My eyes lingered on him for a few moments as I stared down at his wound. Without saying anything, I then turned towards one of the bodies lying beside me. When I shoved him away earlier, I’d briefly caught a glimpse of an armband with a dulled red cross he had.
I reached over to the body, picking up the arm covering his chest before moving it to the side. I reached into his pocket, searching around before a loose object hit my fingers. From the corner of my eyes, I could see that man eyeing me curiously as I pulled out the object. It was a syringe. There were words printed around it, but the ink had dulled. I couldn’t read it, but I could at least recognise what it was from times I’d seen medics using them on the other soldiers. I studied it for a few seconds, twisting the object around in my fingers. It was still unused.
I glanced back up before throwing the syringe over towards that man. Just before it could hit his chest, he caught it with his spare hand, the blood on his fingers staining it immediately. He looked down, eyeing it suspiciously before realising what it was. He turned his head back up, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Morphine?”
“You’ll die less painfully.”
“Well, aren’t you an optimist.”
His face was still hard as he looked down at the syringe again. He continued staring for a moment before he finally pushed the cap off with his thumb, letting it fall to the ground. He raised the syringe to his arm, hovering the needle just above it before jabbing it straight in. His eyes winced again as the substance was injected into his bloodstream.
After a few seconds, he took it out and placed it on the ground. He sighed loudly as he pressed his head back against the dirt wall. His eyes seemed to have dulled slightly as he searched my face, seemingly trying to read my inscrutable expression.
“You know, you should’ve used it for yourself.”
“It would’ve been a waste.”
He raised another eyebrow at me, glancing down at the lower half of my body. His eyes lingered there for a moment before he looked back up, an unconvinced expression on his face.
“You do realise you’re missing your legs, right?”
I gave him a blank stare. It was a little hard not to notice. But regardless, the medics never wasted those sorts of medicines on me before, no matter how lethal the injury. And there was no point starting now.
“I’ll be fine.”
He looked at me incredulously as if trying to discern whether or not I was being serious. But I turned away from him, continuing to skim across the surface of the trench. My finger remained hovered over the trigger.
“So you are an optimist after all.”
I let out a heavy sigh. This had the most words I ever said in one day. “Must you keep talking?”
He raised an eyebrow at my rather curt request. “What? You’re not a fan of effervescent witticisms?”
Effervescent- “Pardon?”
“Sarcasm. I’m referring to sarcasm,” he said with a deadpan voice, “Besides, it’s not as though there’s anyone else down here for me to talk to while I’m bleeding out to death. Well, no one alive at least.”
I chose not to respond to that. Continuing to talk to him would be a waste of perfectly good air. I just kept surveilling the surface above us, staying alert in case anyone tried to approach. The sky appeared to slowly darken, smoke hovering over us as ash fell like rain.
“Are you trying to ignore me right now?”
I shifted my gaze back down, narrowing my eyes at him. “Are you always this sociable with an enemy soldier?”
“Well, only when I’m stuck with one at the bottom of a ditch. Why? Are you going to put another bullet in me for being too chatty?”
Well since he asked…
My hands tightened around my rifle. I raised it and aimed at his head again. His eyes widened at my sudden actions as he quickly raised his spare arm.
“God, alright! I get the point, no talking with you then,” he said, almost through gritted teeth. I kept the gun aimed at him for a few more seconds before finally lowering it to my lap again. He let out a heavy sigh, appearing rather exasperated by the situation. “Do you always solve your problems with a gun?”
“When that problem involves other people, then yes.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something, another remark I assumed, but he kept quiet. He gave me one last unreadable look before turning away.
A silence grew between the two of us as the sounds of explosions continued overhead. Sometimes it was far off from us and others were narrowly close with the occasional burst of dirt spraying down into the ditch beside us.
But amid all that chaos, I could hear two faint voices not too far away. I was about to raise my rifle again, readying it, until I realised they were ones I recognised.
“Sir, there’s a message from the commander!”
The firing continued, almost drowning out that voice. I couldn’t tell if the blonde man in front of me also heard it. It was highly likely he did, he’d be deaf not to. But he didn’t show any indication of hearing them. His eyes were just fixed on the ground, staring hollowly as he remained silent.
“What do you mean they surrendered? You’re telling me we fought all these years for nothing?!” another voice yelled through the mix of desperate cries and the thundering hail of bullets rang through the air. “Not even that thing was enough for us to win. Damn those cowards!”
All those sounds became noise, obscuring individual souls into a single indistinguishable mass of pain. I didn’t want to listen anymore.
I propped my rifle against the wall, the nozzle digging into the dirt. Both my hands remained around the gun, one on the handle and the other near the top. I leaned my head against it, my eyelids dropping. As he noticed me move, the man glanced back up.
“Are you alright?” he asked. I could almost discern a look of concern from him as he saw the solemness in my expression.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Did having my legs blown off mean I wasn’t ‘alright’? Physically, I’d be fine. Or was it hearing my commander curse me again mean made me ‘not alright’? I didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care anymore.
“I just want some quiet.”
I closed my eyes, ignoring the look he was giving me as I tried to tune out everything around me, including him. I didn’t want to listen to the gunfire, the screams, or the curses anymore. It was too tiring.
“Catch.”
My eyes snapped open as I heard him speak again, just in time to see him throw something over to me. Before it could hit my face, I lifted my hand and caught it. My eyes narrowed down at what seemed to be a small metal case that barely exceeded the size of my palm.
I opened the lid of the container. Inside there was a lighter. Its golden casing was stained with dust and scratches, and at the bottom was also an engraving with the characters ‘J.C’. But next to the lighter was what seemed to be a pair of earplugs.
“Everyone retreat north!”
“But sir! What about the girl?”
“Leave it! We’ve lost the war, haven’t we? What use do we have for that thing now?”
I ignored those voices as they gradually faded further away. I glanced back up at the man, giving him a questioning look as I wondered why he’d thrown this over to me.
“What is this?”
“Earplugs. They come in handy during the bombings,” he said with a hint of a smile creeping onto his face. “I figured it’d be less noisy for you when you die.”
I narrowed my eyes at his words as I glanced back down at the case in my hand. Why was he doing this for a stranger, a soldier from an enemy nation nonetheless.
But I reached for the earplugs anyway. They were small in my hand. I placed one in each of my ears, fitting them tightly inside. All the noises around me seemed to muffle away instantly. While not being silenced completely, they were reduced to something more easily ignorable.
I leaned my head back against the rifle, my eyes lingering on him one last time. He seemed to struggle to keep his eyes open, his eyelids flickering between being and closed. Even through the earplugs, I could hear his breaths becoming more quiet.
There was nothing else to say between us. I didn’t even care if he reached for his gun to shoot me. I doubted he’d even be able to do so. I just closed my eyes, forcing the world around me to darken.
The ringing was starting to stop, gradually dissolving into nothingness. This battlefield, which had become my entire world, obscured into oblivion. That blissful silence was all I wanted after those years. I was alone now, left with only a dead man.
But unlike the man in front of me, I knew I wasn’t going to die.
Comments (6)
See all