The sun was hot, they were lounging in the trench, they felt that time was theirs and they lingered from one side to the other within their environment. Just beyond them, an ugly black vista lay stretched out and the corpses of slain soldiers, perhaps from yesterday’s battle, or the day before yesterday, had just been assigned to this section of trench, rats gnawing at them. They were only a foot from the edge of the edge of the trench, “Look,” said a voice, “be careful…however!” (Why he said what he said, and who said it, and even if one of the four said it, or didn’t, would be food for thought at a much later date. But they all looked toward the trench.)
I don’t know why they all decided to look at the same time, to the limit, but they did, maybe there is a dominant force that uses minors to create in the long run, majors, at least this could perhaps be its base; in any case, there were four blows, all at the same time, in the hot air.
Something, glancing down quickly, saw the eyes of the four, fixed on Adolf, the perfect embodiment of hatred.
There was a gasp, as if it came from the thing that was looking at the four of them, a female devil, or a clairvoyant cat, something of that nature, it was grinding its teeth and its paws and claws.
oh
Scattered gunshots and some intermittent hand grenade explosions could be heard. Hans and Gunter, Ludwig and Adolf, place their weapons in the trench of each cell in anticipation that what they had heard might be true, peace was drawing near this afternoon, and these other sounds were just the enemy running out of ammunition before they they were arranged they lower their arms; Ludwig felt that whatever comes has to be better than living with the worms, either in another man’s jail or hopefully in an armistice.
oh
A look of death appeared on their faces, frozen in time, the morning mist having lifted, they remained motionless, for a millisecond, after looking over the edge.
oh
Said Ludwig to the other three: “There is nothing quick in a war, unless death precedes it; and now I could smell it…
“Death is in the air, I smell it, it is with us,” he said.
“What is?” Adolf asked, sweating.
“I hear a voice, right? It sounds hollow like it’s in the mist, like it’s coming from a grave.”
Said Gunter, randomly: “We are so used to noise, this is really strange. What happened to Adolf?”
(Looming dark shadows joined the voice, squeezing each other tightly.)
Hans shakes his head, “Maybe we got that peace treaty after all, it’s all so quiet.”
“That could be true,” Gunter said.
(The voice laughed, as did the shadows.)
Now the three looked suspiciously at their fourth comrade, looked at each other, looked up and down the trench to see if he had been shot, if there was an extra body lying around. At the same time, the shadows lengthened, circled the trench, arranged them, cautiously, then slid toward the trench.
Ludwig shrugged, the voice said, “Rumor is you’re all dead,” then there was laughter in the shadows.
Now the shadows produced growls, the three of them murmured to each other, “Where is Adolf?”
“Go Go!” the voice yelled, but the three did not move.
Adolf looked at the voice and the shadows, and towards his three comrades, lying with the worms, the voice said: “You can stay here, Adolf, you must go up to your destination.”
Adolf could hear the scraping sounds of the belts tightening around his comrades’ wrists, the spirits within their bodies unable to escape; and the foul smell of death rose suddenly, hearing the cries of “Armistice! Armistice!” echo of the path of him.
When Adolf looked back at the bodies in the trench, especially at his three comrades, he now saw their heads, it was as if he had been blind to them before, their heads with their brains smashed out (he asked himself: ‘why not was his brains shattered?, he was the fourth thud’); as the swift dark shadows dragged them like rugs toward his new destination.
He felt his hands and face, even his legs, pinched himself, as if he were grotesquely dead, and didn’t know it, like his dead friends; and when he came to the conclusion that he was still flesh and blood, it was incomprehensible that he was so terribly real. His whole demeanor changed then.
3-9-2009