03/11: Norton
"Drink?"
Norton looked at the flask cradled in the earth stained hand, extended towards him, and for a long period could see nothing beyond the light reflected off the flask's rim opening, a miniature halo exerting an absolute pull over his basest survival instinct.
The moment stretched out, and when the flask shifted, disappearing the ring of light, Norton remembered the hand connected to it, and opened his eyes towards the man standing across from him. Gray eyes returned the gesture while another earth stained hand set about recapping the flask, Norton making out a set of prominent cheekbones, wondering why the man's face appeared shadowed, before noticing the uniform, the helmet, and that they both were standing inside what appeared to be an open tunnel, pieces of wood embedded into one side of the 'wall'. The man's lips were moving, but Norton could hear nothing, his ears replaced by a constant ringing.
He looked up, senses closing a time lag that he wasn't aware of until now, and the most prominent sensation fell to the soles of his boots, where certainty swung back at him, and where he was.
This wasn't a tunnel. It was in a trench.
"Parle Anglais?"
Beyond the roar of shells falling overhead Norton made out the man's words, and raised his voice in answer with a question of his own, when the world went quiet.
"WHERE AM I??!"
Following in the deaf trail of shells and the sudden silence left behind his words sounded like a muffled whisper, and only the expression he wore convinced the man of the weight of his inquiry.
"No need to be ashamed of it," said the man, his expression indifferent, as though he had not heard Norton, and, reversing an earlier decision, began to unscrew the flask instead.
This he brought up to his mouth, arm a tight arch, head tilting back and the flask back by his breast in the next moment. In a move that disturbed Norton beyond all that he had experienced so far he was then offered the drink a second time.
"All's well, you'll see," said the man, a thin moustache along his upper lip, and finally Norton noted that the 'man' could not have been a day over twenty. When he failed to accept the flask it was put away for good. "Wire's cut or it's not, eh?"
The boy was inebriated, and Norton attributed the way he was leaning into the side of the trench behind him to the very same conclusion. He still didn't have any answers.
"Where are we? What's the date?" Showing no sign of having heard him the boy looked ahead to the other side of the wall, Norton noticing then that there were other 'men' lined up against the same side, though none as close as the one beside him, who now, reaching into his uniform produced a tightly folded piece of newspaper, sharp corner directed outwards.
Norton took the paper and unfolded it, distinctly aware that he was the only one volunteering any motion, everyone else seemed to be in a state of abject immobility. His eyes skipped the headlines and immediately went for the upper right hand corner, eyes stuck in a perpetual left right, taking a moment before he realized that it said "29th June, 1916," - when the world exploded around him.
Sound disappeared, the impact from the explosion throwing him off his feet, a heavy pack on his back that he hadn't noticed before carrying him groundwards as the whole trench shook from side to side. A shower of earth rained down from the skies, dirt reaching his eyes and Norton experienced the world as a steady ring, volume tapering gradually with each heartbeat. His vision was a play of motion, and in their immobile state Norton saw that almost everyone else had remained standing, their backs dug into the wall, just like the man who had handed him the folded newspaper.
A new sound was emerging, a ra-ta-ta-ta string played in loop, one round superimposed on another, and then another, repeated ad infinitum to create a wall of sound nowhere close to the scale and intensity of the earlier explosion, though certainly not from want of desire to do so.
Norton had a feeling it wasn't theirs.
No good no good no good, he thought, still staring up at the sky from where he laid, wet earth soaking his own uniform.
From what he could see the sun's gone dim.
His lips moved, but he didn't hear his own word: "My god, they've blown up the sun."
Strong hands reached out and pulled him up, and he saw faces about to run from their skulls, this new sound undoing whatever sense that still held it together. Back on his feet and he was already pushing forward, the men moving, the series of events telling him more than he could care to piece together.
The sound of machine gun fire continued unabated while they waited, but now something new had been added: in its wake was carried the cries of men. In this overbearing moment Norton knew that he was waiting too, but for what he did not know.
He became aware of the acute passage of time, measured in waves of gun fire, pepperred here and there by those same cries that had quickly grown into the background; in an odd way he was almost expecting it. He looked not to the men beside him, nor wondered as to what was passing through their minds, assured just by his being here that it would not be so dissimilar from his own thoughts, just as no one knew at this moment how they had arrived here themselves, nor why, a blank, nameless landscape grew more and more barren by the moment,and before Norton knew it his legs were already carrying him up the walls of the trench, out into the open.
