Mother…I’m Dying ~ Ava Walters

Mother, I can’t feel my fingertips.

The grainy, viscous silt ran through his gray fingers to catch doggedly under his bloodied nails. The mud of the trenches had always burned with a sickly cold, the last horseman of death a soldier encountered when he fell. Now they held almost a pillowy softness, and would have been comforting if it weren’t for the rivulets of red that ran through it, racing one another as if time could send them back. The soldier, his heaving chest lifted skyward, could still feel the tremble of the ground as it rattled his inert frame. Some deep, intrinsic feeling borne of conflict galvanized him to move, to evade, but he could not have moved had he the strength of gods. The sky was lit up in the terrible display of heavenly fire, blue and white swept over by the unnatural gray of gunpowder and the scarlet of dancing flame. Though even those sights, so now horribly familiar, seemed to strobe in and out with the voices and violence accosting his senses from all sides, urging him towards numbness.

“Listen for the shells. They cry before they land.”

How silly his captain was, comparing weapons of mass destruction to something that contained a feeling heart inside to cry. If a broken mind could conjure up an imagination of a shell as a human, it would describe that unholy sound as a scream. That horrible cacophony of death on swift wings arcing through the air, a promise and surrender all at once. The soldier knew such a truth to be evident with a clarity that the others listening to the captain’s speech would never. After all, it was by the deliverance of a shell, thrown on bounds of desperation and orders, that a jagged monolithic piece of metal rose out of his chest, sinking deeper with every shallow breath he took, allowing his lifeblood to bubble up around it and run down his lithe body.

Mother, how old am I?

He had always been praised for being mature for his youth, after which he would preen like a prized bird. He had been told the same thing by the older general in the enlistment center after his artistic signature on his service papers, who rewarded him with a hearty slap on the back and a pair of boots. Only then he was less like a peacock, admired for his shiny feathers and arrogant display, but more akin to a pig fattened up for slaughter. Back then, when the cool metal of a rifle touched his soft palms, he thought himself old. But as he lay in the dirt, the panicked and pursuing footsteps of men he did not know passing him by, he thought himself much too young.

“It is the greatest honor of all to die in battle.”

Honor. What a strong, passionate word. A word with which literature and society venerated. And now… a word used to placate. The soldier, bleeding on terms of such a word, now saw the truth with blazing clarity that only experience wrought. There was no honor in bashing the skull in of a man who held a portrait of his wife in his pocket. There was no valor in sinking a knife so deep into a man’s chest that he chokes on his own blood trying to beg for mercy. The soldier was a dead man walking, his body a tapestry of battle. He found no salvation in silver bullets or broken dog tags. He was seared by the flame of devastation, burned alive, as others around him called it that sickening word. Honor.

Mother, I can’t breathe.

          When the soldier was a boy, he owned a hunting hound. The hound had been his best friend, trotting by his feet with a loyalty only an animal so simple could maintain. He thought the dog invincible, but that was of course until his beloved pet had found himself in a fight with a wolf. A battle of ignorant confidence had left the hound with puncture wounds sinking deep in its throat. The dog collapsed, mouth agape, his feet peddling as if by stirring the air it would flow into his lungs on principle. The soldier felt much the same now. His chest rose and fell with an erratic, ragged rhythm, every movement of his ribs sending white-hot pain through his battered body. He had believed, if ever he had imagined it, that when death came for him, he would fight harder than his hound. That it would be more important, more well-earned. But instead he lay in the dirt, gasping, in the eyes of the commanders no more significant than the dog who lost his fight with a wolf.

“You’ll be back soon, won’t you?”

           Of course he would. That’s what he had promised, in a voice smooth as velvet, with intentions only of ephemeral partings, not a forever goodbye. In his mind, the war that had brought most of the world to the most primitive of human instinct wouldn’t bind him forever. How naïve he had been, formulating plans for after, with the certainty that there would be such a thing. He had even seen such irony present in his comrades. A man planning to go home and marry his lover, stuck with a bayonet through his stomach. A hopeful and brilliant engineer, turned to fleshy pieces by the impact of a cannon. The soldier had just been silly enough to think that death would not come after him. Surely not him, with a life he deemed much more important, with promises he had yet to keep. But death was not biased. It loved all of humanity equally, and whether with an iron fist or gentle caress, it claimed them all eventually.

Mother, did you feed the blue-jays?

Dumb little birds, they were. So focused on their silent and seemingly mindless lives that they would crash into the windows of the soldier’s family home every winter. How strange he would think of them now when he was surrounded by blood and violence. But perhaps that’s exactly why he did. How lovely was their twittered musical, light on his ears after it was in his heart to feed them. Such small moments in his life, ones he thought so inconsequential, like a compliment or a conversation with an enlightened person.

           If only he had gotten to hear their song once more. If only he had remembered to tell his mother to feed them when they came around in the following weeks, seeking seeds on the windowsill.

           Such was the crux of life and death. Wishing, wanting, craving more, only to be swept up on the reaper’s scythe while it whispered in one’s ear, “No more time.”

Mother, I’m dying.

The world was quiet now, silenced by the muffle of blood rushing through his ears. The numbness had spread, softening even the tremble of the ground. If the soldier had a mind to think of candor, he might surmise that he was dead long before the metal punctured his chest cavity. If he had a mind to think deeply at all, he could ponder how, in the name of his god, he committed the most sinful of actions; or even remember the names and faces of those who lived in memories behind his eyes. But as the darkness encroached on his vision, hiding more and more of the sky from his upward gaze, he thought of nothing. Not his family, not the war, and not even the blue-jays. He only felt. Fear. So deep and raw that it scraped up his insides and turned the blood in his veins to futile fire. It would be easier if his mind would match the rapid fading of his body. If by every beat of his heart that grew weaker and weaker, so would his emotions. But instead he was forced to lie in a body of stone while his mind screamed for a vivaciousness that was already stolen by cold metal fingers.

Mother, I’m cold.

The world was dimming, quieting, the black dots in his eyes dancing.

Mother, I don’t want to go.

His heart gave a few valiant strikes against his ribs. One…. two… three… silence.

Mother… I want to go home.