Bold Words

Day 4: Hole - Territory - Thunder

This entry contains 2 very different interpretions / inspirations for the words given to me. I started writing one, then found I wasn't inspired enough to continue it and then began writing the other. I will present both in the order in which they were written.

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#1:

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Screaming. There was screaming. His own voice echoed in his ears, but it did not sound like his voice. He did not recognize it. He did not recognize himself. He did not recognize what was sitting right there in front of him. He refused to. He refused to see it. He refused to accept it. If he did not accept it than it was not true. It was not real. It was just make believe. If he did not believe it, then when he closed his eyes and opened them again, it would not be there.

But even when he did close and open his eyes. It was still there, and he was still screaming.

He closed his eyes, grabbing at his chest. He took a breath and started to scream again. It was not a choice. It just happened. He felt light headed, but he could not stop himself. As his tiny fingers grabbed at his chest, he felt a hole. He was missing a part of himself. It was the part of him he was looking at now. He closed his eyes again and wished it away. He repeated that it was not true and as he opened his eyes again, it was all gone. Everything was gone and all that he saw were the white padded walls around him.

As his voice echoed in the room, it started to scare him. His hands were brought up to cover his ears, trying to block out the screams that would not stop. It was not his fault. This sound… this sound… he could not take this sound.

He curled into a smaller ball, pulling his legs to his chest as he pushed himself into the corner of the padded room. His hands pressed harder into his ears as he buried his face in his legs. The sound was muffled slightly by his own legs, but it did not go away. It would not stop and as simple of a thing as it seemed to be, he could not figure out how to make it stop.

It was not until one of the nurses came in. It was not until they took his arm and put a needle in it did the screaming stop. His body went numb and he flopped into the wall like a doll, closing his eyes comfortably now, thanks to the silence.

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#2:

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Alois ducked into a hole, dripping wet as finally found cover. He was soaked to the bone, and despite knowing it wouldn’t do shit, he threw his arms through the air as if it would make the water go flying out of his clothes and off of his person. He had to be carrying an extra fifty pounds in just water weight. His backpack was drenched, his boots were soggy. He could feel his socks sloshing around on the inside.

“Some weather, eh?” one of the other soldier’s said. Alois didn’t have a clue as to who the fuck he was. Some new kid who just so happened to get this as his first ‘field trip’. What a lucky bastard.

The territory outside was nearly quicksand. Thunder and lightning had already started, giving flashes as warnings just before the wild growl of nature was released for all to hear. With how hard the rain was falling, he was surprised he only had mud up to his knees.

“I guess it makes for good gunfire cover, right?” the kid laughed.

You could tell he was new because he was cracking jokes in the middle of a warzone that was nearly too wet to move on. Alois didn’t have the sense of humor to respond and he hoped the kid didn’t expect him to. He was here for one thing and one thing only and that was his mission. He didn’t need to get distracted with jokes. This wasn’t some goddamn video game, sitting in the kid’s living room. This was hard rain in the Middle East. This was lives actually at stake and he wasn’t going to lose his because some funny man of a soldier decided to sneak into the same hole as him for cover.

“Can you focus? We have a job to do and I’d rather get in and get the fuck out. There’s a lot that can go wrong in this situation. Do you really want to be the reason for that?” Alois nearly snapped. A slam a thunder rolled around them

“Sorry, I just figured we’re taking a breather, we might as well smile a bit. The whole situation with the weather is just kind of unbelievable,” the kid said.

Alois rolled his eyes, “I know you’ve never been out in the field before, but this isn’t anything ‘unbelievable’. Weather happens. War is happening every damn day and it doesn’t take a break because it’s raining, snowing, or if fire’s falling from the sky.”

“So it’s more reliably than the UPS,” the kid laughed, staring at Alois as he waited for his superior to crack a smile, but he didn’t… his lips didn’t even twitch and pretend to almost smile.

“We don’t need jokes right now. We need some goddamn focus because I don’t feel like dying today because of your sorry ass.”

“Yeesh, fine, was just trying to lighten the mood.

“The moment you take this situation lightly is the moment I question your sanity,” Alois said, focusing his attention back outside as he sought for a path they could take.

The storm pelted the ground with a high speed barrage of water. It was nearly too grey and dark out to see more than fifteen feet away. The sand was at least kept down by the weighted ran, but part of him thought that a sandstorm would be easier to see through at this point.

“I see our path,” Alois said, keeping his eyes on the target path they’d planned out before landing. If he took his eyes off of it, he knew he’d lose in this mess. “Follow me, stay low, and stay quiet,” he muttered before he received a hard hit on the backside of his head.

Alois hit the ground with a throbbing pain. Another smack came and then another one until he wasn’t moving anymore. He didn’t know how long he was out. He didn’t know what had happened and when he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was. All he knew was that his arms were tied behind a chair, his head was being pulled back by fingers laced within it. He felt a drop down his nose, down his lip and a continual throbbing in his head.

He heard foreign words practically being yelled beside him and the sound of them made his head spin. This dizziness and nausea weren’t just from the blows he’d taken. They gave him something. He was barely able to open his eyes as light painfully invaded his pupils.

He was forced to close them. He didn’t understand much of what was being said, but he caught a few choice words. He finally forced his eyes open despite the pain and that’s when he saw the lens of the camera, the way his damaged and dirty in ways they hadn’t been before and the wires that connected to him underneath his clothes.

His heart began to palpitate, speeding three or four fold. His hair was yanked again, forcing him to face… something. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He felt like he was going to vomit. His hair was released as his head was nearly tossed aside. His chair fell over, taking him with it before a shock went through his body.

He growled, he grunted, he nearly let himself yell from the power of the voltage. His lashes flicked open and across the room, laying bloody and in pieces on the ground Alois saw the kid that had been fighting behind him. The kid… wasn’t whole anymore and he definitely wasn’t alive. A large puddle of blood was being sopped up by some random blanket and the cut off pieces of the kid’s were spread about on top of it.

Alois’s jaw tightened. It wasn’t his day to die. He had to get home, he just had to figure out how before it was too late.