Ares’s Glorious Canvas

Warning: this is a very gory, violent, and graphic piece of writing, and some readers may find it disturbing. Please proceed only as one feels is necessary.

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(For full effect, listen to this while reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK6GsRUl4WI)

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September 22, 1917…Ypres Sector…

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“Hold the line!” The captain had his hand cupped around his mouth as he stood atop the dirt mound and pointed behind him, the other soldiers rushing and pressing each other all around below him, and pushing up against me and pressing me so much that my helmet came off.

“Captain, the colonel’s dead!”

“We’ve lost all command!

` “Oh, bloody- Help us!” I was terrified, and I feared for my life, and I was worried that the next thing I would feel was a bullet through my belly, or an explosion against my head. But just then, a little buzz, and a brilliant explosion…Time seemed to freeze.

I was no longer standing on the battlefield, but on the most magnificent, graceful land I have ever been blessed to see. There stood the captain, atop the mound, frozen in time, his legs bent forward as he began to fall from the explosion, and his back bent backwards. His head was thrown back over his shoulders, and his mouth was agape, wrinkles forming about the sides, as he screamed, but to me it looked like he was singing.

His arms were spread out wide, but still held low, and to me it looked like he was dancing, dancing as he sang. His face, twisted in agony, seemed too perfect to exist on this world, and the brilliant, bright burst of fire and metal that radiated around him seemed to place him at the center at the world about. The lucky captain. There he stood, atop his hill, dancing and singing, with the explosion complementing this display.

Oh, what a wonderful masterpiece this was! I saw the ugly, horrid landscape before, in my mind: trees of green. Now, thankfully, there were watch towers, some of them releasing plumes of smoke. Where the trees once held nature’s birds, snakes, and spiders, there were now giant telegraph poles, with the wondrous spiderwebs of thin, black wire stretching from here to the end of the universe, it seemed. The birds were all gone, and instead, the much-more majestic, pristine airplanes roared through the sky, their shadows spelling doom for all underneath them, and the loud grinding of their propellers the most wondrous sound I have ever heard - some of them trailed smoke.

That and the magnificent drums of the shells firing, and exploding! I looked about me: “Fire one!” The lieutenant shouted, like a conductor instructing the musicians how to play their role. And, oh, what talented musicians they are! A loud, deafening bang of those deadly drums, and the shell was fired, the artillery recoiled. “Fire two!…” At each bang, my smile grew wider and wider, for here was paradise!

I imagined the green grass that had been here before. Thankfully, it was all gone now. Instead, there were wonderful fields of dark mud and black ash. The flowers in the grass were gone, replaced by the severed limbs jetting out of the ground - some of them naked - that gave the whole scene just that much more beauty. Though some of those limbs still had bodies attached to them, underneath the mud, and for a brief moment, I wondered if they would grow into trees that would sprout more limbs, like ripe fruit, of pure human agony.

That is all this world needs, I thought, as I smiled and looked about me - at the world that seemed to be in slow motion - only four colors: red, brown, dark green, and black. The captain’s dance up on the hill, as shrapnel still embedded itself in his rigid back, seemed to coincide perfectly and harmoniously with the waltz of the other gentlemen who had the honor to prance about this glorious stage: they ran to and fro, back and forth, some carrying boxes, and some carrying nothing. Some held white, blood-soaked rags to their heads, and others screamed - sang - as they rolled about in the mud, covering their ears.

I watched a true artist, also in slow motion, take a shot through the chest: three perfect shots. And at each one, dark and bright red blood would spray from his back as if in a mist, and it seemed to sparkle under the fire-lit sky, as if they were heavenly particles of purely-divine holy water, never to be disturbed by anything around it.

I admired how all these gentlemen were part of this great symphony - this great canvas - their corpses scattered about the mud, and their blood flowing from the pristine bullet holes and torn flesh and mixing together with the dirty water, and finally running together and gathering until I was sure that I would witness the formation of a river of crimson red. I stepped forward, and reached into the open back of a dead man before me. I ran my fingers upon his wound, and gently streaked it upon my face, eager to participate in this great play that all else seemed to engage in in perfect harmony.

I imagined the blue sky that once inhabited this now-beautiful place. It was replaced with a cloudy, ash-covered and fire-glowing sky. It was the sky with the roaring, buzzing, groaning metal birds that are the airplanes, the ones that shoot at each other and the soldiers down below. The puffy white clouds were replaced with plumes of green-white poisonous gas. Like puffs of gentle wind they gracefully swept across the landscape.

I thought of the strawberry bushes that perhaps may have formerly inhabited what had once been disgusting, lush fields of plant life and forest. Now, the suckers of the strawberrys were replaced by razor-sharp barbed wire that twisted and curled about everything near it, it seemed, suffocating the old ashen stumps of trees long dead and ensaring the actors of this glorious play. It seemed eager to participate and to add its contribution to this canvas, and so it slashed and tore at flesh, spilling blood that decorated this landscape better than any paintbrush could ever achieve,

Then I considered, still smiling with blissful delight, that I am an actor in this as well. I looked down at my rifle, still gripped in my hands, and thought, this is my painting, just as it is everyone else’s. Still smiling with glee, I slowly stepped higher up the mound, ignored by those moving swiftly around me. Rifle in hand, I walked almost mechanically toward enemy lines.

I grinned when my hands were sliced by lush vines of barbed wire, and I nearly laughed as I splashed up puddles of blood and muddy water. Here, some discarded ration tins; there, some abandoned machine parts. The small, wooden farm cottages that may have resided down by the stream sides were long gone. In its place were sturdy, concrete pillboxes.

I smiled as I neared the enemy line. But enemy is such a harsh word, as they are just as much a part of this great spectacle as are we. I smiled as I saw the gentleman point, shouting nervously as he jumped up and down, shaking the other man by the shoulder, and then the other two of the machine gunners frantically swung the gun around, and with a brilliant series of swift drum sounds, I felt the flesh torn from my arms and chest, and I fell backward, into the mud.

I smiled as I drifted away, knowing that my limbs would become flowers, and my blood would add to the blood of countless others to form that beautiful river that I am sure will be. I sighed one last breath of satisfaction as I considered that my grand part in this wondrous play had been executed perfectly. I turned my head as I drifted away, gazing into the blank, terrified eyes of a dead man. I felt like he was my closest brother in that moment. I am happy knowing that I had the privilege to contribute so well to this wondrous, beautiful world…