From a Mirror all is clear parts 1-2

From a Mirror All is Clear

Life has rules, winners, and losers, like a game show. However unlike this game show, in life the losers do not just walk away empty handed, or with the home game, no their lucky to walk. But here, now, for once in your life you are going to be given a special scripted encounter. It could be described as the home game, or the consolation prize. Its goal is to show the pride and failure of something oh so not common in this common era. But don’t be surprised if you get more than you wanted.

The sun is setting in its normal spot, and the wind is blowing gently. The breeze creates a cooling effect, which fits in a niche perfectly. The niche made by late, overly warm, summer weather. The heat here is persistently dragging the evening out with its humidity, giving an hour the length of two. You are sure, and remind yourself that any day now the heat will loose its grip, but you make yourself forget that even in the winter, the weather here could just be described as chilly. For a brief moment you catch yourself all most in a jest wondering what this place would look like if it ever did get cold enough. If the sun did get far enough away, and the leaves dry and fall. You are sure that the sight made would make people question the whole hell freezing over cliché. Yes this fictional winter wonderland would be perfect for some creative artist to paint and call it his masterpiece. Just humoring the thought of it moves memories of previous real scenes of home in winter to shame. But unlike your imagination the hot reality of it is that this temperate climate will never loose its sunlight, the trees never will lose their leaves. Even with out the imagination this would be perfect for a brief vacation.

The terrain you stand on is remarkably dry. Its not covered in grass, its one of the only places where you’ve actually seen dry dirt. A majority of the land on this island is covered in tall growing grass. It is the first site here that has been pleasant to both eye and feet. This grass here amused you upon arrival yet now after so long it has outlasted its welcome. The trees also climb high and thick as the grass does, if not thicker. But thankfully they produce the shade with their long thick green leaves, shade that with out it would make the heat here immobilizing. Light on occasion is able to make it through a hole in the canopy. It shoots like a bright beam until it crashes soundless and lies motionless on the ground. Aside from these occasional beams you walk in the shade’s darkness. But with the sun setting, and light becoming impossible unless artificial you will soon be able to cross more open ground.

A group of seven was dropped off on the island with a single mission in mind, with little thoughts of the results other than the light of the tunnel in their minds. You have seen them through all up to this point. The first of your group is a southerner, slow accent, but nice and full of charm. Second was a banker’s son who has aspirations for more than bean counting likes his father. The third was the overly friendly type who tried his damndest to be friends with every person he had ever met, and often made enemies with this drive for friendship. The last remaining three of the group, oddly aside from looks and not being related could have been triplets. All three were descendants of soldiers. Their patriarchs had fought, some had died and from this familiar family background they formed a bond. Each had grown up with an absent father fighting for something. Each had grown up across different towns and territories and called each state they crossed their home. They knew so much about war from their past yet knew little of friendship. War is easier to specialize in. But with their familiar backgrounds they finally found something to bind themselves to another. At meal times or down times if you found one you found the others. Last of the seven is You. You spent time looking at each face trying to remember details just incase. But there were times when your memory’s boundaries, those boundaries that kept the past and present separate, times when they crumbled. You would slip and call one of them another name. A name of someone lost, only found in your memories or in pages of the dead. But your group worked together, like a machine with a purpose even if others had forgotten theirs.

On this small mound of dirt you take a long drought of water from the canteen you filled up five miles back. The memory of that “while back” takes your focus. You had stopped at the creek to fill your canteen and wash the dirt from your face. Your fellows followed you, and did what you did. You looked upon your face in the untroubled water that flowed past you calmly. What you saw troubled you but did not surprise you. In this natural mirror you could see your eyes were deeper set and your face looked a lot older than the last time you saw it. New wrinkles appear where a smile and youth used to keep them at bay. And with this thought back to realizing your body growing older on the outside you begin to wonder about the days and what they brought, how the days affect you, just as this day is starting to end.

Homesickness in this quiet moment grows rampant through you and your traveling group. And in this moment upon finding dry dirt for a moment you think back to a place where the grass is held at bay with people and machines and would never get this high. Where on a day such as this at home you could have watched a baseball game and eaten a hotdog. Maybe even a beer to wash it down, instead of this tasteless water. Or if the wind was just right you could smell some delicious desert cooling from the oven. And in an hour from this exact time you could have sat down with your family, ate a meal and discussed anything that crossed anybody’s mind. Sometimes discussions could get rather hot but people cooled down and nobody left the table until the problem and the dishes was cleared up. Maybe go fishing like every other summer, the lake that is near your home is remarkably blue and even when the fish aren’t biting the fun had is always enough to make you want to stay and not go back home. At home you could have called upon the next door brunette who always called you by that childish name that she will never let you live down. You could have sat on a swing with her and discussed even more local things and concerns or just kiss and hold each other like you had done so many times. So many possibilities of and remembrances of home cross your mind that you could described as absent minded. But in the very near distance out of sight you here whispers on the wind, you almost want to thank the voices for grabbing and pulling you from your memories, memories of a home and time that can never be again. You step back around the tree and motion for others to do the same.

The voice comes closer and soon you see the same number of men as your own group emerge from the thick brush. They are being careful but so far have no reason to expect anyone. Your group had not made a sound and if your group had been as noisy as they had your places would be reversed they would be safely hiding and you would be the noisy bunch pushing into the bush. This noisy group had stopped at where the river and the creek met and refreshed and had just started their movement west again. The man in front and closest to you is the most cautious and had often reminded his fellows to be quieter but they seemed too careless to listen. His face seemed familiar and stuck out more so that you pay little attention to most of the others as they passed. You wait and listen but apparently like yourself this group seems to be alone with no other noise you hope that with there passing and leaving will leave you again safe as one could be in this damnable place. The last person had been the noisiest and possibly the most youngest, But just as he was passing by he caught the sign of a hidden person in the brush and yelled for support from those who had already passed. You wonder how he was able to see what others had not but realizing this was no longer the time for thought. You yell to the others to commence fire and soon the area is filled with gunpowder, and smoke.

The sounds have trouble making it through to your ear, but the only sounds heard are strait out of hell, gunfire resonating, sounds of men fighting, grunting with their movement. Finally the last sounds were groans of dying men. Through out all this you and your men have acted to the best of your training, shooting, ducking and you giving orders. But with a shot to the arm and then leg you fall backwards dropping your gun closely and loose conscience. And with a flash its you twenty years old sitting in that Indiana swing with that same sweetheart that only crosses your mind every second you get that isn’t occupied with regret, remorse, or worry. Any second that is your own, that same girl, who died in your arms only days after this whole incident started, returns to remind you of another life. And with remorse you go through the motions of the dream. You are like a machine yet full of pain and contempt. Deep down you know this isn’t real yet you continue on. This memory of what happens later turns the pleasantness felt into pain as the dream becomes more of a nightmare. Your conscience wins over unconsciousness just when the pain of following through the motions of becomes too much. And as you wake the pain from the dream changes and becomes pain in your limbs. With this great pain pulsing, and now only silence answering your shallow calls for assistance, you raise yourself up, seemingly from the grave.