The Projection Room

It was World War I. Georges trudged warily with his fellow soldiers. It was an unforgiving, cold autumn. Their French Army uniforms were barely sufficient against the damp winds and mist. It was a soggy fall twilight. The damp made the cold worse as it chilled clear down to their bones. There was only the smells of decaying leaves and the sound of boots trudging heavily in the thick, heavy mud caking unto their boots.

Georges looked to his left to see the body of a fellow soldier stiff from rigor mortis that had turned an obscene color of pale blue. The dead man’s eyes were blank with a milky haze growing over them, the mouth open and black like the grave awaiting him. Georges looked away and kept moving. He was only mildly hardened to the sight of death by now, but only mildly.

Soon after he passed the fallen soldiers, there was the sound of bullets flying. He instinctively hit the ground. The bullets whizzed past him as they made a banshee cry near his ear. They were followed by the sounds of shells and mortars that started to explode in the mist before him. There was the immediate sound of men crying out and heavy breathing as they tried with all their might to move through the mud. The mud was like little hands holding them back, pulling them down as if complicit with the enemy. The sounds of gunfire, mortar and men’s shouts increased as the final, timid streams of light pierced through the clouds before fading.

Georges got up from the mud and ran as he followed two other fellow soldiers. The three of them continued to dash for cover, but it was too late. Through the mists and mounting darkness, bullets found all three of them.

Georges was lying in the mud on his belly. His helmet had been pushed off his head forcibly. He touched his head and looked at his hand to see his own blood. Only then did it dawn on him that he had been shot. He couldn’t even recall how he had ended up in the mud on his belly. He couldn’t remember how he got there. Time for him seemed to have changed, moving forward in fits and spurts. One of the other soldiers was face down in the mud; he was already dead. The other was slumped against a tree stump. Sights and sounds momentarily blended together and moved in spasms till they flowed back to normalcy again.

He looked for the other two he had walked and finally ran with during the battle. The one slumped against the tree stump was bleeding heavily from his chest, breathing his last.

The shock was subsiding and Georges was aware of the pain. He narrowed his eyes from the agony. He strained in an effort to try to pinpoint and focus his vision at movement up ahead. At first he thought it was German troops, but there wasn‘t the universal movement of urgency and stealth common to soldiers. Rather he suddenly noticed that it seemed to be two peasant men forming out of the very mists themselves. They seemed unaware, unconcerned about the violence and chaos around them. They were unflinching, steadfast, almost casual to the bursts of firearms and mortar explosions around them.

Georges watched them, his curiosity outweighed his dizziness and pain in these moments. Both were modestly dressed like peasants or poor farmers. Both had crude cloth satchels at their sides. One had a cruel, hungry grimace on his face. His cold, blue eyes were large, yet the irises seemed far too small for the rest of the eye, which were set deeply into cavernous orbital bones. The eyes were set unnaturally close to one another adding a more predatory look. They hungrily scanned the horizon with quick, jerky movement. His features were pointed and sharp, giving him an overall reptilian, cruel look. Thin, wispy, dirty blond hair swept over and around his head when the damp wind chose to move it. Georges watched, but had enough of his faculties to feign death as this man looked in his direction. Georges acted like hiding prey, keenly aware there was the air of a merciless, hungry predator about him.

He overlooked Georges, and walked past him. Instead he approached the fallen soldier that was slumped over and poked him like a cruel child would a pained, helpless small animal. He bent over to look into the man’s face. The soldier was not yet dead. This dying soldier looked into the eyes of the cruel one. Immediately the soldier started to scream. Soon afterwards, his eyes went empty. He was dead. The cruel one placed his hand over the man’s face. A stream of vapor was drawn out of the dead man’s mouth, and seemingly collected by the cruel one. He held the vapor in one hand as he opened the cloth satchel. There was a deep abiding darkness that absorbed all light in that satchel. He placed the ball of vapor into the darkness, closed the cover and moved on.

The other was dressed in almost the same manner, but Georges read something entirely different in him. His features were rounded, thick and strong instead of thin and sharp. His face was oval with eyes that were brown, calm and clear. Auburn hair swirled about his features from time to time. His jaw had a determined set to it as his eyes scanned the same horizon as his companion. He too seemed like he was seeking something much like the first man. But he didn’t seem as much to be hunting as looking for a lost child or beloved pet.

The other man approached the second fallen soldier. He turned him gently over, and look sympathetically into his dead face and eyes.

He also drew out a vapor from the dead man, but when he opened his satchel, there was a distant light emanating from within it. This other man placed the vapor into his satchel and moved on.

The dead man’s face momentarily flashed a look of peace before the pallor of death continued to grow over it. The other moved on, seeming to follow his companion. But before he did, he locked eyes with Georges, who wasn’t able to feign death as quickly this time.

Instantly, almost as if the latter had spoken to the former, they both looked over to Georges. They seemed almost as surprised that they were detected as Georges was to have gotten their notice. The cruel one looked over and stepped towards Georges, but the other one placed his arm in front of him to block his path. The cruel one looked angrily at his companion, as if to spit venom at him, but impatiently moved on and down the battlefield. It seemed that while they were companions, they weren’t friends, but rather adversaries forced to work together for a common cause.

The other one looked at Georges briefly, knowingly. They lock eyes, but then he moved on too, following his cruel companion. They both looked back at Georges briefly as if to say they’d meet again.

George closed his eyes as he lost consciousness.