Find a Critique Partner
Gwendy
By Gwendy
Oct 10, 2006, 03:13

1942...

The roar of thunder drowned out the soldier’s labored breaths. The wind whipped through the thick, gnarled and vine-strangled trees, making him shiver. Blood trickled from a gash on his head, threatening to blind his narrow eyes but he shook off the droplets and continued to stumble weakly through the jungle maze, leaving a trail of red on the knee-high grasses that rustled with his pained steps.

The frequent flashes of lightning guided him through the dark. The trees began to look like the monsters he had faced mere moments before--his fellow soldiers. He heard their cold laughter; saw their sinister sneers; tasted their sadism. He saw the sharp bayonets of their rifles sparkling against the torches. He could almost feel the way it had ripped through his flesh.

The soldier’s knees gave away and made him fall into a ditch, the bed of dry leaves and twigs not caring to ease his burden.

He was dying; dying in a country far from his own. Of course, he knew that going into war might mean dying in battle, but he wasn’t in an honorable fight to the death. He was a victim...of the very people he had sworn his allegiance to; murdered simply because he had listened to the pleading voice of his conscience.

Rain began pounding his body with its frigid drops. He felt the same coldness he had felt when he witnessed those horrors in that accursed house. The women’s screams and pleas for mercy resounded through his mind again. He saw their tear-streaked faces, their glassy eyes begging for even a single ounce of pity as their clothes were torn off and their innocence, ruthlessly taken.

“Y-yameru...” the soldier whispered the same word he had shouted at his fellowmen, but this time, he was reprimanding his restless mind. He wanted those vile images and pitiful voices to stop. He shouldn’t be bearing such guilt. He hadn’t sinned. Those weren’t his sins. He had done what he could to correct the sins that weren’t even his but it was all for a loss. The women were dead. They were dead because of him.

Through his hazy vision, he saw yellow and orange light that reminded him of the sunrises and sunsets he saw from his home village. The light became brighter and brighter until it overwhelmed him.

That’s when he saw her, silhouetted against the sun; saw her turn around to smile at him the way she always did; heard her promise to wait for him...forever, wait for him...but he wouldn’t be able to return.

“A-Amaya-chan...g-gomen...nasai...” was the last thing the soldier spoke before unconsciousness came to claim him.

Then, he was falling--tumbling into the darkest tunnel he had ever seen. Through it, random images of his past whizzed by as quickly as Japanese Zeros flying over foreign skies. And in moments, he was back--back to a time of peace and innocence; back to his motherland; back to the Land of the Rising Sun...