafening pulse to my ear. Bullets whistling by, hitting men and dirt alike, covering the ground in a red liquid. ‘Grenade!’ One shouted But it was too late.

War left me with nothing but regret. I miss the days before I threw away my knees. What am I to do now? I wish to do all the things ‘normal’ people take for granted. I wish to walk again. I wish to run again. These are few of the many things I wish to do again.

I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. We were under attack. A sea of soldiers wearing masks entered the trenches. Sergeant James alerted the troops. The shrill cry of ‘Gas! Gas!’ Was still ringing in my ears. I hesitantly reach for my gas mask. I'm stumble and the mask falls out of my hands and into the green sea. It was me against death. My eyes started watering, my lungs burning. The trench started spinning dangerously. I was blacking out. My entire life flashed before my eyes.

I am free.