the bitter end

[nobody@pmantis.berkeley.edu]

oh, how the noise hurts my ears, oh how the fires burn my eyes, oh how
my body quakes and shivers. i, the glorious memetic warrior, lie bleeding
on the rocks, the enemy has vanquished us, we have been trampled 'neath
their onslaught. i hear my fellow men groaning with spasms around me,
they call each other's names and cry out, the noxious stench of death
oppresses my nostrils. the eve grows cool, it is twilight, and the bitter
cold infiltrates my body like fog through the grass.

we were ambushed, we thought we knew the enemy's numbers, we thought our
intelligence sound. but they had tricked us in the blackest of betrayals,
all our spies were double agents, and they had stabbed us in the back.
they laughed as they crushed us. the enemy was so numerous, his location
so ubiquitous, that we could not help but be massacred in the hot sun.
there was white fear and red terror everywhere as they came from every
direction to slay us.

all our operations were useless and ineffective, our carefully crafted
future plans aborted, the enemy had infected our own nervous system 
with his poison, and our grisly, grotesque failures haunt my mind 
like shrieking phantoms. oh, my trusted friends! my fellow warriors! 
my noble generals! all are dead and dying, bleeding and weeping, 
lying and crying. my consciousness flits between moments like a 
thief in the shadows, i am bewildered and dazed, as fragmentary
hallucinations of my youth flash before my eyes.

oh, the horror of their weaponry! they assailed us with their bombs,
their grenades, their tanks, their planes, the machine guns pumped bullets
into our fragile flesh, our limbs scatter the battlefield, our blood 
lies in pools in the trenches. we went deaf with the onslaught, our
ears bleeding, our eyes blinded by the horrid wrath of fire. their 
blitzkrieg trampled us like bewildered ants 'neath the stamp of 
soldier's feet. the earth is scarred with holes and pits, and 
hideous shapes of artillery and shrapnel surround me like monsters 
looming in my nightmares.

oh, that fearsome face of mine enemy, how it glowered and glared and
burned with fire in my eyes, i saw the venemous hatred cutting and
mowing me down. their hate surpassed ours, their deadliness crushed
us unmercifully, wretchedly, horribly beneath their iron wrath.
they were monsters from beyond our nightmares but from our own reality,
and they ripped our bodies apart to feed their chiseled jaws.

the moon shines down at me now, i see the reflection in the pools of
water around me, and i am the only one left alive. i hear my rasps,
i feel my chest heave, i feel my feeble heart pump, i can feel the 
gentle trickle of oozing blood at my sides, my life slowly, silently,
inevitably, inextricably leaking from my body. there is only utter cold 
and pitch blackness, as i hear the rats scurrying through my hair and 
gnawing at my flesh.


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