Are You Proud of Me

The gunfire was silenced soon after the rain began to fall over the trenches of France during the year of 1917. The soldier clenched his gun within shaking hands, waiting to take the shot. He was nervous, afraid. He didn't know what his future had in stores for him when he was drafted. He was far from his safe, dry, comfortable home in upstate New York. But when duty calls, he had to answer. He left his lover behind in a hurry, barely able to get married before he was sent overseas. And now he is here.

Although he was scared, at the same time he seemed to be alright with fighting, after all it was for a good cause, right? He saw it as an opportunity to bring honor to his family name. He would be the first in his family to fight in a conflict and survive to the very end. He hoped to make those back home proud of him when he returned.

The rain poured as the night grew darker, illuminated only by the bright, short flashes of mortars and bombs that began to fall from the sky alongside the rain. The soldier placed a hand on his helmet to hold it securely in place on his head, his rifle in his other hand, as the mortars began to fall closer by. He had never gone through a barrage such as this before. In fact, he had only been out of basic training for less than a month before he was quickly sent onto the battlefield. He was a medic in the American armed forces, so naturally he would be afraid of the mortars more than anyone. If someone were to be struck by a mortar, he was the first to respond.

The mortars fell for what seemed like hours, but was actually just a short few minutes. The soldier was thankful that no one had decided to run out into No-Man's Land and get injured. He relaxed now as the enemy stopped firing their mortars. But what he feared the most was about to happen as he heard the whistles blowing. They were being ordered to march into No-Man's Land and storm the enemy, and he would have to join them.

His heart felt as though it was in his throat as he saw the troops jump over the trench and into No-Man's Land. He mustered what courage he could and climbed out of the trench, following after his comrades, turning his head left and right to see them get gunned down by machine gun fire. He knew his duty was to find only the wounded and not the dead until the battle had ended. He had almost forgotten that he too had to fight before the enemy began to fire it's mortars once more. They had been led into a trap!

The allied forces scattered as the mortars landed all across No-Man's Land, taking out groups of soldiers as the scrambled to get back to the safety of their own trenches. It didn't help that the machine guns were taking out even more of them. As the soldier joined his comrades in a retreat to their own trench, he heard the cries of help behind him. The soldier looked behind him to see a man reach out from the mud, his legs blown off from a mortar round, crying out for help. The soldier, swallowing his fear of death, ran back to save the man, lifting him out of the mud and carrying him on his back, moving as quickly as he could back to the trenches.

When the soldier looked around to see that everyone else had already made it back to the trench and he was all alone out there. His allies, friends, brothers all cried out for him to hurry back to the trench as he carried his fallen comrade back. It didn't take long for the machine gunners to spot them as well as the mortars, a single mortar being fired right on the soldier's position as he made his way closer and closer to the trench. The man he carried had long since gone unconscious and as the soldier had gotten closer to the trench, a few of his comrades told him to throw his comrade to them, which he did.

And in that instant, just seconds after they caught their wounded brother, the mortar fell down, smashing into the ground just inches away from the soldier...

For a moment, all that the soldier could see was white, assuming that the mortar's blast had consumed him. He could hear nothing but a constant ringing in his ears. When his vision returned, he found himself, being dragged into the trench by pale man. When they were safely in the trench again, the soldier looked over himself to see that he was still in one piece. He gave a sigh of relief and looked at the man to thank him. The man stared at the soldier with a grin, the rest of his face shadowed by his helmet. The soldier ignored this and proceeded to thank the man before asking his name. The man, as he was walking away from the soldier, replied quietly "Thanatos".
What an odd name, the soldier thought. But he brushed it off and returned to his duties, checking up on the wounded man he had saved who, when he saw the soldier approaching, asked who he was. The soldier was confused as this man was a part of his own platoon, but brushed it off as amnesia. Seeing that the man was fine, the soldier returned to his duties.

Several years passed before the soldier found himself home again in New York. The soldier, walking up to the door of his home, knocked on the door. He waited patiently until his mother and father answered the door. He smiled at them, asking "are you proud of me?" His parents stared at him confused, as though they had never seen the man before. His father then replied "who are you?" It was as though they didn't even recognize their own son anymore.

Shocked, the soldier left his own home, walking down the street. He didn't walk far before he bumped into another man who had recently come home from the service. The man turned to the soldier and stared at him, giving him a grin as the soldier recognized him immediately at seeing his pale skin. Now that he got a better look at his face, it reminded him of a skeleton because of how pale he was. He shook off this thought and struck up a conversation with him, relieved that the man actually knew who he was.

The conversation went normally, usually going along the lines of "what have you been up to after the war?" When the soldier told him what happened to him after the mortar incident, Thanatos laughed. When asked why he was laughing, Thanatos replied with "None of it ever happened. It's time for you to wake up". Then he walked away.

The soldier stood there, thinking about what he said before he started to think about the name Thanatos. He paled as the cold reality hit him as everything he saw turned to black, the humming of machines being the only thing he heard.