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He had been shot, straight through the chest.
We had been wading through water-logged fields since sunrise. The sky loomed above through the clouds of pagan-black, sending a staccato of rain upon the sodden ground. The rain almost matched the distant tones of heavy artillery. A blackened roar of thunder filled the heavens as we made our way into the village square.
Scattered across the ground were pieces of furniture, remnants of what once was. There were only a few buildings left that hadn’t been destroyed, however, scouting out the village was our only option. Gun raised in front of me, we entered the square hesitant, straining our senses to detect danger. A car had been left there which I managed to crouch behind. Not even having time to fully survey the area, my friend collapsed to the ground.
He had been shot, straight through the chest.
From where I was stationed, it looked like he was pointing into oblivion. The shot echoed throughout the square from the cruel and vindictive barrel of the gun. In the blink of an eye, he collapsed forward under the pressure of his own weight. His body hit the keys of a discarded piano, which emitted a hellish pizzicato, then he fell to the centre of the square. His arm stretched out, desperately trying to grasp the piano to reposition himself. Another mismatched chord was played, his hands gripping at the keys, a study in futility.
I looked around frantically from the corner of the car, trying desperately to understand where the shot came from. From how he had fallen, and the direction from where the gunshot hit, it appeared to come from near a bell tower. Parts of the ghostly-grey slate tiles on the roof had been stripped away, left in a collage amongst the pile of rubble underneath. The walls of the bell tower were etched and scarred permanently by shellfire, yet another victim of war.
A place that was once overflowing with light and colours; the sunrise yellows, the brightest reds, the most vivid greens. Once a place bursting at the seams with the life of a community, now desolate, bleak, silent. A town previously exuding a joyful symphony of fraternity and benevolence, now a flat, deafening soundscape, with the undertones of warfare somewhere in the distance.
In the distance was an abandoned cart, a portrait of fear and neglect, the spokes of the wheels highlighted in ashen-grey against the rustling shutters of a café, its body a mahogany brown, washed out and weather-beaten from months of disuse.
Suddenly, I had a vision of the last time I felt so frightened. The night that my brother had played in the local theatres play. I was only young. Once it had finished and he came on stage for the final bow, I saw the proud grin on his face falter. Our father. He had seen the disapproving glare on his face from the entrance door to the audience stalls. My brother’s friends and I waited for him to join us. He came out, all of us whooping and cheering for him, before my father grabbed me and my brother by the shoulders. I remember the boo’s and concerned questions of his friends. The silent drive back. My mother’s instructions for me to stay in my room. The shouting reverberating throughout the whole house. The creaking of the floorboards outside my room. I followed him shortly after that. He was in our father’s study, gazing out the window, pistol held shakily in his hand pressing against his temple – my stomach sank. The shot pierced through the air, ringing in my ears whilst his body fell to the floor. The last thing I remember seeing was the blooms and runs of his blood staining the oak floorboards as my parent’s moved me out of their way. I felt so guilty; I wish I would’ve stopped him. My brother, cradled in my parent’s arms, gone. And there was nothing I could do.
Now I had the opportunity to actually help. My comrade was no longer bleeding as severely, his crimson blood washed away through the street, leaving a pale pink stain in its wake. But he had stopped moving completely. The only sign of life being the strangled gasps of his breathing, and the rise and fall of his chest. If I didn’t move quickly – because I knew none of my other comrades would – it was certain that he’d be left there, his lifeless body just left in the square, his corpse collected at the end of the war and dumped into one of the many mass graves. His initials etched into stone; his name never remembered. He only needed one person for him to even have a chance at going home and rectifying his life back to normality.
The taste of copper infiltrated my senses as I bit my cheek, gathering up the courage to drag his body back to some false sense of safety.
I couldn’t do it for my brother, and I couldn’t do it for my friend. I was a coward, through and through. I’ll never forgive myself for it.