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The Field |
| Written by Jacob Garfinkel | |
| Thursday, 15 May 2008 | |
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Share it:      Author's note: This is the first draft of the first story I've ever written so it might suck, but I'd appreciate some feedback
He had spent the night digging the trench, and as the sun peeked up above the pale, cold, mountain range to the east the man too peaked his head over the dirt wall. He looked across the field of softly shifting, golden grass and into the deep dark forest of the unkown. As the sun rose higher in the sky the golden grass began to glitter and the field came to life, but the forest beyond stayed dark and deep. And he waited. A startled dove flew from a tree on the forest outskirts, and as the man peered into the deep he saw another man walk forth with a pistol in his hand. The forest man seemed unaware of the man staring at him from across the field, and instead turned to watch the sunrise, his eyes gleaming with the promise of a new day. The man in the trench stared into those gleaming hopeful eyes and his fingers relaxed, but as his eyes drifted downward he saw that the man was wearing red, and his fingers tightened around his rifle’s trigger as he felt hatred pour through his veins. He took aim at the man across the field, and as the red man slowly turned in his direction he squeezed the trigger and closed his eyes to the massive heat that protruded from his rifle barrel. The red man spasmed and tiny drops of his warm blood covered his face like chicken pox. He jolted backwards, and as he fell his arm raised in the air and involuntarily squeezed off a pistol round into the sky, as if he was uttering with his last breath a curse against the cruel G-d that had filled his mind and soul with empty promises of hopes and dreams and plans for his future, only to have them all wasted here in this lonely field. His comrades heard the shot, and more red men plunged from the forest blackness into the field. And the man and his allies in the trenches shot them down, and as more and more men fell a pale mist arose from the orgy of lifeless, bloody meat the covered the field, and the mist was not dew off the grass but the useless hopes and dreams and fears and concerns of the generation of men that covered the field. By the time the sun was above the field it was over. The dust settled, the pools of blood and human waste were dried by the noon heat, and as the meat began to rot it covered the field in an awful stench. But it was over, there would be peace. And as the man walked among the corpses he saw the dove from earlier fly down and land in the field. And he understood as Noah had, that the symbol of peace is not a dove white as fresh snow, but a mourning dove, pale and gray in remembrance of all those who died for peace today, and a foreshadowing of those who would die for it tomorrow. Copyright 2008 Jacob Garfinkel |
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