Spoiler! :
Three days had passed, slowly, but they had passed. Exhaustion had begun to set in, worming it's way under my skin. I sheltered myself in an old, blown out drainage outlet. It harbored no feeling of embrace from it's miserable concrete walls, but it would be the closest thing to home I would feel for some time.
German shepherds barked off in the distance making me jump in my tattered clothes. The bodies of the fallen surrounded me with eyes frosted open, fixated on me. Steam still rolled off the pile, like startled wraiths vanishing into the night. Guilt laid on their sorrowful eyes, not from the sins of being soldiers, but the creation of dying in shame.
Another hound barked, chasing ghosts back into the shadows. I was certain I would not make it from the hellish ditch, getting shot in the back trying to climb my way out. I could see myself frozen like the rest, immortalized in my last dire moments. I shook the thoughts and focused my mind on staying warm, the night air was just as cold and merciless as my pursuers.
I climbed from my hole in the wall and descended, slipping once on a loose arm. A chill traveled down my limbs, goosing up my skin and creating a static numbness on my fingertips. A light snow had begun to fall, reminding me that it was the wrong time to be squeamish. When I had finally made it to the bottom of the ravine I immediately went amongst the dead. Winter had locked in the stench of this war crime but had done nothing for how foul the air had felt. A heavy sense of urgency had laid about me as I meticulously began to strip the mass grave of anything warm.
I feared finding another living soul in the heap. I could not bare being clutched at from the grave, I had no thoughts on how to help a dying man. Each body I turned over made the idea less realistic as I relieved the dead platoon of their field coats. Every article warmth brought with it a small struggle, wrenching frozen arms to impossible angles.
A thick branch snapped at the head of the ravine just out of sight. My heart leapt in such a way that I could not breathe. I donned one of the jackets, my shaky hands seemed to take eternities, and I fell amongst the fallen. Heavy foot steps crunched in the snow somewhere at the edge of the barren, winter woods. In my last few moments before I thought to be shot to death, I pulled the closest bodies over me in hopes that the dead would help to defend me. Instead of gunfire, a melancholy wail filled my ears. It was a cascade of moans coming from the edge of the forest, and with it a familiarity. The slow mournful note was like a whale song drifting through the hull of a ship. Not the same, but I had heard it before.
I watched from my dreadful cover as the horror came down the hill, slender and pale. Terrified, I couldn't look away as it moved towards the corpse pile with such grace, as if it were dancing. It was a hairless visage of a man with an empty face. It made up for that with a wide fixed grin filled with jagged teeth. No more than a few meters away, a thick odor of rot washed off the horrifying thing's immaculate skin, filling the ravine.
It passed through the ditch, stopping to touch and graze the bodies with long, boney claws before lurching onward. It's touch lingered on one body, a body very close to mine, before it let out another long, mournful cry. My mind filled with decades of despair but I could do nothing to cover my ears.
It began to dig into the man, slinging gore into the fresh snow. I spent what felt like hours watching and listening as bone, organ, and skin was sadistically pulled way. The thing ripped out what looked like the man liver, handling it gently, feeling it as if for defects.
It's grin grew bigger as it caressed it's new treasure. The thing moved on, its jolty, shaky movement seemed almost choreographed. It reached the edge of the drain pipe, and silently pulled itself into the darkness. Once it was far from earshot, I took off through the woods, my captors now the furthest thing in my mind.
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