COURIER IN THE BIRD MASK

TRIGGER WARNINGS child death, suicide, abuse, plague, sickness, breakdowns, first person, spouse death, starvation

Day Eight

My dying words.

I often forgot how life outside of the cruel harsh reality of war is. Before the Sand pest— a soft morning light pouring into my room, a gentle orange light filling my eyes. It was a peaceful moment, it was moments like those that made me value this town.

The war— a tsunami of terror, a stench of Death. Their pale faces, covered in dirt and soot and blood and vomit, covering them with hands that were calloused and dry, blisters of blood popping from them, small volcanoes of pain. Men on the trenches, bathing in their own vomit and shit, coughing up their measly meals of stale, mouldy bread and water mixed with urine and mud.

It's exactly the same here— in the Sand Pest. I'm in the hospital, the heart of all evils. The stench of death is loud, everyone's faces covered in tears, snot and blood. They're not in the trenches but they're in beds, doubling over to vomit as the doctors try and fail to fix us. Images of sharp, moulding, decomposing faces with the expressionless faces of dead children haunt my memories, a spector I can't quite ever forget. Faces clear as day, a framed photograph in the museum of my memories, centre stage next to the events of the plague.

I'm old. I don't have long left.

I wish it was all over.

Anatoly.