A 100 Word Story
Even as the fighting ended, peace still seemed
like an ethereal dream; something that would slip through your fingers like
cigarette smoke. The silence was surreal. The sound of gunfire and explosions,
aircraft and dying men faded, replaced by…nothing; not even wind blowing across
a wrecked landscape.
Five minutes ago, they'd been at war – now
they weren't. They’d run hunched over; sat huddled in bunkers; crouched in foxholes;
ducked, crawled, and dove.
For the first time he could remember, he
stood up; stretching to his full height. He'd been a soldier all his adult
life.
“Now
what?” he asked.