Had to run this by you.

CalebNova · June 10, 2004, 4:05am

Just looking for a little feedback on this short piece. It’s the beginnings of a fic for Planetside, a little battle flashback. Background isn’t really important, nor are the characters, I just wanted to know how this comes across. Quality control, before I do anything with this. Don’t want my outfit to see it if it comes across cheesy. So, just your thoughts or even just a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Nightmares


The sky was red. Red like everything. Red like the grass. Red like the rocks. Red like the blood that colored it all. Red like the men who made it bleed.

He couldn’t breathe.

The dirt was cold and the air was hot, rippling with tracers and reeking of ozone. Dust filled his lungs like fear filled his heart. It was crippling, overwhelming. It was all so very, very loud. But even the roar of gunfire could not drown out the screams of the dead and the dying. Clenching his fists and his jaw, he cowered behind the boulder, inches from the killing streaks of light. He was unarmed. He was just a journalist. Just a fucking journalist. Someone grasped his side.

He recoiled, rolling over to face them. It was a man, younger even than he. Red, like the rest. Blood on his shirt. Blood in his mouth, flowing from his nose. He was already dead, he just hadn’t stopped breathing yet. In his hands, a gun.

“Take it.” The words were choked. He shook his head. He couldn’t take it. He didn’t know how.

“Take it,” Was the next gasp, the last one. “Kill those fuckers. Kill them.”

He was dead. But the other, the first, hiding behind the boulder was not. He lived. That was wrong.

This was all wrong.

Fear so easily turned to rage.

The gun was hot like the air, like his mind. Shaking hands tightened their grip. Shaking legs lifted him, lifted him up to the edge of the boulder.

They came like a flood over the plain, more and more red blazing from them, sprinkling the fields with death. The dead man was right. The words came unbidden.

“Fuckers.”

They had to die too.

The gun bucked in his hands, and one in the onslaught fell to its fury. He didn’t scream, bottling his hatred and channeling it to the weapon, and it spat back at the enemy, tearing through flesh and bone and cauterizing all it touched.

The blood on the ground and on the fallen became the blood in his mouth and on his hands, and he killed them.

And he became red like the rest.

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Heaven_s_Soldier · June 10, 2004, 2:09pm

Caleb that is quite impressive. You depict the battlefield supremely. You have to keep writing.