A Soldier's Remorse - Flash Fiction - So Don't Blink
By hudsonmoon
- 947 reads
This is one from the vaults. I find it odd that it's devoid of any humor. I'm not that somber. But I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.
***
A fingernail moon cut through the clouds, and I felt a pang of sadness well up in my throat, and I began to cry. I cried myself blind. And as I staggered through the cornfield in a drunken haze, I wondered where she was.
I thought I had seen her shadow, and so I ran. I ran as I did in the youthful days of summer - carefree and wild. In those days I embraced a world that sang to me of joy. But it would not be long before I loosened my hold and began a journey walked by countless others. Now I've returned. But she is gone.
I told her the war would last a few months. I would return, and together we would raise children and tend to the farm.
I was gone close to two years. Much of that time spent in a Confederate military stockade in Florence, South Carolina, where brutal doings were carried out by formerly kind hearted souls. Can men who have committed unmentionable cruelties, return home and sing their children to sleep? I may never know.
I didn't know of her death until I returned and saw the headstone. She was buried near the lilacs she had planted when we bought the farm. They were in bloom when I arrived, and it seemed an obscenity having to smell their sensuous fragrance while mourning her death.
I wish myself dead sometimes. An atonement for the blood lust that has caused so much misery.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Really well told. In so few
Really well told. In so few words, you've captured the cruelty of war along with his feelings of standing apart from his actual involvement. I felt his emotion.
- Log in to post comments
Emotive and powerful, Rich.
Emotive and powerful, Rich.
Tina
- Log in to post comments
Hello Rich,
Hello Rich,
Not your usual style but still a very good but sad story well told.
Moya
- Log in to post comments