14/1/12
Location: Back to the bedroom - Only two more sleeps in it!
Background noise: Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works '85-'92 (I really need more of this ambient electronic stuff)
Burial - Untrue (Ambient dubstep? Why not?)
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture, Nutcracker Suite (Okay, this electronic stuff is too distracting)
The sky, blue of an untuned television, was interrupted only by smoke trails and the occasional miniscule projectile. The trench ran several hundred meters in each direction, a group of men crouched at an unknown point along it. One man, short and possessing a large, bristling mustache, barked orders to the motley crew. The men were not of any single race nor nation, but were somehow united, here, against their common enemy.
"We have been ordered..." shouted the mustache bearing man over the echoing crash of artillery, "...To attack the position directly in front of us, to the south east, when the artillery stops."
The men stood mostly distracted. Trench warfare was all the same after a while, the unending mud and uniformly terrible conditions meaning everything looked the same after while, and the strategies of the generals comfortable in the home countries never changed.
"We will divide into three group..." A particularly loud artillery shell exploded with particular proximity to the man with the mustache, drowning out his voice, dry and monotonous anyway, to all but those nearest him. Clearing his throat, he continued.
"We will..." His voice stopped again, not due to artillery again but this time to the lack of it.
"Oh shit... Go, go now!" The mustached man's voice wavered with nerves, suddenly sounding less like the shout of a war-hardened man and more like the scream of a prepubescent boy.
The men raced over the side of the trench, without regard to the mustached man's anguished cry. Gunshots rung out from the opposing trench before many had even clambered into no-man's-land, some falling straight away, others whilst caught on the endless barbed wire and other debris scattered across the battlefield. Less than a quarter of the men who had left the trench even reached the opposing side of the battlefield, and many of these quickly met their end at the end of a gun, not from a bullet but a bayonet.
Five men made it into the trench. The mustached man was not one of them. Surprisingly, only ten of the enemy remained. Or perhaps only ten had been there in the first place?
A gunshot. One of the five had managed to grab his rifle and shoot the man in front of him. It surprised even him, which meant that he was even less prepared for the bayonet which quickly went through his back. The next of the remaining four, though was prepared, and upon being stabbed pulled the pin on a grenade he'd stumbled across at some point.
The explosion, in a definite example of Murphy's law, was directly next to a crate of ammunition. The explosion took the surviving men with as much surprise as that first gunshot. Suddenly, there were four men, two of either side. As much as they may have wanted to ask for a truce, the men knew they wouldn't be heard.
A slim man, dark hair, grey eyes, part of the attacking side, took the first move. Pretending to lunge with his bayonet, he instead fired at an opponent. Suddenly, a dance of violence and bloodshed had commenced, the swishing of bayonets and the occasional gunshot more like a choreographed performance than an act of war. The slim man's ally fell hard.
One versus one. What was the point? Explosions recommenced in the distance. The artillery had started again, at least it appeared at first. The explosions though, seemed to lack any position, any depth. They were uniform, and spread perfectly around. Both men stared each other down, not out of mutual confusion but because their bodies appeared to have stopped working. The bodies of their compatriots had surrounded them, but now there were none. The ammunition case which had exploded previously was back in its original position, as if nothing had happened this day. Suddenly, the blue sky flicked to black, no transition but simply an inperceivable shift. The whole world shifted into darkness.
***Error***
Forcefully disconnected from server
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I kind of cheated today since I'm still a little writers blocked. This is a rewrite of the introduction to a piece I wrote a while back. I want to use this style of piece to introduce a much longer short story at some point so don't be surprised if it springs up again. Between then and now, though, I know it needs a lot of work.
I really want to turn the piece from Day 4, A Dystopian Romance into a short film script. It wouldn't be hard dialogue-wise, there's not exactly a huge quantity of it, but I want to describe the shots and shit, that'd be fun. Definitely a project for when I get home next week. I also need to start working on my Vault Dweller cosplay, been putting that off for like a month...
UPDATE: The next part of this story is now up! Urban Camoflage!
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