A cold charge of fear awakened his body, and he...
A cold charge of fear awakened his body, and he whimpered for a momentHe pictured the bullet tearing through his body, ripping apart the flesh inside, and he felt nauseaA little bile welled out of his mouth"All that poison inside me is gonna be messin' aroun' now, jus' killin' me But he drifted away again, settled into the warm lapping content of his drowsiness and weaknessHe was no longer afraid of dyingThat bullet's gonna clean up mah insidesAll the pus'll be comin' out now, an' Ah'll be okayPappy said his granpappy used to have an ole nigger woman bleed him wheneveh he had the feverTha's jus' what Ah'm doin' nowHe looked mistily at the groundThe blood was sopping against his shirt front, which made him slightly uncomfortableHe held his hand tiffany silver jewelry over it, smiling faintly
His eyes stared at the ground two inches awayTime hung still, unmoving about himHe felt the heat of the sun on his back; he dropped, submerged, in the chattering rhythms of the insect life about him, and the square foot of earth he could see became magnified until every grain stood out perfect and completeThe ground was no longer brown; it was a checkerboard of individual crystals, of red and white and yellow and black; his sense of dimension vanishedHe thought he was looking from an airplane at several fields and a patch of wood, and the tall grass blurred a few inches from the ground, became nebulous and shifting like cloud vaporsThe roots were surprisingly white with thick scaly bark stippled with brown like birch omega olympic watch treesEverything he saw was proportioned to the size of a forest, but a new forest, one he had never seen before, and quite odd
A few ants meandered past his nose, turned about to look up at him, and then waddled onThey seemed the size of cows, or the way cows would look from the top of a high hillHe watched them pass out of his line of vision
Goddam, they're cute little buggers, he thought weaklyHis head settled on his forearm, and the wood darkened before his eyes, turned upside down as he fainted
He awoke, he drifted out of unconsciousness perhaps ten minutes laterAnd lay there motionless, wavering between wakefulness and sleepEach of his senses seemed to have sprung free of the other; he would stare emptily at the ground, or close his eyes and dior saddle breathe, only his ears alert, or his head would roll on the ground, his nose twitching over the faint bouquet of earth, the pungent spice smell of the grass roots, or over the dry decay of mold
But something was wrongHe raised his head, listened, and heard some men talking softly in the field ten yards awayHe stared through the tall grass, unable to see clearlyHe thought it was someone in the platoon perhaps, and he worked his throat to speak, and then stiffened
There were Japanese in the field, or at least he heard men talking in a strange guttural, pitched in odd tones, rather breathlessHe felt a choking horrorTag ends of all the stories of Jap torture flicked his brainSonofabitch, they'll cut mah nuts offHe felt his breath escaping through his nose, gucci women's watches slowly, with compression, stirring the hairs in the nostrilHe could hear them puttering around, their words slicing abruptly against his ears
"Doko?"
"Tabun koko
They were thrashing the grass, moving around againHe heard them coming nearerAbsurdly, he began to repeat a jingle to himself"Doko koko cola, doko koko cola He buried his face in the earth, mashing his nose against the groundEvery muscle in his face was working to keep from making a soundAh gotta git my rifleBut he had left his gun a yard or two away when he crawled deeper into the grassIf he moved to get it, they would hear him
He tried to decide, and in his weakness he felt like weepingIt was all too much for him, and he burrowed his face into the ground and tried to hold his omega watches for sale breat