Every particle, every atom of my body screamed at me to run. But I knew I couldn't without arousing suspicion. I was walking a pace barely even a margin faster than my usual pace, but it sounded to me as though the pavement were exploding after each slap of my feet. I felt a thousand gazes dissecting my limbs, but looked back to see no one so much as giving me a second glance. Finally I reached Mathers. I threw up, narrowly missing his shoes.
'Ah. You're alive.' He wrinkled his pointed nose in disgust. 'I detonated the device before you returned... Of course I assumed you'd left.' I said nothing, shaking, bent over my knees.
'Christ, you really are a child. This is a war for god's sake. What did you expect?'
'I - I... I didn't want to hurt any kids for Christ's sake! Is it really necessary?!'
'Jones, grow a pair, alright? We want this bloody pathetic country to fold , and the best way to do that is to surprise them, scare them, take away what they love most... Anyway, for all I know, you planted the bloody thing in an empty frigging field! We need to attain photographic evidence, remember? Hmm, it'd look great in my scrapbook too.'
'You sick ba-'
'Let's not get above our station now Jones, eh? Come on. Move.'
To all those who believe Hell to be situated somewhere in a shadowed corner of the universe, I'll tell you now; it isn't. Hell, for me at least, is where I sacrificed my soul.
The stench hit us first. It smashed into us like a solid wall of reinforced lead. The putrid fumes curled into repugnant wisps and whirled up into my nostrils. Burnt flesh. It smelt like some perverse, rancid barbeque, where the meat on offer was rotting corpses. Even Mathers' face paled to a cadaverous grey.
We walked. Silently. There but not a sound in all the world now, and the silence clung to us with a grim determination, like some putrid disease. Most of the walls had been completely obliterated, and the furniture had been charred beyond recognition, thrown to odd areas of the grounds. And the bodies.
Tiny corpses littered the ground, all arranged in jagged lines with limbs missing and smouldered away, like some bizarre funeral procession. We continued walking. As though paying our respects. Ironic. Considering we did this to them. Or, I did.
A girl, her head had been cracked open, as though it were merely an inconsequential egg, and her facial features had been eradicated. Her mouth appeared to have been ripped away, and her nose had disappeared, revealing the bare cartilage inside. Her eyes. Her eyes seemed to have melted into her shattered skull. Oh Lord, I only knew she was a girl because there was a remnant of an ear. It was badly singed, and partially torn away from the head, but a charred, yet undeniable butterfly earring remained upon the lobe. I fell to my knees.
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