Like a beast in the night, the sky churned. A vast oblivion ceased only by the illuminating barrage of gunfire firing in the distance. The blanket of darkness punctured by the sharp flares of war, sparking like embers in a hearth. Flames painting the abyss of black that swallowed the land whole, as if they were matches drawn along the abrasive trail of suffering and ignited in the perpetual shadows that controlled the godforsaken place.
But through the eyes of a man teetering on the precarious line between life and death, they looked like the tails of fireflies. Fluttering around in the open English countryside, with a degree of freedom that not even the strongest men knew. Mere flickers of light, sharp orange but dwindling in sight, like peering through a kaleidoscope and witnessing the world lit ablaze.
The sky rumbled fiercely above him, like thunder rattling the heavens until each and every mighty golden gate came tumbling down. Soil sprayed the Earth like heavy torrents streaming down from the long-lost salvation above, raining down a top the mud saturated by the moisture seeping into the dirt. Droplets in free fall, bathing Flanders Fields in a downpour of crimson not soon to be washed away and forgotten.
It wasn't bound to dry out in the first evidence of light to grace the war-torn land, disappearing like the rains had never flooded the country and soddened their steps. It lingered beyond its rightful time, clinging to the surface until all sights were altered by its harsh crimson shade, stained by a red that made sure what was once there would never be the same again.
For even the umber Earth, toiled and formed into trenches above their heads, looked different when the blood of the fallen glazed the walls and collected in the treads of their worn boots.
The battlefield in front of them, looked as though the moon shining high above had been glazed in the blood of the fallen. A reddened hue altering the vision of each and every man that stormed past disjointed limbs and bodies limp with bullet holes ripping apart their flesh, until nothing more than bone lay visible in the grass.
Memories were bathed in the shades of an all-consuming scarlet, like the very letters that would never be sent by those sprawled with their last breath over the fields of France.
It gripped to the weary minds that were holding on by a fragile thread, tugging the rope with every body they dragged back with their own two hands, the sights of the innocent cementing in carmine on their conscience. Comrades, whose presence would fade with the settling smoke, and boys disguised in the flesh of men they hadn't a chance to be.
But it was the blood coating the flesh of the living that could never be cleansed. The basins of rainwater dyed by those looking to erase the evidence of bloodshed seeping into the lines of their palms, fingernails caked, and cuticles torn. Knuckles stained until they could no longer discern whether it be the blood of a soldier or the bruises yet to heal from their fists.
The weight of the blood, warm as it oozed from the bodies plunged with their bullets and blades, but numbingly cold when it set and dried, never became alleviated. It loitered long after the last trace of red had been wiped off from dirty rags and smudged on uniforms no longer the color they were when they'd started.
For it clung to the bones beneath the surface of scarred flesh and torn tissue, like rust eating away at metal pipes, it buried itself within the foundation and eroded away what resided.
The rains could surely wash away the fallen tears, shed deep in the darkness, but it could never touch the blood branded onto the souls of the men who fought.
Beneath tired eyes and lids that weighed down upon them like they were laden with pure lead, the world slowly seeped back to Thomas Shelby.
A gradual immersion back into the reality that had abandoned him, creeping back through the blood in his veins and slowly drawing the sound of his surroundings back to his senses.
