By Lucas Kowalick
It’s hard to breathe. I can’t breathe. I’m alive but I can’t breathe.
The trench filled with gas. The Germans moved forward. We fell flat on the ground.
Mustard gas, a truly evil invention. Used only for the first time this year.
Hopefully the last year as well.
But, like everything the Germans did, they didn’t make it very well.
It tore through our skin and lungs as we bled and pussed everywhere.
But we weren’t dying.
We wish.
The agony was unrelenting. I could barely see but I could hear.
I wanted to tear my ears off.
I’m thankful I didn’t. I could hear the distant marching toward our trench.
I couldn’t understand their words but I know a chant when I hear one.
It was far away but we wouldn’t last much longer.
We were practically dead already. Give up.
No. Osowiecs don’t do that.
The gas should have brought death. It only made us look like it.
We devised a plan through pain and agony.
We laid down in the mud which soaked with our blood. Guns still in hand.
They came ever closer. We came ever closer to losing our lives. Not without a fight.
The rain felt like bullets on our open wounds. Stay still.
They cut through our barbed wire. They let out a shout as they began jumping down.
That’s when the dead men marched again.
We rose from the earth.
We wheezed for breath through our destroyed lungs.
Skin and eyes were melting.
Blood flowed through every single part of our bodies.
In shock, they froze.
In shock, they died.
Our bayonets pierced their chests.
Our bullets pierced their bones.
Our revival pierced their minds.
As an entire German platoon lay dead in our trench, many of ours fell as well.
One can only come back to life for so long.
Lucas Kowalick is in 11th grade and in his second year of creative writing. He started writing in fourth grade as a way to have fun with friends during dull days and getting to tell stories. He's always been a storyteller. He plans on attending college for paleontology and becoming a museum curator/fossil perpetrator.
This is inspired by the Attack of the Dead Men from World War I. Dead men fighting in a war is pretty absurd.