[Dream | Week 17, Day 1] Dig
Hard metal against hardened earth, soil disintegrating with the force of pulling wet and muddy soil. Lift, pile to the side, splatter. It sounds like flesh being stepped on, slab of meat and bone being dropped on the ground. It's the same sound a body makes when it lands on wet soil, gritty and sticky and slick. It makes that sliding and sloshing noise where a marionette without the strings is forced aside from the brutal blow of fire, lightning, earth and water.
It's everywhere, the rain of limbs. It piles up like a great wall until one thinks it's actually a wall.
Metal on earth. Sole of a foot against metal, pushing it deeper in to the earth; digging. Keeps digging until it's six feet under.
Next:
Toss the shovel aside.
Climb up.
Fisting hands around a pair of forearms, rotting and burnt, ashy to the touch. Soot coats fingers like oil paints. Ash and wet soil, it's hard to tell at this point, which one is which. It's hard to tell if it's even blood at this point. The stink is pungent, acidic, and after a while, when one smells the same thing all the time, one gets used to it. Missing limbs, bone sticking out of flesh, torn skin, empty sockets, guts spilling and coiling from widely gagging abdomens. Lungs and heart, some having chunks ripped off, some burnt to a crisp, some hanging out and some just missing. Some are headless, or skulls resembling a cracked breakfast egg, egg whites and yolks spilling over the sharp edges of the shell.
The dead becomes the air itself just as much as it turns to the earth itself.
It's all you breathe.
It's all you feel.
(Ah, this one. He had two kids. Went on a mission with him once.)
Pull at those arms, push the body in to the dug out grave. Routine. This has been done several times, it's hard to keep track of it now.
Cover. Cover. Cover. Pat the surface. Pat the surface.
Step to the side, about three feet to the left.
(Your fingers are shaking.)
Start again; hard metal against hardened earth, soil disintegrating with the force of pulling wet and muddy soil.
(Hell, you're shaking all over.)
That's another grave dug out. Look up, look to the right; ah, just several thousands more to go. So used to this, that the face you wear is just slack and stagnant expression. The type a receptionist would wear when they go through the humdrum of their very mundane day.
So used to this.
(At least look a little mournful.)
Dig.
Just.
Keep digging.
--
[Iruka wakes up with sharp inhale, eyes snapping open. Holds still for a while, before he sits up, dusty and looking war-worn, bandages and dressing present on his face and temple. Blinks and…
Looks to the side. Sees the Hitomi and sighs. Just sighs. Reaches for it, and the feed cuts off.]