Part 6
341 Words
SIX
Yun stared at the blank piece of parchment, but he didn't see it. Instead, he saw the pale faces of the girls shut in that horse enclosure, blank and awaiting their fate. Or the corpses of their dead men, who died fighting to save them. Died, and failed.
Farmers. Peasants. Not fighters.
Their daughters and wives. Dead now, like their menfolk, he had no doubt.
He rose from his stool and paced the room.
He wished he'd never gone to war. Never killed, never seen the aftermath. Never seen the monsters his brothers became. But it was too late for wishes now. Wishes could not bring back the dead whose vengeful spirits would haunt him until the day he died, and maybe afterwards in hell, too.
How could he glorify the s*******r he'd seen?
Yun didn't have words to describe it, and the pictures in his head would not let him rest.
He plunged the brush into the ink and yanked it out again, splattering the table with black spots. Dried blood, he thought, as he swiped the brush across the page. Dead faces with eyes that stared, dead eyes in living faces, and still he heard their screams. He drew their essence on the paper in stark black lines until there was no pristine paper to soil with the people of his nightmares.
And still it was not enough.
Yun sank to the floor, cradling his head in his hands.
He was a fool, like his father said. A fool to have gone to war, a fool to have come home again.
For one heartsick moment, he wished he was more like his brothers. Capable of revelling in the suffering of others, taking pleasure in causing it.
Then sanity returned.
Yun grabbed the sheets littering the table, crumpling them into a ball against his chest. He pitched the papers into the fire, watching the flames flare up and consume his creations. If only the fire could consume his visions as well. He would welcome hell after death if it could make him forget.
- Writer
