That Feeling of Dread - A Short Story

That sick feeling in your stomach. The cloying nausea that sets into motion the swoops and swirls of molten lava in the pit of your belly. It claws its way upwards, setting up shop in the cavity of your chest, no longer does your heart reside there, no that's shrunken in fear, all that is left is the vague pain. It sends tremors down your arms, your fingers shaking uncontrollably.

That feeling of dread. It makes you want to be physically sick.

You know its coming. Lying in wait, somewhere just out of sight, out of your control. There is nothing you can do, and doesn't that just make it worse?

The dread lies heavy in your gut, icy cold and you're always, always aware of it. It spreads, the ice, down into your legs, making you creak, one second away from cracking. Your shrunken heart beats frantically, almost hard enough to break your ribs and burst free of its cage of splintered bone.

There isn't much time left. the wristwatch your father left to you, that was his father's first, ticks away reliably against your hammering pulse, its constancy before today having been calming, solid reliable. Now it makes you worse. The reminder that for all your prayers, your pleading to God and any other deity or force of nature, time will tick on, as it always has and with every forwards movement of the clock hand the closer you come to your annihilation. 

Looking around you can see that (thank gods you're not the only one) every other man around you looks sick to his guts. In fact some of them are being sick. Young lads and old ones, rich men and poor, all are equal in this awful waiting period. 

The rain drives over your skin, dozens of tiny bullets pelting away at you, eating through the flesh to sit, cold and slick into your core. The wind is a razor, cutting you to the quick. You can remember the first time ever you cut yourself with a straight razor. It seems at once both a distant memory and a recent event. Mud sticks to your boots, sucking and sucking, that awful squelching almost hypnotic, whispering promiscuously into your ear, 'let the mud take you, let it suck, squelch, pull you under.' 

Many a man has fallen to their enchanting whispers.

Tick, tick, tick. Your watch reminds you of the short (so short, too short) time you have left. Precious minutes to gather the warmest memories about you, like a protective cloak, to shield you from the frozen rain, the sharp winds, the sucking mud. But all you can think of is how everyone else must be feeling.

Do the other men feel this awful dread? Are they afraid of what awaits us? How could they not be afraid? Which of us will still be standing in 10 minutes?

BANG, BANG, BANG, RRRRRR, RRRRR, RRRRR. 

The crashing of the shells and the growling of the machine guns has been going for so long now that you almost forgot they were there. The thundering cries of explosions have sung you to sleep many a night this past week alone. They've become almost reassuring. A guarantee that if you must suffer, so must they.

"Poor Bastards." Someone mutters. You can't tell who, but think the sentiment an apt one. Whether on this side or theirs. You are all just poor bastards, caught up in something far bigger than yourselves.

You check your watch for something to do, the heavy weight of your rifle on your back brought into sharper focus as the movement of your arm jostles it between your shoulder blades. A minute to go. 

Absently, you instruct the men to affix their bayonets, the great confusion and shuffling exploding around you a good cover for you to not do the same. What would be the point? You're not likely to last long against what's facing you. You don't believe for a moment that the bombardment, for all its noise, has done enough damage. 

You are all going to die. Like cows to a slaughterhouse.

Suddenly everything stops. the shuffling, talking, rustling of the men. The wind dies down. The rain slows. The bombardment stops. 

It's time.

You step up to the ladder, one hand on the rung in front of you, one on the whistle around your neck. You know that every officer along the line will be doing the same. You feel connected to all of them, wish all of them luck. Wish that the men behind you would never have to do this, could just turn around and go home. To their wives, their children, their mothers. You wish the war had never started.

You blow the whistle at exactly 6:03am and go over the top.    

-The Act of Writing-