Side By Side

I wrenched the soul out of a middle-aged man as his crimson blood fled from his cooling body; a bloodied sword laying lifeless in his hand.
I walked over the lifeless ground, heaving under the burden of dead and dying men, lying across its muddied surface. I stopped at a wounded soldier, groaning as he pulled his broken body across the blood-soaked Earth, and plucked his soul out to join the multitude of others I had taken.
Thousands of corpses, left to decompose after their poor souls are claimed, remain evidence of this devastating battle. The dark sky hung overhead bringing along an unforgiving fog that surrounded me as I trudged along with the weightless burdens heaped upon my shoulders.
I was all around…
No animal dared make their way to this sorry place. Too scared with the knowledge that I was here. My smell, death, would suffocate any brave, helpless soul that ventured to this pitiful place.
How are humans capable of both beauty and ugliness? Why do they bring about so much pain and suffering?
I am thought of as cruel, disturbing, horrifying. But I am inevitable. I am less cruel than any of the men who brought this end about. I don’t kill…
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I was stricken with fear. I was told to control it, but I couldn’t. My men were depending on me! I see my papa in my mind. He would be ashamed. What had I done?
I had run and hid beneath an old oak tree, whose branches bent down under the strain of many years. I stayed there for what felt like hours. I had fallen asleep to the sound of gunfire and cries of pain. A deafening reminder of what I had run from.
I awoke later, how long I do not know, but all was deathly quiet. I crept out of my place of refuge and entered a still grey world. Everything had lost its colour. As I returned to the large open field from whence I fled, I stopped motionless. Everyone lay dead.
There were no survivors. I sat and wept.
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I freed each of the dying soldiers, some just young boys pretending to be men, from this world of pain and suffering. I had come to collect 3,000 men, but I now only carried 2999. Where was the last soul?
As I searched for him, something broke the still calm of the world around me. A cry, I spun around, careful not to drop any of the warm souls that weighed me down. A young man knelt in the blood covered grass, weeping, crying from the depths of his soul. He was dressed like the rest of the soldiers with a musket over his shoulder. He wasn’t harmed like I expected, like he hadn’t fought at all! I crept closer. This was the missing soldier! How was I meant to take his soul? He has no illness; he is not suffering. I can’t just take him…

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