Strange are the days that I wake to gray before my body meets my mind. Often I find myself back in that foreign land under the tartar yoke and with my heart booming like the distant guns. Around the tent I enter, I still notice that the grass grows brighter where the rain has washed the blood away. Yet for all scattered mangled limbs draped in torn valor inside, there is a peace in the horror here.
Though I know I am asleep, I feel the mask sitting on my face as if it were the first time, uncomfortable and humid. All of it made worse by the constant stream of amputations I must perform, coming from the hills beyond. But this is not what tests the metal of my heart here. It is the dread of this relieved memory. Not the now, but the after of this event. Yet, I am all alone here. No cries of the dying or screams of the wounded. No officers shouting orders to runners for distant battles. Not even the sound of camp rustling was common at night. Just my heart, the distance boom of the guns and the dread of it all.
I exit the tent and see the column of smoke coming from off in the distance behind another set of hills. It is thick and black, spreading its melancholy up to the sky so that it may soon dampen everyone's mood as it does mine. Yet before I can continue in this mixture of memory and dreams, the gray begins to fade away in reality. The feeling of the foreign breeze turns to that of my sheets and the silence is over taken with morning masses. The distant boom stays in my heart though along with the smoke's melancholy memories.
Such an ill omen of future tidings
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The Thoughts of Dr. Otto
Historical FictionDr. Otto Wahr held a reputation of an essentric nature, most often adorened in his plague doctors mask while roaming the wards of St. Martins hospital. While some of his patients called him 'The Good Doctor', most saw what insanity crept behind his...
