No Bravery | dunkirk au

Domestic Pressures

September 10th, 1943.

That morning, Alex woke with a start. 

His eyes opened wide. For a few seconds, all he could see was blinding light, and he felt his pupils restrict because of it. 

He had his mouth wide open, suddendly grasping for air as if he had been slowly suffocating for days on end. 

His mind was blank, nothing and everything on it, all at the same time. He tried so hard to remember, to recall to his mind what had happened, but it would've been a little hard if he couldn't see anything. 

Breathing heavily - feeling his whole chest constrict and explode while doing so - he closed his eyes, counting to ten - he was surprised he still remembered the numbers' correct order. 

Then, he slowly opened his eyes again. 

It was slightly better now, he could see a number of blotches in front of his eyes. It wasn't enough. 

So he closed his eyes and reopened them again, and again, and again. 

He didn't know it, yet, but he was getting rid of tears. 

At a certain point, he was able to make out shapes, and what he saw confused him even more. 

The last thing he remembered was Tommy. Running. And bombs.

TOMMY. 

Oh my God, Tommy. Where was Tommy? 

Alex was pretty sure Tommy had died. 

How couldn't he? Alex should've been dead too. 

Maybe he was dead, and this was the afterlife. 

Thinking about it, he should've been to Hell. But so far, he didn't feel flames nor anything he had ever heard about in all the Sunday's functions he had attended with his family. 

Wasn't there supposed to be flames? 

Instead, what his tears filled eyes were seeing were something that resembled a ceiling. 

He blinked a couple more times, before realizing he was in the dark, and no matter how much he blinked, he couldn't distinguish anything else but shapes. 

He tried to listen to what was around him. Maybe the noises would've helped him understand where he was. 

But the place was deadly silent. All he could hear was the loud blank noise in his head, and what he thought was his own breathing. 

So far, Hell had been weird and disappointing. 

In the full on silence, at a certain point, something caught his attention: noises. 

He narrowed his eyes, trying to force his brain to decipher what the noise was, and after three or four attempts, his brain did decide to cooperate, and what he heard scared him. 

Footsteps. Clicking footsteps approaching wherever he was. Did the devil's feet clicked? Did the priest ever mentioned it in his weekly lectures. 

Then the clicking noise stopped. A creaking noise invaded his ears and it felt so close. The clicking noises started again, and they were closer than they had ever been. They didn't last long. A louder clacking noise. Clicking noise again. 

And then Alex was invested by a beam of light, so strong he had to close his eyes. 

For a split second he thought it'd be the oh-so-anticipated hellflames. 

But when he was sure that no flames were actually touching his body, he opened his eyes. 

And what he saw around him confused him even more.