The Late Armistice

The difference between animals and humans is clear; our conscious. We are aware of our being, aware of a purpose, and enlightened in our intellectual connection to thought and to others. This difference is so significant that in our arrogance we often forget that we are animals in our nature. But it is a bane of mankind in our pride to neglect acknowledging our most powerful tool in which we are all governed by without choice; fear.

Humid rain showered down upon an injured soldier stumbling through an open field, the darkness of a night shrouded in clouds concealing his way, though even if he could see it, on foreign land nothing would be familiar. He has abandoned his post in fright and the ricochet of guns and thundering of bombs fade far in the distance. War bursts in hateful reds and oranges behind him, the future in front of him as dark and unknown as he feared. A deserter’s fate is always unknown.

Further on the air thins of its polluted smoke sickening the soldier’s rasping lungs, and the clouds part to shine the moon’s omnipotent beacon upon the grassy field. Slithers of silver adorn outlines of shapes and shadows, and a once hidden old barn just south of the soldier beckoned. Unsticking the brown uniform from his skin so glued from the deaths of other men, his roughened icy fingers reach below the neckline to garner his silver cross upon which he laid a grateful kiss. Tucking his saviour back below his uniform, the soldier hurried with all that his wounded ankle could muster to the old barn’s doors.

The exhausted soldier heaved his body weight at the doors. All fear of enemy soldiers or even allies whom would arrest him are drowned out by the instinctive, animal determination to survive. For a soldier must endure hell itself, cloaked under the normalcy of war, out on the front where his identity is but a number and his sacrifice of self a courageous effort. But even a dying soldier knows a night alone in the chilled rain would kill a man.

His desperate booming against the barn doors cease as they eagerly swing open with a groan and the soldier falls through with a scattered hay-softened thud. Rendered dizzy, he looks up vacantly to see the barn empty. Holes in the wooden roofing provide moonlight travelling on the backs of quiet rain falling through and the soldier can just barely distinguish remnants of old bundles of hay stacked along the back of the barn.

Beginning to stand, the soldier grimaces back down to a crouch as pain slices through the stab wound of his ankle. The heaving of the barn doors had ripped his wound further and his ankle would be lame until morning. Crawling along the dirt past the four horse stalls sitting empty on either side, the soldier positioned a makeshift bed amongst the old hay bales. They weren’t overly warm but they were dry, and laying down as he did a swift deadness came to his muscles, and the soldier realised he had not properly laid down to rest, with his bones propped against nothing but rock and mud, for days. The rain need not lull the soldier for it had barely begun to quicken before exhaustion overtook and his eyelids promptly closed.

It is said that the origin of our dreams is still unknown. For some it appears as a collection of our most entertained thoughts of the day, or perhaps a recycling of old memories departing us. Some say it is signs of our subconscious desires or even predicted futures, though there still brings a wonder upon night terrors and haunting dreams. For one to have seen the death of friends, the gruesome distortion of bodies, and the unrelenting fear of humanity at war flying over your head, chasing you through ruined buildings and striking from hiding, it is a sympathetic wonder what dreams caused the shivering soldier laying in the hay to twitch and groan, kick and grimace. But what is known is the continuation of fear and disorientation when suddenly ripped out of the nightmare tearing through one’s own head, and what frenzy this did cause the soldier to manifest at his situation.

A shrill demonic hissing did wake the soldier, and in his bewilderment of fading night terrors an indescribable creature with black eyes and claws glided swiftly as it attacked his face. As rain roared on the old barn’s roof the banshee screeching could be heard still, and black clouds had covered the grace of moonlight for the soldier could see nothing, not even his own hands.

Receding silently in the dark with a quietening of its cry, the soldier trembled with cold swear stinging at the gashes on his temple. What creature on this land made such a noise? With all but two hours slept in the past two days, the soldier’s head was as clear as mud. Would I fair better out in the rain? He wondered, if it were possible in the pitch black to even find the door. How many were there? How large were they? His questions were dismissed as his fight or flight instincts sensed the evil coming nearer.

As gentle a sound as the whistling of wind, the high pitched cry began traveling closer, and closer. The soldier’s heart drummed a frantic beat and his ears buzzed as they listened for every sound. The soldier dare not breath, dare not move, for fear of alerting the animal, and his eyes searched frantically in the dark hoping to see anything but hoping to find nothing at all. Blood mixed with his sweat and trickled down the side of his face landing on his hand which clutched the cross over his uniform. He had never clasped his faith as willfully as he did in this hour.

Suddenly, a whoosh of air and the hissing screech pummeled towards his head. Claws scratched at his face a second time, narrowly missing his eye. The soldier yelled and screamed a terrified bellowing and swung wildly before thud, and all that could be heard was the rain softening outside.

The soldier wildly cocked his head from side to side, his breathing ragged and uneven, listening for any sound of movement. Had it left? Did he hit it? An hour was spent in an adrenaline panic, forever listening and not daring to breath. His nerves had not calmed but the soldier no longer had strength to stay awake, and despite the protests of his conscious his body passed out into a sleep so deep he would not dream.

The gentle pitter patter of a late rain welcomed the soldier to a brighter morning. Streaks of sunlight shone through the gaps in the wooden roofing of the barn, and the smell of warmed hay filled his nostrils. The stinging on his face from the strike of claws during the night pulled his bleary eyes wide open and he anxiously wrung his body from side to side hoping to find an empty barn, only it wasn’t. But an arm stretch away lay a bundle of lifeless feathers on the ground, with colours and a face of which he had seen before in his own country; a barn owl. Slowly rising up from his bedded hay, and wincing at his ankle as he did, he hobbled but two steps over to glance down at the small, soft creature.

In his animalistic fear the soldier had indeed swung at the owl’s head and with a quick crunch it had lost its life against the faultless wooden panel which now stood tall as a gravestone for the dear soft feathered body lying motionless in front of it.

A now familiar ghostly hissing started above him in choir, and looking up the soldier witnessed four pairs of black eyes glinting down at him; that of another barn owl and three little ones. Shielding themselves in the safety of their nest resting upon the wooden panel connected above to the very one the soldier was standing in front of, he knew with a solemn heart what had happened. Removing himself from the owls’ distress, the worn soldier quietly limped out of the old barn.

Stepping out into the field trudging his heavy boots, the soldier felt no warmth console him from the vivid sun. The smell of stale smoke hung dead in the air, and looking up to the north he could see, even from the great distance he had treaded in his abandonment, what little remains were left of the city his comrades had been attacking for weeks.

Though the moment was hushed, the soldier’s mind was deafened by his thoughts. If I had not come here, if I had not entered this place. If I had not been scared, if I had not attacked in fright, if I had not been here at all, would it have been different? As he despairs on upon the blackened city, rising no higher than an average tree, with the last of the fires and the dust still clouding the city, he knows. And though his heart cries, no tears can fall.

The sound of a gun clicks but a few metres behind the soldier. Being pulled from his haze of thoughts, the soldier innocuously turned to view a man in farmers clothing cocking a gun at the soldier’s head. Raising his hands steadily in surrender, the soldier’s blood fell cold and not a sound passed between them.

And in that stillness the soldier prayed that he was more afraid of the man than the man was of him.