Hiya ppl. Newbie to the big, bad world. Review please.

by **Blood** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:34 am

The blood. It would'nt come off.

I was scrubbing more frantically now. I was rubbing my hands raw, and yet the blood wouldnt go away. I was mixing my own blood into it now. My chaffed hands had ruptured and the blood flowed.

Yet nothing seemed to wash the redness away. I was sure it was eating me, my flesh was being consumed slowly by a force I had already killed. The stains it had left upon me were evident. So evident, that none but me could see them. I remember the young Lt. and the Sgt. laughing at me for showing, what they referred to as, the worst case of feigned battle fatigue. The laughed at me for my cowardice. They would'nt understand the pain I was going through.

But their derision wasn't what made me kill them, it wasn't me! My hands found their throats all by themselves. And their blood from their gurgling throats mingled with the blood on my hand. Their blood was no better than anything else I had tried. Nothing could rid me of these obscene marks on my flesh.

The apothecaries said something about young men being forced to fight monsters of the warp was wrong. I remember the commisar, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, as he ranted and raved about how I had turned from Him by commiting murder.

I wondered why this very man had patted my shoulder when I had shot the crowds of hab-dwellers in the open square a few days ago.

I remember. I do. Very clearly in my mind's eye. That is where I picked this stain. Every part of my training told me not to touch the small pile of rags that moved and trashed about in the blood slicked mud around the square.

Emperor! I do not even know what square I was in. Feth! I do not recall what planet I was on, forget the city. One more world in a million. All burning, all suffering, all of them, every last one, bleeding from a million, nay trillion wounds. And the blood coated my hands.

Little filthy creatures are babies. And mothers are worse. They use their bodies as shields against death. As if a few inches of flesh can stop a hell-gun charged to max power. She must have succeded. Cos the bundle was alive. And I picked it up. Idiot! Why!

I had lost my soul to the darkness the minute I picked up the ragdoll off the street. I tried to remove the little veil that hid the the little one's face.

Feth! Feth! Why was i so curious, what motivated my hands to move so. What had i done, whicch sins had gone unrepented!

My hands, look at them. I can still feel the cloying warmth of the blood and it splashes. My hands are blistered now. The apothecaries have bound them to prevent my frenzied attacks on my own person.

They wont listen to me. They wont amputate my hands. They cant stop the madness, nor can they still the screams. I tried to block them out with every psalm of the Holy Emperor I know. No use. Death.

No way out. A single street, down the hole. And pop goes the weasel. Giggling. Madness. Schizophrenia. Fatigue. A laugh, no bitterness.

WHERE ARE YOU! I search my soul, scour it for any inkling of where you are and all i find is void. No comforting presence. No shining angel like the ones on the frescoes on the cathedral on my home-planet.

So much like the child. The little one. The one I killed. The one who would have lived, but didnt. How do I tell me hands to stop shaking. Why do I suffer their presence?

If they wouldnt amputate, then I would. I tired. They put me in restarints for attempted suicide. They say it is a crime to harm the property of our most blessed Emperor. All I am now. A number and a pair of dog-tags. A hell-gun with my name on it. Out there in the mud with the rest of my team. The child. God-Emperor. Protect me.

I am dead. Maybe i already died. They didnt notice. I try to tell them that I am dead. My body twitches and betrays life.

The death throes of, hehe, not my body. It will live on. My soul. It screams now and then. The banshee wails in the distance.

The eyes of a child. Innocence. Death. A pair of eyes that asked me why I killed it. Why I robbed it of it's food source. Who I am and what I am doing in it's private world. An intruder. A thief. I stole. Again.

Death. Blood. Paradise. Emptiness. There is no redemption in the stars. Just the hollow mirth that is followed by the hellgun discharging real close to your temple. After that I can see naught. Except my hands.

And they still bleed.