original // destination nowhere.
by free magic
When he had a moment to fling himself down to the ground and suck in what he could through his lungs, he contemplated the rusty soil and all the feet that had trampled it previously.
War has a funny way of connecting you to people you never want to be connected to, just like how it has a funny – he thought it was funny, with a hint of bitterness – way of ripping you out of people’s lives, of ripping people out of your life. What do you know? You’re just some momentary spark of life, no more significant than a firefly on a hot summer night. Against the massive history of the earth your life doesn’t measure up to be anything.
He thought it was bad when he watched his brother crumple to the ground, all pain and screams and finely splattered blood creating impromptu paintings across the canvas of his dirt-stained uniform. He thought it was bad when he felt rough hands drag him upright by the little concave just below the bones of his shoulders and force him to fight on for the sake of something greater than a human life.
Somewhere hidden beneath the ground was what he had been looking for. Except he didn’t know what he was looking for, because it had all been taken away.
Air, his lungs cried silently. He had not known it was possible. Air, infiltrated with the metallic taste of blood, of lead everywhere, of the slowly eradicated freshness that he had associated the outdoors with as a young boy. Air was the victim as much as any mortal body. He was only helping as part of the oppression, sucking it in and taking it over, spitting it back out as something no longer oxygen.
The thought was troubling to him.
He held his breath as he heaved himself into a wary standing position, tried to remember what he was running from and realized that he wasn’t running from anything. In fact he was running towards something and it had taken him this long to realize, as pain blossomed all over his body in great bursts in time to his heartbeat, that he had been running towards his own grave.
