House of Rain
Oct. 3rd, 2004 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drcuriosity14:35 : Start writing.
Fiction below:
House of Rain
The metal roof suffered under heavy bombardment - hundreds of impacts each second. It would not be long, now.
The colonel sat wearily, on an old creaky chair and enshrouded in the natural static of downpour, and tried to ignore the dripping on his boot. The operation was, he reflected, quite a simple one. But then, the land in which his forces had to operate was more than complex enough to make up for it.
He and his troops had enjoyed the rain when it had first started. It was a welcome respite from the fine, choking dust - dust that would turn your lungs to fire and tongue to dry sandpaper in a breath. However, that dust had long since fallen to dirt, and that dirt had become mud, and now it threatened to become a quagmire.
And so it comes to this, he mused. Those thousands who fight for millions, supported by technology centuries or even millennia in the making. Those responsible for their lives and deaths find themselves sheltering in a small shanties like this, with nature itself as their worst foe. The smell of damp uniforms in their nostrils and a glorious, patriotic soundtrack of staccato drips hitting muddy steel-capped boots. The world outside seen through panes of glass and a vertical blur of water. Glass cracked five minutes or fifty years ago; it mattered not.
They had made good ground in the first few days of rain. Visibility for the human eye had fallen dramatically, but the superior technology of his forces had given them the edge. In modern warfare, seconds can mean a difference of hundreds of lives. Timing was a good subset of everything. However as the operation continued into the rain, the heaviness of his vehicles and the equipment of the troops themselves had become their own worst enemy. What little advantage their technology had brought them earlier had given way to a lack of mobility. Their opponents knew the land well, knew better how to avoid its hazards, and were catching up in their movements, supply lines and intelligence. They were losing time, fast.
Again he wondered if this kind of work was made easier or harder by belief in a god. Sending so many to die, that each might reach their heavenly paradise, hellish punishment or eternal oblivion. Doing one man's good, and another's ill.
It was not a thought that comforted him.
There was a knock on the door. It was time. For a moment he wished that it were some partisan, some enemy who'd sneaked past the perimeter under the cover of this damned rain to put an end to his life - an end, so that some other have to step up and make the hard decisions that lay in the hours ahead. That moment was soon disappointed, and he pushed it away.
The door to the shelter opened and a soldier walked in, his silhouette wreathed first by a halo of spattering raindrops bouncing off his coat and then dribbling trickles, as he passed inside. He saluted and spoke, a puff of warm condensation rising from the air filters in his mask.
"All teams checked out and standing by. We're ready when you are, Sir."
The colonel rose from his creaky chair; slowly, like a man many decades older.
There was a good chance, he decided, that he was soon about to find out on the topic of gods, one way or the other.
The weary man gathered himself, became The Colonel, and walked out to face the rain.
15:20 : Spellcheck.
15:24 : Proofreading and flow-checking.
15:31 : Finished draft, for now.
15:34 : Named. Awaiting possible feedback from the general populace, and later reflection.
Recommended soundtrack choices:
Graeme Revell - Rain Forever
The The - Sweet Bird of Truth
Mussolini Headkick - War Drum
Stromkern - Melt
Front 242 - Gripped by Fear
Somatic Responses - Û
Vein Cage vs Mercy Cage - Defeat + [2k-2K]indaCage
The Merry Thoughts - House of Rain
Fiction below:
House of Rain
The metal roof suffered under heavy bombardment - hundreds of impacts each second. It would not be long, now.
The colonel sat wearily, on an old creaky chair and enshrouded in the natural static of downpour, and tried to ignore the dripping on his boot. The operation was, he reflected, quite a simple one. But then, the land in which his forces had to operate was more than complex enough to make up for it.
He and his troops had enjoyed the rain when it had first started. It was a welcome respite from the fine, choking dust - dust that would turn your lungs to fire and tongue to dry sandpaper in a breath. However, that dust had long since fallen to dirt, and that dirt had become mud, and now it threatened to become a quagmire.
And so it comes to this, he mused. Those thousands who fight for millions, supported by technology centuries or even millennia in the making. Those responsible for their lives and deaths find themselves sheltering in a small shanties like this, with nature itself as their worst foe. The smell of damp uniforms in their nostrils and a glorious, patriotic soundtrack of staccato drips hitting muddy steel-capped boots. The world outside seen through panes of glass and a vertical blur of water. Glass cracked five minutes or fifty years ago; it mattered not.
They had made good ground in the first few days of rain. Visibility for the human eye had fallen dramatically, but the superior technology of his forces had given them the edge. In modern warfare, seconds can mean a difference of hundreds of lives. Timing was a good subset of everything. However as the operation continued into the rain, the heaviness of his vehicles and the equipment of the troops themselves had become their own worst enemy. What little advantage their technology had brought them earlier had given way to a lack of mobility. Their opponents knew the land well, knew better how to avoid its hazards, and were catching up in their movements, supply lines and intelligence. They were losing time, fast.
Again he wondered if this kind of work was made easier or harder by belief in a god. Sending so many to die, that each might reach their heavenly paradise, hellish punishment or eternal oblivion. Doing one man's good, and another's ill.
It was not a thought that comforted him.
There was a knock on the door. It was time. For a moment he wished that it were some partisan, some enemy who'd sneaked past the perimeter under the cover of this damned rain to put an end to his life - an end, so that some other have to step up and make the hard decisions that lay in the hours ahead. That moment was soon disappointed, and he pushed it away.
The door to the shelter opened and a soldier walked in, his silhouette wreathed first by a halo of spattering raindrops bouncing off his coat and then dribbling trickles, as he passed inside. He saluted and spoke, a puff of warm condensation rising from the air filters in his mask.
"All teams checked out and standing by. We're ready when you are, Sir."
The colonel rose from his creaky chair; slowly, like a man many decades older.
There was a good chance, he decided, that he was soon about to find out on the topic of gods, one way or the other.
The weary man gathered himself, became The Colonel, and walked out to face the rain.
15:20 : Spellcheck.
15:24 : Proofreading and flow-checking.
15:31 : Finished draft, for now.
15:34 : Named. Awaiting possible feedback from the general populace, and later reflection.
Recommended soundtrack choices:
Graeme Revell - Rain Forever
The The - Sweet Bird of Truth
Mussolini Headkick - War Drum
Stromkern - Melt
Front 242 - Gripped by Fear
Somatic Responses - Û
Vein Cage vs Mercy Cage - Defeat + [2k-2K]indaCage
The Merry Thoughts - House of Rain
