/lit/ - Literature

>>7133623

This is a letter from a British officer-in-training to his fiancee in WW1. It's part of a writing project where my and my actual fiancee write letters to each other as we are separated due to my father's gambling addiction and the loss of my family home. At the moment, I have moved from LA to a rural town near Amish county and live between two cornfields. I'm not a writer, I do math and economics tutoring, but this sounded like a fun way to keep in touch in addition to the normal ways.

Sept 23rd, 1914


This has been a very hard few days for me. During a training session where I was supposed to lead my platoon across and over a steep ravine to capture an enemy point I experienced a serious accident.

It was very dark and I am very new at this. My inexperience showed. I'm not a natural climber so half way up the incline I tripped and fell all the way down head-first.I was completely knocked out and awoke in the sanitarium with a bandaged head and leg to boot; it wasn't pleasant either as the lower wound began to turn color after a few days.

In that moment my hopes and fears all coalesced into one cacophonous fantasy of a nightmare. I could fully recover and continue on my journey, but then I would still be risking my life, in a very great way. On the other hand, the wound could worsen and I might even lose my leg or my life. At least if I lost my leg I wouldn't lose my life, but what kind of life would that be?

Maybe they would let me have a staff job where I could plan from behind the lines. Or I could help in some other way? In any case, it was up to fate and my constitution.

I experienced a delirium the next three days. Feverish deserts and icy forests invaded the soft green pastures of the sanitarium. At times the room would change shape and size, at others I would become completely blind.

It was during these periods of blindness that strange events would reoccur.
I would find myself in the middle of the night, almost pitch black except for the presence of the full moon, wandering in a forest by a small river.

It was always bitterly cold but there was the strangest thing. A striped cat, I couldn't tell the color because it was night but it most likely had golden eyes.

It approached me closely and then wandered off. I of course followed it, it's very unusual for a cat to be in the middle of a forest at midnight.

The pattern was always the same but became more and more complex with time.

First, it would always lead me to a copse, a little clearing of trees with a soft ray of moonlight shining on a stone plaque covered in thick moss. The plaque itself was brazen on a stone mount.

I cleared off the lichens and astoundingly my name was listed on the plaque alongside my birthday. There was then a dash and nothing else.