Work Text:
June 27th, 1917
Dear diary,
The ground shook. Bullets whizzed above-head. The medics yelled for supplies.
The tunnellers were at work. The infantrymen were at work. The medics were at work.
A low rumble erupted all around us. It sounded halfway between an earthquake and air hissing out a pedal bike tire. We looked at each other in confusion. The rumble didn't end.
The earth shook.
The shooting slowly ceased.
The tunnel-mining slowly ceased.
The rumble got louder.
A man dropped to the ground.
Another followed him.
Then another.
And another.
Shouting fought rumbling as men saw their brethren drop, like flies in winter.
Distant yells carried well across the barren wasteland ‘tween us and the Jerries.
Some dozen wisps flew up out the cracks in the blooded muds below our boots. They swirled skywards and came together to form a man of cloud.
“Who doth dare perturb thine God from his rest?”
His voice came not from his mouth in the sky but still from the ground.
“A thousand years I have slept, forgotten but no less here. And now! Thou weak-bodied mortals doth wakest me from my slumber! How dare thee!”
Those still standing, them who had not collapsed initially nor passed out from shock, we all fell to our knees. The god must've spoken to the Jerries in their vilest of tongues, as, when we fell to our knees and begged forgiveness, similar cries of beggary rose too from across the mile.
“Hah! Thou thinkest thee may beg and be forgiven! No! That is not the way! Thou minutest of wills hath forgotten the ways of thine forebearers!”
Arms materialised beside the bust of the god. He pointed at man after man. They dropped too.
“Mine name be Baltazo! I bid thy not let slip this from thine minds. I watch thee from above henceforward. Be as thee be.”
The man disapparated.
The generals called for their lower ranks and them lower ranks called for theirs. Fighting ceased for the day as men of war scrambled to grasp the events of the day firm with both hands and understand.
July 2nd, 1917.
Dear diary,
Telegrams sent and telegrams received, orders were ordered. The rumble had been felt far as in England.
Field directive 147: The Race of Utmost Urgency to the Past Ones.
Execute directive 147.1: Locate further deities of past eons.
Execute directive 147.2: Wake the undead.
Execute directive 147.3: Persuade them to our cause.
Already word has been sent to incognitoes in Italy to march to Athens, sacrifice some common cow on the altar, and we will have the Hellenics with us.
I myself, I have been sent back Home, O’ dear diary! My battalion has been tasked with recovery of King Arthur and the Irish bastard. I will to Home!
July 17th, 1917.
DD,
Blew up some dozen hills. Nothing yet.
July 25th, 1917.
DD,
Blew up some more hills. Still nothing yet.
July 27th, 1917.
DD,
Ran out of hills in Kent and East Sussex. West Sussex next, and Surrey after. Some dozen other bands are combing the countryside elsewhere in Britain.
August 4th, 1917.
DD,
The 284th Batt. found Arthur! Joy!
Kent and East Sussex and West Sussex and Surrey had nothing, we go to Ireland next.
Dear diary, I pray the Irish do not kill me before the Jerries do.
August 28th, 1917.
DD,
We found the Irish bastard today! Fin Mac Cool, his name was. The Irish probably spell it stupid.
September 11th, 1917.
DD,
Back in Belgium. The Commander tells us we have some number of gods and heroes on our side. God knows who the Jerries have.
September 21st, 1917.
DD,
Our gods and heroes are treated like generals. St. John (head medic assigned to our Batt.) is present at meetings because he is in some ways an officer. He says we asked Bormana (some minor irrelevant french goddess of fresh-water healing springs) to bring rains of poison down upon the Jerries.
Seems a little unfair to me, but what do I know?
September 30th, 1917.
DD,
Rain came in floods and floods. It has not ceased in days. I stand up to my waist in mud, but if I climb out of the trench I will lose the top of my hea
WHAT
Raining blood now. Be back later.
October 14th, 1917.
DD,
I do not wish the rains to return, however, it has been baking hot for days. Even when Father’s watch informs me it is night, the day dims not, and dawn comes when you think it is.
St. John tells me Serapis tells him the Turks have taken Ra hostage, and he may not do some duty to bring the night, thus the Sun lingers above. Why Apollo or Helios or some other god cannot bring night I know not.
When will they tire of their tricks and desire the Nyx again?
