Being Here by Barry Jonsberg

culminated in a scream that chilled her blood and made her flesh crawl. Silence. And then sobs that soaked through walls, her mother’s soothing murmurs. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Until the night absorbed the dying whispers and she lay down, stared through the window, waited for sleep to creep back, reclaim those it had deserted.
    From Hell.
    The distorting mirror of memory?
    Perhaps.
    All people were stories. This was something the girl understood. It was the fabric of her world. But for the first time in her short life the girl considered this: that when people were gone, gone too were their narratives. Some ghosts might linger in the memories of those left behind, but they are doomed to further fade in time, as all must fade. Thereafter, nothing. She felt the ache of not knowing. She longed to visit the page of his mind and read the story written there. A glimpse into his world , she thought. That would do. That would suffice.
    Across the barn, the shadows thickened and swirled and resolved themselves. It was as if the darkness had taken on life. Slowly the stain coagulated, became a man slumped against the back wall. A wedge of blood and brains was a bouquet against seasoned wood. The top of his head was a ruin. For a moment the girl thought she caught a glimpse of the shadowy outline of a rifle cradled in the arms, a faint glint of steel, the stench of dirt and fear.
    And then the world dissolved.
    A diseased sun bled across a ruined landscape.
    The boy and the girl wandered, unseen, through the nightmare.
    The earth was churned, reduced to mud as far as the eye could see. Only a few trees remained, but they were husks, all branches stripped bare. Nothing green grew or could grow. The world was grey.
    Men lay in a trench cut into the earth. They cradled rifles, heads bowed, muddy water to their knees and waists. Rats scurried through the trenches. A few swam, creating thick ripples. One lifted its muzzle from the chest of a slumped figure, gazed at the girl with blood-red eyes. Its whiskers twitched before it returned to feeding. The girl crouched, ran a hand through the mud. It felt alien, sodden with death and leached of hope.
    The boy took her by the hand, drew her to her feet.
    Each sense was assailed. The whines and screams of shells tore the air. The stink of blood and despair. And too much, far too much for the eyes to comprehend. A shell landing in a group of soldiers stumbling from the trench. A rain of blood and flesh. One man sprawled in mud, smoking. And then his face gone, brains splashed across those who lay beside him.
    The girl tightened her grip on the boy’s hand. They trudged down the line, feet sucked by an earth reluctant to release each step. Within the trench, at intervals, were buried chambers. A soldier emerged blinking from one. There was a whistle in his mouth. He waded through mud, gesturing at the slumped forms of men. Most struggled to their feet. A few broken forms did not. The soldiers attached bayonets to the ends of their rifles. They gathered around rickety ladders set against the trench walls. The man blew his whistle.
    The boy and the girl were surrounded by a crush of humanity. They scrambled up a ladder and saw noman’s-land laid before them. Craters. Embankments of barbed wire. To left and right a silent tide of men flowed from the trench. Some ran, others walked. But all moved forward. For ten seconds, maybe as many as thirty, the trench oozed with the sound of countless boots sucking against mud. The girl glanced back. More men poured over the top. Hundreds, thousands. And shells falling. Always, the shells falling.
    The girl looked for her father. She knew he was there somewhere. But all the men appeared the same. She ran with the tide of soldiers and time froze. Minutes lasted an eternity. Dozens of men surged ahead, their rifles tilted, bayonets forward. Some screamed, though no sound could be heard above the wail of shells and the drumming of enemy fire. Mouths were