War Betrays

   The War had just begun, my friend Red and I had been conscripted into the war as soon as it started. The day they came for us, Red and I were on our bowl shaped hill in the peach tree we had grown together, eating our fill knowing this would probably be our last chance in a long time, maybe our very last. As the soldiers approached we made a promise to each other,

   "We stick together like the bark of this tree, your back is mine and mine yours and we protect what's ours". We said it together as the soldiers pulled us out of our peach tree.

   Three months pasted we were still together, friends, brothers, our bond grew stronger every day. We were in the trenches, a labyrinth of walk ways and hidey holes and we were surrounded. We knew the enemy would rain down upon us soon, so Red and I came to the conclusion that we could hide and wait for reinforcements to arrive, knowing that if we fought with the rest of our fellow soldiers we would surely die with them. Red led the way to a remote place of the tenches, easy to hide, easy to get lost. Red had it all figured out like he knew that one day we might have been it that very situation. He had me hide across the way of a four way intersection of the remote tenches so we were in clear view of each other, to watch each other's backs but virtualy invisible to unwanted eyes.

   There, Red and I hid from the war, in the distance were the loud and haunting cries of our fellow soldiers under siege. I was terrified and Red could see it, footsteps were appproaching, were they friend or foe, my thoughts were 'would they see ME', god I sound so selfish. What about Red? They were coming from all sides. I thought I was going to die as the enemy soldier's tread carefully all around us. I watched holding my breath, for how long I don't know. I waited for the closest soldier to me to mover far enough out of ear shot to take a breath but I couldn't breath, I gasped for air, he heard me but hadn't spotted me.

   He signalled for his friend to stay and I looked at Reds face to see it as calm as always, he began to say something under his breath that I will never forget.

   Reading his lips he spoke; "we stick together like the bark of this tree, your back is mine and mine yours, and we protect what's ours" as he smiled.

   The soldier that heard me gasp hadn't given up the search and was right on the other side of the thin mud wall, hiding the hole in which i hid, his breath was cold an full of blood lust. He was smaller than me and looked weaker too, but if he found me would I have made it? That devilish person could have ripped me limb from limb if he had got his hands on me, so why did things have to go so wrong!?

   The second soldier spotted Red, I should have warned him, he didn't know but if I said anything the blood thursty killer would have discovered me. I should have nodded to him at least or something but I felt the presence of evil, the soldier beside me. I could only think of myself in that time of fear, I chose myself. The soldier had snuck up on Red he wasn't paying attention. He ... he was watching my back never taking his eyes off the solder beside me, never taking his eyes of him, until he looked at me with a smile giving me the 'OK'. However I had made my decision.

BANG

   "Oh God, God No" Reds smile faded as he looked at my horrified face and slide down the wall until he was sitting, blood pouring from his stomach.

BANG

   Another right throuh the chest. More blood, more blood stained Reds cloths, stained them ... red. Everything was red. The enemy just left him there to die as they heard our reinforcements advance through the trenches, charging our way, with no time to track me down they fled. I ran to him, cradled him in my arms, I begged for forgiveness, for this mistake that fear drove me to. He was so pail, he shivered like a leaf in autumn winds, tears streamed from his distant, sparkling ocean blue eyes, that stared at the sky to land on me. And after all that he began to smile again as he tryed to stop coughing up blood.

   He pulled me closer and began to whisper in my ear "It's not your fault Blue, my time was coming, it's coming, its ... its not your f...fault."

   "But it is, it's all my fault I ... I ...," and he fell limp before I could confess my betray to my one and only friend, his hand fell away from my collar in which he held dearly as death had tried to rip him away from me, laid upon his open chest. The splattering of blood from his mouth was merely a trickle. He laid on the ground peaceful like the autumn leaf had finally been blown off its branch in which it held on to with desperation and had been swept away to its final resting place, in which it was peaceful. Drops of rain began to kiss his cheeks as he laid as pail and peaceful as white snow. I tried to wipe the rain away from his cheeks but it kept falling, I looked up expecting dark clouds but all there were was a painfully beautiful, blue sky that we would once stare at together for hours on end dreaming of our peach tree, but the rain continued to fall from my eyes.