The Sentence

A Story by Isadora Swift

Monoglogue

As the light dissolves before me, I feel the imminent darkness coming. Its tendrils already smothering the safety that is day, I know what is coming, I know that my confidence and joy are disappearing over the horizon with that sun. It is God’s unmerciful hand that sealed my sentence. He saw the sins that I was once so proud of, he saw the eyes of the fallen, whilst I hid behind the mounds of mud that was supposed to protect me. Not even that could save me from his fury. Vengeance to God alone belongs, Isn’t that what they say? He took his revenge, on me and my fellow compatriots, the men who are plagued by him no more.

I was always so young, so free, so strong, but once I crossed that sea so wild and landed on the ruined soil, my fate was sealed and my life was over.

They never told me the price I would pay; they only told me of the glory I would reap. Well, I got my glory; I got my splendour, a meager, fading, fragment of metal, worth no more than the shirt on my back that pierced into my weathered and ancient hand, as I tried desperately to clutch on to it. It was the one thing that told me I was right, the one thing that told me I had done had been meritorious. On the edge of day, the last of this Summer’s evening melted away, night replaced it, swallowing me into its shadows. It rushes upon me, I thought I was braced and prepared but I knew in my heart I could never prepare for this.

Each day, in the sun’s shadow chasing gaze, I could believe the words. ‘It is in my head’ I would tell myself, but now, stood alone and exposed not even the knowledge of eventual yet distant dawn could calm my howls.

The images flashed by so quickly but I knew the scenes by heart. One brandished two white eyes that swam, from a body shrouded in the writhing in agony and the torments of death. This had been a man I had seen in battle, daring and unyielding, now yet another victim of this damnation. Desperately looking for something, anything. They found nothing, only peace. The next monstrous picture was the searching, petrifying hands of the devils breath that stalked the worn and silent battlefield. As it neared I cried out, franticly attempting to convince myself, ‘Dulce et decorum est. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’ Unknowing whether it was in my hellish dreams or back in that summer’s night. Suddenly its stone cold grip closed around my throat. Squeezing. Choking. Killing. Just as I felt it reach my eyes and the burning commenced, and I could hear what sounded like shell fire in the distance, I was dragged back to reality.

The window in front of me was covered in condensation from my breath but I could still make out my reflection. A little, decrepit, scared old man, standing at his kitchen window, His face full of horror and his body stooped over, no-one would have guessed the hell he had caused. I realised I could still here the noise of the shelling and I stumbled around to see what it was. My dog, my last friend, stood barking at me. Old and frail like me, he was scared; he could see my distress and the burning hate for myself behind my eyes. I bent down to sooth him, my hand reaching out. It was then that I fell, falling, falling towards the floor. I lay there.

My sentence was served, this was my freedom.