Mirrors in the Mud

An exhausted and despairing soldier is navigating the muddy rivers of the labyrinthine trenches of enemy territory, until he comes face to face with someone he never expected to…

Welcome to another corner of Sketches & Storytelling – The Story Sketchbook – a space where I share short bursts of fiction straight from my creative sketchbook. These stories are quick reads, but each one is a snapshot of a bigger world, a character in motion, or a moment that matters.

This one’s a little eerie, a little reflective, and like most things here, it started with a question I couldn’t shake.

Hope you enjoy the read.

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The earth explodes, erupting like a grotesque brown flower into a shower of foul, muddy rain, ending the trench raid.

Blinded and deafened by the blast, Private William Hayes clutches the trench wall for support.

The dampness of relentless rain steals his body heat, and cordite clings to his nostrils like a sickly-sweet perfume, mingled with the putrid stench of death and the earthy odour of mud – a suffocating blend of reek.

Vision clearing, he finds himself in a Dantean nightmare.

Both friend and foe lie sprawled and twisted across the churned earth like seeds scattered from a height. Smoke creeps from the craters of the pockmarked trench.

Ears ringing, William can still hear the distant rumble of artillery as the realisation of his squad’s demise takes hold like a fever.

He’s alone in enemy territory…

***

Panic claws at his throat, and a wave of nausea washes over him. Fear floods his mouth with a metallic taste as the hungry mud threatens to swallow him whole. 

With Herculean strength, William lifts his leaden legs and leads himself along the river of mud and death deeper into the labyrinthine enemy trench.

A plume of acrid smoke floats along aimlessly like a platoon lost to the mud and lacking the ferryman’s fee, forced to wander the banks of the River Styx forevermore.

With smoke-impaired vision, William steps into a crater of churned mud, which immediately attempts to suck him down deeper into the underworld.

As he struggles to pull his foot free from the clutches of Hades, a shadowy figure lunges at him from the darkness of a tunnel and in a panicked reflex, William fires a shot. 

The bullet finds its mark. The figure drops.

The bitter taste of fear is replaced with the sickly flavour of guilt as William frees his foot and makes his way towards the fallen figure, hoping beyond hope that he isn’t dead but fearing the worst.

Almost.

As he rolls the soldier onto his back, it’s his own face he sees looking back at him. 

Lifeless. 

The overwhelming taste in his mouth and his spinning head cause him to empty the frugal contents of his stomach.

This can’t be real.

Eyes filled with tears and ears still ringing from the explosion that ended the trench raid, William stumbles on into the growing darkness.

As he steps out into a clearing of churned mud and smoke, he finds himself back at the explosion site. 

But this time he notices…

The contorted bodies of soldiers scattered across the ground like discarded dolls all have something in common. 

They all have William’s face.

Despair is now establishing a firm grip on him, finding success where the mud had failed, and dragging him down into the abyss.

Fixated and overwhelmed, the slap of a boot hitting a muddy puddle in the tunnel he came from snaps him out of his morbid meditations.

He turns his head to see another shadowy figure emerging.

Not again. 

William throws down his gun, refusing to take another life.

***

As his rifle hits the floor, a gunshot rings out. Looking up, he sees a wisp of smoke escape the barrel of the figure’s rifle to join company with the smoke plume platoon.

Warmth spreads across his chest like bathwater as his shirt turns crimson, and he drops.

The haze of fading consciousness takes hold.

The shadowy figure approaches, and as it kneels down, William gets a clear look at the figure’s face. 

Again, his own face looks back at him. 

This time with a single tear rolling down his cheek.