Black Smoke

This is a short story/description which i wrote when i was bored  one day, tought you might like to take a look. Comments and votes appreciated. Thanks x

The blossoms danced on the wind carried by the feeling of elation and joy the voices around me created. I could not turn. My senses fixed to the floating blossoms from the cherry tree. I recognized this place. My heart seemed to remember it to. The flutter of my heartbeat was like the wings of a humming bird waiting to break free. “Hershel,” a familiar voice whispered from behind me. “Hershel, look at me,” My head would not turn. The blossoms, moving faster now, seemed to be in a hurry, escaping from some hidden predator in the wind.  “Hershel, open your eyes, wake up Hershel, AUFWACHEN!” The voices soft quality changed, to something dark something I knew I feared. Suddenly vultures filled my vision. Tearing the blossoms from the wind. Shouts and screams filled my ears. I opened my eyes, and a dream turned into reality…

Every step I too allowed water to seep into my unforgiving, crippled leather clogs. I could not see ahead of me, only a tapestry of faded blue and white uniforms hanging off starved bodies truding over a heavily eroded path. The clouds scudded across the sky, leaving a trail of sleet and rain, which poured over my limp body.  I passed a maggot-ridden corpse strewn next to the C Barrack. The eye hung loosely from its socket while the intestines became a meal for the creatures that harvested the dead. A wave of nausea overcame me and dragged me with its sharp tallons to the depths of darkness.

The crowd had left me behind. A guard buried his fist into my stomach. I didn’t feel the pain; the memories had of the dead had clouded my brain with a sense of harrowing serenity. I stared into his blue eyes, his blonde hair still in place, the gel holding it together, just as his polished medals and smart uniform must hold his conscience together.. I looked around me. At the piles of dead by the barracks. The striped pajamas blotting the bleak and barren landscape. The fences surrounding us, not trapping us, but trapping the horror of the truth about this place from the world. The barbed wire lined the sky, cutting the landscape into segments. The grass, the hills, and the sky. The landscape is slowly dying, the grass turning yellow, the hills bare, the sky like it has been left to rot, the grey clouds infecting the once blue sky to leave a dark, depressing atmosphere. The evil here is infecting the landscape, turning it sour, death following its wake. Barbed wire cannot keep out all of their secrets

Black smoke rose above me, blotting out my vision like the vultures in my dream. We entered a dimly lit room separated by dark wooden benches. Undernourished bones jabbed at my body like a crude child poking a dead animal with a sharp stick. I could not see, the smell of 2000 unwashed men assaulted my nose. The white skin almost glowed in the dim light like a white corpse against the black of crow’s wings.

    Naked and exposed, I was forced into the bare skin of men around me, suffocating me, crushing me. We crowded into a dim, lurid room. The once white paint was chipped with the endless struggle of the dead, to reveal an infrastructure made up of dank wood and crumbling brick. The room did not look like it could take the pressure of the ever-increasing number of men being crowded into the room, like cattle into the slaughterhouse. The doors shut and fear took over. I was forced against the man next to me in a scramble for the door. The sound of the fists against the prison door was like drums of a marching band, a final farewell. I saw a man crying on the floor, crying out for the dead. I closed my eyes tight, I though of Imah, of Abba, a goodnight kiss, their arms enveloping me. “Hershel, you are going to die” Her voice filled my head as I saw the blossoms in the wind.  I felt myself being crushed by the gradually increasing pile of bodies. “Hershel turn around, it’s okay now, look at me honey” As I felt life leave I turned my head and saw Abba and Imah in the distance. As I ran to my mother her arms enveloped me, their warmth evaporating the weight on my shoulders, leaving no room for bad. “It’s okay now Hershel.”