The Beast and the Prey

A man remembers the war he was once a part of.

1898

A forest of torches and effigies had once surrounded me in the abysmal darkness, redness dripping from the branches. There were nights I woke to the sound of death, and feel blood on my face and hands, wondering if it was mine. Days of silence on the river that caused more anxiety than I’d care to explain. My father once told me there were two sides to every man, the beast and the prey. He told me I should never trust a man who claims to have a singular motive, for there is always another. “If you ever find yourself in the midst of two kinds of beasts, warm to the one with power over the other. You will not survive otherwise,” he said.

    Spiders have woven their webs in my mind for nine years, eating away at anything that resembles sanity. The truth is, I never came back from that expedition in the Congo, and it took years to accept that. I have seen what a man can truly do and become, as well as how far he can fall.

    I do not pretend to be a survivor among those men, for I was more a coward. At eighteen, I was merely a boy during the expedition, unwise to the horrors that awaited me. What a fool I had been, with the excitement I felt when our day arrived, my thrill and drive for adventure. Had I truly learned nothing from my father’s warnings about mankind? Had I not seen how he lost his leg and eye in the Second Anglo-Afghan War?

    On that voyage, the man I despised the most later became the one I respected and admired the most. Henry Stanley, our captain, had been a hard man, showing no vulnerability, and little mercy, even on the darkest days of sickness. The weight of his eyes was the only revealer, for there is no hiding weariness there. I daresay I should consider myself lucky compared to Henry Stanley, he bore the burden of more than I.

    When considering my case, I should say I am guilty of being that which my father warned me of. God, rest his soul, and help him to forgive me.