When I finally came to writing my creative piece for assessment, I did not find it as difficult to come up with a good story within a 2000-word limit. Inspired by Greek Mythology and First World War poetry, I created the following narrative. It was only two marks away from receiving a first, an achievement I am very proud of for a first year English student simply taking a creative writing module as a means of winding down and alleviating stress. I hold this story in very high regard as one of my favourite pieces of writing.
‘We’ll all be home for Christmas, lads,’ the General had said three years ago.
The mud, the rats, the lice, the constant rain – all of it drove the soldier mad with rage whenever he thought about it, and there was rarely a time when he wasn’t thinking about it. Gunfire sounded incessantly all around him, the constant thudding sound boring deep into his brain. He could barely watch as his friends – his brothers – fell to the ground in front of him, never to walk again, systematically murdered by the enemy. Some who fell would be lucky. Perhaps they’d be sent home with a case of shell-shock. Or maybe they’d just be executed for cowardice. Either way, at least they’d be out of this nightmare.
But he kept on going. He played his part as the pawn, just as they wanted him to. He killed the enemy without thinking, barely registering the fact that they, like he, were young men with parents and children. None of them had been told the truth. Delusions of glory and honour had finally been washed away by the rain and mud, and the truth was too dark to even warrant contemplating. Only the war poets dared to speak the truth, and there was one poem the soldier liked in particular. Well, perhaps ‘liked’ was too strong a word, but it summed up his frame of mind perfectly:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!’ The words turned to venom as he mulled them over in his mind. ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ – the person who said that had clearly never been asked to do so.
‘Home for Christmas.’ They were probably right. They just hadn’t specified which Christmas.
As he contemplated this, however, he suddenly realised he had lost his focus – a fatal error. He hardly noticed as he began to keel over, the world turning into a black haze as his vision was clouded by the dust and the smoke of the battle, which hung heavily in the air as though attempting to mask the death and destruction from God’s view. He felt pain shoot throughout his body. He tried to scream, but no sound emerged. He hit the ground with a dull thud, and lay there, paralysed, in agony, feeling the darkness close in all around him.
The soldier woke up some time later. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and was amazed to find, upon examining himself, that he appeared to be totally uninjured. In fact, he couldn’t find any physical damage at all. His legs were completely intact, his knuckles weren’t even so much as grazed, and his breathing – breathing! He couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard he tried, he found he was unable to draw breath into his body. Had his lungs perhaps been punctured? Maybe he wasn’t as undamaged as he had initially thought. He struggled, but it was hopeless. He was going to die anyway, and he knew there was no escape.
This agony continued for several minutes, before he finally registered that something quite unusual was happening. He forced himself to calm down. He had been in a state of panic for a good five minutes and yet, when he placed his hand against his chest, his heart rate had not increased in the slightest. In fact – and this is what disturbed him more than anything – he could feel no heartbeat whatsoever.
He had no heartbeat. He could not breathe and yet he continued to live. He felt numb all over, and his skin was icy to the touch, as if his blood had ceased to pump around his body. Confused, he rose to his feet, and looked around him.
The fighting still raged on, but none of the soldiers who raced past him so much as glanced at him.
It was then that he felt something hit his chest at speed and, looking down, he noticed a large bullet wound had appeared.
But he felt no pain. No blood seeped from the hole. He was astounded. He seemed to be immortal! But how could this be possible? This was the ‘war to end all wars’, not some sort of fairytale. Whatever had happened to him, it was very, very surreal.
At that moment, something, almost like a voice carried on the wind, told him to look to his left; as he did so, he saw, at the bottom of a hill, a river running fast and free. He was sure that river had not been there before. The soldier walked down the hill to investigate and, as he came close to the edge of the water, he saw a tall, thin figure gently rowing a small boat towards him. As he came closer, he noticed that he was in fact a hooded old man, with an ashen face as white as chalk, very few teeth left, an untidy, matted white beard, and a long, hooked nose. He carried a large wooden stick to row the boat with, but he saw he rarely dipped it in the water; the boat simply glided towards him as if of its own free will, seemingly uninfluenced by the rapid flow of the water which would certainly have pulled any Earthly boat away down the river.
The boat stopped just short of the bank, and the man held out a wrinkled, wart-covered hand with long, spidery fingers and dirty, rough fingernails. ‘Come,’ he croaked, in a hoarse voice which was barely a whisper. ‘It is time.’
The soldier didn’t know why he felt so willing to go with the man, but something told him he had to. Something told him that he didn’t have any choice in the matter. He took hold of the man’s hand and stepped timidly into the boat, which automatically began to carry them away down the river, slowly and steadily.
‘What river is this?’ he eventually asked. Then, uncontrollably, all of his questions came flooding out of him. ‘Who are you? What’s happened to me? This river wasn’t here before, was it? Where are you taking me?’
The man held up his hand for silence, and the soldier obeyed. He leant on his stick, thinking, and sizing him up with a pair of small black eyes. Eventually, he spoke.
