Snippets of Writing

15.

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The sniper took long, slow breaths, sitting back on his heels. He looked up at the sky, at twinkling stars shrouded by a thin veil of mist as clouds drifted past the pale moon. His empty rifle clattered to the ground with a dull sound that he did not hear. His brother was dead. His brother was dead, his sweet beautiful brother, and he had died by the sniper's own hand.

The sniper stood up, looking away from the blasphemy that was the sight of his brother's broken body and the blood pooling around it. His sharp eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the alley that he stood in front of, a darkness that seemed to roil and twist like the emotions inside him. He couldn't live with this. Not anymore. Killing soldiers and informants had become easy for him in the last few years. He successfully suppressed his emotions when he had to kill innocents, when his head was filled with children screaming and mothers crying; as he became a reaper walking and his cruel rifle claimed life after life.

The sniper knelt beside his brother's body once more, images of memories flashing through his mind. A woman and a man, laughing together. A man that looked so much like him that the face was almost his. He couldn't do this anymore. The sniper's head fell onto his chest just as his brother's head had fallen to the ground amid the pool of his own poppy-red blood. Amid the screaming in his head, screaming that belonged to him and his brother and his family and the countless people he had killed, the sniper came to a decision.

It was the only logical decision and the only thing he could do anymore that would do the world any more good. The sniper stood and let his empty rifle fall to the ground with a clatter. He pulled something from his pocket without looking at it and gazed at the pale face of his brother. The sky began to grey as morning awoke - he had spent too much time by his brother's body. He had to do something now, when the night was old and morning was creeping its bright tendrils toward the horizon.

The sniper looked at the horizon, then at his brother's face again, then opened his hand to reveal his knife. The well-maintained blade gleamed silver in the faint light of the predawn as he stared at it.

Then in one swift motion, he plunged the knife into his chest and fell to his knees, refusing to let a single sound force its way past his lips.

His blood dripped to the ground and pooled around him, mingling with his brother's cold blood. A bloody sunrise and a bleak morning as the city mourned the night past found the sniper laying facedown on the street beside his brother's body, an arm draped over his brother.

At least this way he would see his brother again.

another extension of classical text featuring figurative language.
freshman year english