A Victory

A Victory
By Scott Morris

She is everything.
Her smile.
Her touch.
Her presence brings the most ecstatic of emotions to my soul.
She speaks "I love you."
And her smile makes everything perfect.

Bang.
A grenade explodes.
I am welcomed back to the present.
The rifle in my hands tells me where I am.
I reload.
This place is cold.
My hands go numb.
Hail pounds down on this fatigued body of mine.
I tell my legs to keep moving.
The cannon I'm holding weighs a ton.
My body hits the snow covered ground.
This is not my fate.
This is not the end.
I force my muscles to keep going.
They do so, reluctantly.
The sounds of death are close.
Meters away.
But I keep moving.
Despite it all, I keep moving.
This motive of mine is beyond persistent.
It eats away at me.
Gives me this gun.
Puts me in this hell.
And tells me to turn around.
I let out a roar.
And become a savage.
Something I know all too well.
I slam back the trigger of my death machine,
Releasing my spirit's fury upon the enemy.
I advance into a wall of bullets.
The pain of the present gives me all the more reason to fight.
In hope of returning.
She is everything.

I deliver death.
Efficiently.
I am nothing more than a brute.
Bodies rain down on the tundra terrain.
I raid the corpses for ammo.
The beast within lies dormant once again.
Without giving them the mercy they deserve, I summon my aching muscles to carry on.
Once again I force an onward sprint.

She told me that I would never be without her.
That her love would follow me to the farthest reaches of hell.
I challenge that love now.
And it remains intact.
It always does.

My foot hits the hard ground once again.
The cloud covered sky has begun it's transformation into darkness.
Bang.
I sprawl myself down with great force.
The cold, hard surface rips at me.
The sounds of death.
At a distance.
A faint reminder that I have not escaped.
I shuffle forward.
There's cover ahead.
The ice tries to blind me, but only succeeds in blurring my vision.
My mind says stay.
But something inside me tells me different.
And I hammer more lead into the air.
The smell of corpses makes me cough as I run by.
Give me warmth.
Give me her.
A bullet tears through my shoulder.
Only a kilometer now.
I increase my speed.
Less than a kilometer.
Another bullet in the shin.
I try not to scream, but I do.
The machine in my hands is useless.
I tackle the man that's caused my right leg to give out.
His gun works just fine.
Reinforcements.
I react just quick enough to use him as a body shield.
Somehow I thought that would work.
Another bullet, licks my scalp.
I see spots.
Doesn't stop me from emptying the magazine.
I fall.
Alone I lay in the cold.
Surrounded by death.
Death I caused.
I have no more fight in me.
That is for sure.
The only question I have is, do they have any fight left?
I assume they do.
And that thought empowers me to lift.
Unarmed?
I think not.
The untouched pistol on in the snow will do just fine.
I wrap my wound.

Half a kilometer now.
The longest distance I've ever encountered.
I lose sight in my left eye.
The majority of my body goes numb.
I have motive.
And with that I find a way.
A way to her.

I take my last step.
Not because I've reached my destination.
Because one of those bastards lived.
Because he put a bullet in my skull.
I drop to my knees.
He continues to fire.
I begin to die.
And as the darkness of life becomes light of death,
I have reached my goal.
At last, I've reached her.
She holds me, and I hold her back.
Heaven.
She is everything.