‘It is called the River Styx,’ he said with pleasure, smiling as he finished speaking the name. ‘My name is Charon, the ferryman. It is my job to take the dead to where they belong.’ As if his last statement did not make it clear what had happened, he continued with ‘you, my friend, have died.’
‘Died?’ He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. He screamed the word at Charon again. ‘Died!?’
‘Yes, died.’ Charon spoke matter-of-factly, as if he felt no sympathy for his situation. ‘Ceased to exist. The breath has left your body. Your spirit comes below with me whilst your body remains above. Do you understand now?’
He could have passed out. It all made sense now. He looked around him, and noticed thousands of men, all of them dressed similarly to him, along the sides of the riverbank.
‘Who are these men?’ he asked of Charon.
‘Those like you,’ was his simple reply. Charon cackled. He beat his staff on the floor of the boat, and he felt the thump as they hit the side of the bank and stopped moving. Charon motioned for the soldier to step off, and he did as he was told.
When he looked back, he noticed Charon had remained on the boat. ‘I can go no further. Hades is through that door.’ He pointed at a pair of large wooden doors which looked as though they concealed the entrance to some sort of temple. ‘Watch out for Cerberus,’ he added. ‘He hasn’t eaten today.’
‘Cerberus?’ he asked, fearfully.
‘A many-headed hound,’ he said, in a tone which suggested he felt this would be common knowledge. ‘Guards the entrance to Hades; makes sure no-one who crosses the Styx returns, that sort of thing.’
It was then that the soldier looked longingly over the water, eyeing up the other side, desperate to return the way by which he had come.
And then he fancied he saw the outline of a little boy on the other side. Yes, he was certain he was there. He was transparent, and seemed to glow in the moonlight, but he was definitely there. He was moving his mouth silently. He strained his ears to listen. He fancied he could just make out one phrase.
‘Daddy, please don’t leave.’
The words tugged at his heartstrings. He knew he had to get back somehow. Charon was leaning on his stick, watching him.
‘You wish to return home?’ He sounded genuinely surprised. He scrutinised him minutely with his beady, black eyes. ‘I sense that you would be willing to do more than most to achieve this goal.’ He smiled: a large, toothless grin. Then he seemed to make up his mind. ‘I can make you a deal, my friend.’ He spoke the words slowly, as though thinking hard about what he was saying. He nodded to show that he was willing to do whatever it took for him to get home to his little boy. Charon thought for a while, before continuing. ‘I have been the ferryman here for fifty years. In that time I have never had a day’s rest. The ferryman can only change if the staff is taken willingly by the new ferryman. I was tricked into doing so. I wanted the boat to go faster; the ferryman at the time told me I should row the boat myself. And, thus, I took his staff but, upon reaching the underworld, I discovered I could never step off the boat. I was bound for all eternity to take doomed souls across the river, and I knew I could never enter the afterlife until someone took the post from me, willingly.
‘Once you have been a ferryman, you receive powers which can never be taken from you. Forever, I shall have the ability to take life... or to give it.’
He knew what the bargain was to be before Charon even spoke the words. ‘You want me to become the new ferryman,’ he said at last.
Charon nodded. ‘Until you are able to find a new volunteer and, once you have done so, I will work my magic to send you home.’
He didn’t have to think twice. He nodded his agreement, and took the staff from Charon. It was cold and wet against the palm of his hand, and try as he might, he found he could not let go once his skin had made contact with it.
Charon stepped off the boat, and smiled. But it was not malicious. He was a man of his word. He looked back at him and, stepping forward quickly, embraced him. ‘Thank you, my good sir.’
He nodded. He felt no sense of grief at the years – or decades – which lay ahead of him. Only joy, for he knew that one day he would be home.
‘Once you have found the next ferryman,’ Charon said, you must follow the tunnel into the underworld. Here you will see two rivers: the right one is the Phlegethon - a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus, which you must not follow under any circumstances, lest you wish to spend eternity in Hades – and the Cocytus on the left. Follow the Cocytus, and you will find a blinding light. Walk into the light, and you will be free. Thank you once again, my friend. I am ever indebted to you for your kindness.’
*
No-one knew how the soldier made it through his injuries. But made it he did, and it wasn’t long after that he was stepping off the train once again, and smelling the fresh country air of his homeland.
And it was then that he heard the cry of a child. But it was a different sound to all he had heard the past three years. This wasn’t a cry of pain. This wasn’t even a cry of anger.
It was a cry of joy.
He turned towards the sound, and his face lit up in a wide grin when he saw where it had come from. At the other end of the platform stood a tall woman, grinning with happiness at the sight of him and, running towards him, the source of the noise, was a little boy. The boy ran into his arms, weeping, and screaming ‘thank you for coming home.’
The soldier never spoke of his experiences that day. He lived to ripe old age and died, peacefully, in his bed, surrounded by his family. It was said that in his final moment, he would look towards the open window of his bedroom, smile, and raise a hand in acknowledgement of the presence of someone he clearly recognised.
His final words were, ‘it is good to see you again, Charon, my friend.’
2010
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