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I no longer remember what it was like before.
The trench is not merely earth and timber- it is a tomb, a wound carved into the soil, festering with damp and decay.
The air hangs thick, a vapor of rot and cordite, pressing against my lungs until each breath feels borrowed.
The walls glisten with moisture, yet I swear the sheen is not water but some viscous ichor, seeping from the bowels of the earth herself.
Tears shed by the ground for every fire we force upon it.
At night, when the bombardments cease, silence reigns- but it is not empty.
It hums, it whispers, it breathes.
I have pressed my ear to the sodden planks and heard voices- low, guttural.
Not of men but of something older, something that is never full, something that is never not tired.
I remember when corporal vanished three nights past.
His lantern was fount guttering in the mud, it's flame trembling as though in terror.
We followed his prints, but they did not lead forward nor back- they descended.
Downward, into the soil, as though the earth had swallowed him whole.
I tell myself it is madness, that the war gnaws at the mind as rats gnaw at the dead.
Yest the more I deny it, the more I feel the ground shifting beneath me, beckoning me downward.
The trench is not a refuge- it is a mouth.
And we, the soldiers, are not its occupants- but its offerings.
When I close my eyes, I see faces in the mud- eyes wide, lips moving soundlessly.
They are not strangers.
They are men I have known, men who should be rotting far, far from here.
They call to me, they pull at me, tug at my Pershing's.
But I am never drawn near.
The whispers grow louder each night.
I stare at the faces as they stare back, blinking, driving me mad.
Why must they stare when I had no part in their sorrow?
Why must the earth let their bodies resurface- only to torment me, the man who fought beside them?
Hours pass beneath the moon's pale gaze.
The murmurs swell until they drown the silence.
I beg the faces to return to the depths, but they linger.
And when the sun rises, the thunder resumes.
Pounding overhead.
When will it ever be quiet?
I no longer trust the men beside me.
Their faces blue in the dim light, features shifting like clay.
Sometimes I hear them whisper my name, though their lips do not move.
Other times, they stare too long, as if waiting for me to faulter.
In the half-light, I see them not as men at all but the trench itself- eyes opening in the mud, mouths gaping in the miry walls.
Helmets protrude like stones, limbs tangled in roots, yet they move, they breathe.
When I blink, they are soldiers again, hollow-eyed.
Dreary.
When I blink once more, they are swallowed, pressed into the soil, their faces smeared across the damp timber like grotesque frescoes.
Becoming the mud-men I've seen for days on end.
When will this damned hell end?
I cannot tell where the living end and the dead begin.
Perhaps there is no difference.
Perhaps we are all already part of the trench, our bodies merely waiting to be claimed.
Each time I reach out to touch a comrade's shoulder, my hand sinks deeper than it should.
As though flesh has given to loam.
They do not flinch.
They only watch, patient, expectant.
Why so expectant of my arrival?
I have a family awaiting my return.
I am just a doughboy, no different from the countless others before and after me.
Yet Gaea is cruel.
Each day, the cycle resumes- my own Pandora's box.
Open, close.
Open, close.
And with each opening, more monsters crawl forth.
Every day, more soldiers vanish.
Deeper into the mud where they once stood tall, leaving only shadows and faces engraved in the walls.
I ask myself why I see such things.
Am I truly mad?
Others seem untouched, unbothered.
When I speak of the faces, they only blink at me, unfazed.
But why?
Am I the only one cursed to see the trench for what it is?
The voices will not stop.
They claw at me, gnaw at me, scrape their teeth against my skull.
The mud-men blink and blink, their eyes wet and endless, their mouths moving without sound.
I cannot breathe without them filling my lungs.
I cannot close my eyes without their faces pressing against the dark.
I begged them to leave me.
I shouted, I struck the walls, I tore at the planks until my nails bled.
Still they stared.
Still they whispered.
Still they waited.
The trench is too narrow.
Too tight.
Too loud.
I must get out.
I must get away.
No man's land yawns before me- open, empty, screaming with fire.
But it is cleaner than here.
It is quieter than here.
The mud-men cannot follow me there.
The voices cannot crawl across the wire.
The mud grasps my boots- but I climb up the ladder.
Escaping the grip of my own personal torment.
The grip of the damned mud-men.
Watching.
Blinking.
My hands shake, my breath catches, but I climb.
The guns thunder, the sky splits, the earth convulses.
I laugh.
I laugh because at last I am free of the trench's mouth.
I run.
I run until the voices fade, I tun until the faces blur, until my lungs choke on smoke.
And when the fire finds me, when the soil rises to swallow me whole, I welcome it.
Not for peace, only for silence.
Perhaps, I have joined the mud-men.
For now it is silent, forever silent at last.