Out into a world for no man.
Norton looked at the flask cradled in the earth stained hand, extended towards him, and for a long period could see nothing beyond the light reflected off the flask's rim opening, a miniature halo exerting an absolute pull over his basest survival instinct.
The moment stretched out, and when the flask shifted, disappearing the ring of light, Norton remembered the hand connected to it, and opened his eyes towards the man standing across from him. Gray eyes returned the gesture while another earth stained hand set about recapping the flask, Norton making out a set of prominent cheekbones, wondering why the man's face appeared shadowed, before noticing the uniform, the helmet, and that they both were standing inside what appeared to be an open tunnel, pieces of wood embedded into one side of the 'wall'. The man's lips were moving, but Norton could hear nothing, his ears replaced by a constant ringing.
He looked up, senses closing a time lag that he wasn't aware of until now, and the most prominent sensation fell to the soles of his boots, where certainty swung back at him, and where he was.
This wasn't a tunnel. It was in a trench.
"Parle Anglais?"
Beyond the roar of shells falling overhead Norton made out the man's words, and raised his voice in answer with a question of his own, when the world went quiet.
"WHERE AM I??!"
Following in the deaf trail of shells and the sudden silence left behind his words sounded like a muffled whisper, and only the expression he wore convinced the man of the weight of his inquiry.
"No need to be ashamed of it," said the man, his expression indifferent, as though he had not heard Norton, and, reversing an earlier decision, began to unscrew the flask instead.
This he brought up to his mouth, arm a tight arch, head tilting back and the flask back by his breast in the next moment. In a move that disturbed Norton beyond all that he had experienced so far he was then offered the drink a second time.
"All's well, you'll see," said the man, a thin moustache along his upper lip, and finally Norton noted that the 'man' could not have been a day over twenty. When he failed to accept the flask it was put away for good. "Wire's cut or it's not, eh?"
The boy was inebriated, and Norton attributed the way he was leaning into the side of the trench behind him to the very same conclusion. He still didn't have any answers.
"Where are we? What's the date?" Showing no sign of having heard him the boy looked ahead to the other side of the wall, Norton noticing then that there were other 'men' lined up against the same side, though none as close as the one beside him, who now, reaching into his uniform produced a tightly folded piece of newspaper, sharp corner directed outwards.
Norton took the paper and unfolded it, distinctly aware that he was the only one volunteering any motion, everyone else seemed to be in a state of abject immobility. His eyes skipped the headlines and immediately went for the upper right hand corner, eyes stuck in a perpetual left right, taking a moment before he realized that it said "29th June, 1916," - when the world exploded around him.
Sound disappeared, the impact from the explosion throwing him off his feet, a heavy pack on his back that he hadn't noticed before carrying him groundwards as the whole trench shook from side to side. A shower of earth rained down from the skies, dirt reaching his eyes and Norton experienced the world as a steady ring, volume tapering gradually with each heartbeat. His vision was a play of motion, and in their immobile state Norton saw that almost everyone else had remained standing, their backs dug into the wall, just like the man who had handed him the folded newspaper.
A new sound was emerging, a ra-ta-ta-ta string played in loop, one round superimposed on another, and then another, repeated ad infinitum to create a wall of sound nowhere close to the scale and intensity of the earlier explosion, though certainly not from want of desire to do so.
Norton had a feeling it wasn't theirs.
No good no good no good, he thought, still staring up at the sky from where he laid, wet earth soaking his own uniform.
From what he could see the sun's gone dim.
His lips moved, but he didn't hear his own word: "My god, they've blown up the sun."
Strong hands reached out and pulled him up, and he saw faces about to run from their skulls, this new sound undoing whatever sense that still held it together. Back on his feet and he was already pushing forward, the men moving, the series of events telling him more than he could care to piece together.
The sound of machine gun fire continued unabated while they waited, but now something new had been added: in its wake was carried the cries of men. In this overbearing moment Norton knew that he was waiting too, but for what he did not know.
He became aware of the acute passage of time, measured in waves of gun fire, pepperred here and there by those same cries that had quickly grown into the background; in an odd way he was almost expecting it. He looked not to the men beside him, nor wondered as to what was passing through their minds, assured just by his being here that it would not be so dissimilar from his own thoughts, just as no one knew at this moment how they had arrived here themselves, nor why, a blank, nameless landscape grew more and more barren by the moment,and before Norton knew it his legs were already carrying him up the walls of the trench, out into the open.
Out into a world for no man.