A Moral Greyscale
The stalemate had been broken.
In the frenzy I taste the thick blood of my bitten tongue, metallic like the deafening barrage of overhead gunfire. It is only a split second before I recover and search frantically for the soldier who had attacked me. Letting go of a single life will result in the death of many more.
I spot the soldier's pale complexion over ten metres away, his skin a stark contrast against the muddy earth which lines the trench, against the dark green uniform which crowds the narrow area ... against the rest of us.
"GET HIM!" I bellow in agony as his shrinking figure recedes into our living quarters.
Then the reluctantly anticipated fire of a machine gun, the howls and shrieks of combat mates violently ambushed. It is difficult not to picture the carnage which will await my return. Blood and revolting gore, but this time of my friends ... my friends, of whom we had sworn an eternal allegiance.
The culminating fury erupts within me as the crazed scream of a mad fighter - and my paralysis shatters. I storm through the length of the trench with a regained strength, treading on the hands and shoulders of my fallen army.
He is still there, the cold satisfaction of murder plastered over his white ghost of a face.
He is white. Just like those who had slaughtered my village. White.
Charging towards him, I tackle him to the ground with the power of countless memories of loss. He loses his machine gun, as I did my parents. My friends. My elders. Everything was gone.
I strike his stomach like a frenzied animal, drawing on the forgotten strength of pain. He tries to strike me again, this time with the dagger attached to the side of his shoe. He misses.
He sends his foot flying against the stone surface, dislodging the earthly remains of the trench wall which topples over us. Pushing us closer together, urging us to exact our revenge.
The silver dagger dislodges. He wails as the blade slides to within a few metres' distance, sending us into a frantic brawl. He elbows my thigh sharply, temporarily disabling me as he scampers toward the blade. His hand is merely centimetres from the blade before I clasp his neck, strangling him as I drag him along the blood-stained floor.
I reach for the blade, but the solace of cold metal in my hand does not arrive. I almost forget myself - whipping around, I force the dagger against the soldier's white neck.
Against a boy's white neck. His horror stricken eyes match chillingly, incongruously, with the snicker of murder on his mouth. He has aged too much.
It will take only a flick of the wrist to send this boy to the hellish suffering he deserves.
He is white. I am black. White, black, white, black, white, black ...
Author's Note: 515 words. Sorry about any parallels between this story and the first creative I wrote on this blog (Chastity - My Kind). I think I tried to refrain from specifically using the phrase 'my kind' haha ... don't remember if I succeeded :|
I was originally going to end it with something like white, black, something brown then something about how there's always a bit of each in each other (yin and yang) or some deep philosophical statement. As expected, that never happened.
I should probably add more to this author's note. On another note (do you see what I did there? I get amused by my own sense of humour), I need to sleep. I realise that I only ever post here right before I go to bed .........
edit: In case you thought I was pulling that lunacy about white, black and brown from nowhere, it's me reading too much into the colours of the cat and dog :P
I was originally going to end it with something like white, black, something brown then something about how there's always a bit of each in each other (yin and yang) or some deep philosophical statement. As expected, that never happened.
I should probably add more to this author's note. On another note (do you see what I did there? I get amused by my own sense of humour), I need to sleep. I realise that I only ever post here right before I go to bed .........
edit: In case you thought I was pulling that lunacy about white, black and brown from nowhere, it's me reading too much into the colours of the cat and dog :P
hi! Today, I'm going to type my mental processes as I read, with two windows open.
ReplyDeleteJennifer, you have extremely under-advertised your first sentence. I'm getting the speed, the loss of direction, the DANGER of it.
Wow, laconic sentence changing the pace. It suddenly seems terrifying, but the speed is from a different place. It's unsettling, something frightening.
I am now going to compliment you a lot on the "metallic like the deafening barrage of overhead gunfire". That is a great simile.
Actually I'm going to absorb this properly. be right back. *starts reading again*
OKAY! I had a few comments, but they kind of got blown out of my brain from reading your awesome story.
ReplyDeleteMy main quarrel with it is that you haven't quite grounded it in any particular contextual conflict, and so it's really hard for me to figure out how I should be feeling, or how the characters should be responding. But honestly, I think you've done brilliantly without all that. I'm historically inept, so there probably was a war of black and white that is really famous.
Your use of colour as a motif, especially in emphasising it through constant juxtaposition is a really great device for driving your point and form of belonging. Looking back, I'm very curious about the first line, where you said "the momentary yet lethal darkness..." because it almost seems like a symbolic representation of the dangers of racial discrepancies and an inability to have free will, blinded and such. But I'm just deep reading.
Your imagery is really...real. I can always feel your scenarios better than I can feel mine. The pure speed and adrenaline of your action sequences demonstrate an ability to portray the speed of consciousness, and the blood frenzy and confusion of battle. And then sometimes, you have those solitary thoughts which just stand out and epitomise the points that are significant; they both catch the reader's attention and drive the point. I feel like I'm racing along, following these two people fighting, and suddenly you grab me with a net, slowing me down, and shoving the words "He is white" in my face. It's great. :D
At first, I thought you were just describing the other man, but with the repetition of "White." in such a simple laconic way, it's truly impacting on the audience the emotions behind it, or even cynical apathy from an over-emotional uncontrolled past that are evident and asdlfkj.
It might be because I do After the Bomb, but I just think in writing war stories, it's important to consider the white men that were conscripted (depending on where they came from), the ones who were afraid, those who really actually hated the opposition (whomever they are, because i really am terrible at history) and wanted to kill them etc. so you can figure out how they'd feel about all this, how they would respond behind enemy lines etc.
It's really interesting that you had this enemy soldier race into their trenches on a massacre run. Haha I suppose I'm just amazed they're still alive. :P
- to be continued -
- continued -
ReplyDeleteOh! Probably one of my favourite parts of the story were when you said "He has aged too much." which is a seriously (i'm running out of adjectives for "awesome" and "brilliant") supercalifragilisticexpialidocious way of describing the loss of self from war. The imagery is very vivid.
Few personal/grammar points:
- "reluctantly anticipated fire of a machine gun" is a very interesting way of putting it.
- "my friends, with whom I had" rather than "of whom we had"
- I really loved the idea you had with the contrast between a soldier and a boy's white neck. but the way you formatted it seemed a little more disconnected than i felt comfortable with...?
- bit confused with the horror stricken eyes matching with the snicker of murder. I think I get what you're saying, how it's "incongruously"...it's just a bit contrary, that's all.
- does this boy deserve the suffering, or does the soldier deserve the hellish suffering? :) okay, this is more of a word choice one. As your protagonist first raises the blade to the *soldier*, and hesitates for thought (not like Hamlet's procrastination haha) because it is a *boy*, it might be better to separate the two ideas as two different personas within the same man which exist because of the war's effect on the individual people. I mean, you don't have to change it to the soldier. You could also alienate this conceptual "boy" from the protagonist's conscience, so that he compels himself to hate, to have a reason to kill a child, as well as a soldier.
It's an amazing moral dilemma that you've discovered.
I think we need a page just for commenting, because I can't stop rambling on about everyone's stories in the comments.
P.S. your tag says Week 9, it should be Week 10. :)