October 20th, 1917.
DD,
Night came last night.
I still have not been shot.
October 31st, 1917.
DD,
I still shake.
I was set to trenching this Monday gone.
We dug straight East-ward. We found a stone slab. Too cornered to be of Nature. Excitedly, we dug around and below it and uncovered a sarcophagal structure. We prised the top off. Took us… perhaps most the afternoon. Difficult to tell time by the light now, and my watch face glass has shattered.
Finally, we lifted it off.
Inside was… the top half of a young woman, maybe a girl. The bottom half… a tangle of bones.
The bones rose.
A man fainted.
Meat and tendon and sinew and skin grew outward from the bones.
Thick maroon blood…
Oozed from the open sheen of meat covering the bones.
Another man fainted.
Thick maroon blood…
Soaked the bottom of the stone box.
A third man fainted.
Then a fourth.
Of us nine who had dug the Thing from the Earth, only five still stood.
Glistening red meat and offal crept up the vulgar chest of the woman; viscera creeping up the dreadful neck of the woman and gristle digging into the new flesh on the heinous face of the woman.
She had the face of Medusa.
Ugly as they come, she was so completely and utterly coarse and crude to look at.
“Who dares wake Melusina?”
Her voice was just as oafish and uncouth as her common, brutish guise. She was simply loutish.
I looked her up and down.
She wore the most wonderful of the womanly assets upon her chest, yet, on her, they were as offensive to the senses as French cheese is to the proper English Tom, Dick, or Harry.
We told her we were fighting the vilest of Evils. The Jerries must be defeated!
Well!
She turned her snobbish nose up on us! How dare she! We woke her to the noblest of causes, and! She turns her nose up on us!
“I shall find the truth of truths, then I will decide who is truly “vile”, as you Men-Folk say.”
And thus it were, she slithered off, as if she knew her way in this labyrinth of trenchary.
As if she knew!
December 2nd, 1917.
DD,
Oh, how cold it has been! Colder than previous years, even only in December!
December 5th, 1917.
DD,
Will this wretched war ever come to an end? I watched a fellow's chest open wide mere feet away earlier this day, or maybe this week. Most likely within the past twenty or so days. I have lost ability to count days accurately. I only hope my account will mostly portray correct days within a margin or a week either side. I can only hope.
The man- the man whose chest I watched burst as easily as a bubble of laundering soap on a delightfully sunny Saturday morning- he'd simply looked at me with this look of incredulity in his eyes, on his tongue, but the set of his mouth and the lines circling his eyes and blending his nose and brow told me he'd simply... accepted it. Was too weary too long. An unspoken "finally, at long last". Yet it came so quickly.
The pop! in his chest blew his ribs out, all of them reaching out like claws digging out of a fresh dug grave, teeth baring from a gory maw still glistening from the horrible sticky red innards within... or not.
He seemed almost to look at me one last time, give me one last hurrumpf before crumpling to his knees, falling onto his side, bones crunching as his rifle smashed into the boy below him with the force of all his body falling so ungraciously, so unseemly, so undignified an end.
February 15th, 1918.
DD,
Lord, forgive my sins. Forgive me my trespasses. I have thoughts of sin on my mind. Lord, absolve me my sins, I repent.
February 24th, 1918.
DD,
Oh, I have foolish thoughts stirring themselves a'tizzy in my mind. I cannot entertain such... such foolishness. Our men look not too far dissimilar from some of these so called "gods", our faces yellow and pale and twisted, miserable and wasting, all of us bent over in weariness or in pain or in fear.
I am hoping for just one good day. Does such a thing exist any more? Still, I hold out my foolish hope.
March 17th, 1918.
Dear Diary,
Oh, dear, Lord! Lord above, if you exist, please, relieve me of my burdens, please, Lord, bring me peace, bring me solace. Please, Lord, please, Father!
March 19th, 1918.
Dear Diary,
I happened to come across a cherry tree in blossom today, on my way back from the secondary line, trudging back from the kitchens. The branches were covered in the most beautiful white blossoms, in full bloom despite the sharp sting of the wind on your cheek, mindless of the zing of bullets flying above head, the pounding booms of the distant excavations, the artillery.
I picked myself a beautiful bouquet to walk me to my altar tomorrow morning.
My mind is set. My soul is resolute.
Lord, deliver me.