By Jack Mullen, Year 12
The air screamed, and the sky wept dead lead bullets into the dirt. Like the pitter-patter of raindrops, they plopped into puddles like dying desperate fish escaping into the sea. Like pinballs, they tumbled and bounced inside human heads and jingled like coins in a swear jar as people fell. They Burrowed through mounds of muscle, hiding away and settling slowly into the quiet dust.
Here’s to them, the Lugers, the nine millimetres nine feet under — the unlucky ones who left the gun so young. Their full metal jackets and sharp-looking hats really caught the eye and dropped some jaws. Here’s to the Shells whose shattered bodies scattered in the wind like autumn leaves and broken knees. They shall not be forgotten. Here’s to the 7.62 calibre rounds, who kept time so well like gunshot swiss clocks, ringing with the regular beat of the battlefield. Singing in the clean voices of bells.
They aren’t to blame, they never understood the scope of their impact, but barreled into battle one after the other, flowing like rivers of ore, shining in the sun and showering down to the debts to await their respective deaths. Smoking without cigarettes.
Underground it’s peaceful as white skulls choke on the pieces of blackened and burnt bullets, and cry hollow metal tears from empty sockets. Like little metal seeds, they sink through mud and settle in the dark, nestled between rib bones, rocks and fellow comrades. No one to scatter their gunpowder across the countryside or entomb them in a magazine, they rust away the day, turning red. Eventually, the blood stains blend in and every bullet with a piece of brain on it, a piece of soul in it, looks like a screw off the sunken titanic. They slowly crawl through the earth’s crust and dig for Hades’ hell, the endless underworld, moving further away from the bullet shed and bloodshed above.
A hundred years from now historians might dig up dirt and expose the plated skin of Lugers, Shells and Sniper rounds. They’ll print placards depicting a bullet’s story, hammer to head, barrel to the bone. Maybe they’ll count the lost souls and come up with a pretty number like a hundred thousand or more. Who knows?
Until that day comes, may every brave bullet
Rust in peace.
