Colors of Sanity

Chapter 1

The source of his nausea, his mutilated abdomen, rest bleeding calmly. Right now, his loose  turnequitte was his main priority. The half-clotted blood was running slowly, pouring out of his dark yellow skin, but being out of antibiotic made this an extreme situation. Danger at a height. His linen mess was probably not helping right now, digging into the deep slash wound when it got caught in the door handle. All those times. Clumsiness is a side effect of being low on blood, sanity, and will. He had no need to scream, even while under attack, because pain was something of a companion now and did not have much effect on him. Heavy, polluted rain poured down onto the large, silvery tent. Extra noise was quite the issue, because silence was necessary if you wanted to shoot the enemy first. Or the crazy tribals,   suicidals, for that matter. Looking out one of the small plastic windows, he saw nothing but the fog blanket that coated the lightly forested plateau.

     Ripping open the door in the first aid box, he removed the roll of gauze and begun winding it around the area beneath his for-the-most-part shattered ribcage. Safety-pinning it tight, he decided it was acceptable and remembered it was his shift to scout the perimeter. With a hardy "Hey Muhammad!" in his heavy African accent, he replaced the heavy set man, one of the still-sane few left. Wiping dirt, sweat, blood, and whatever other grime was coating his being, off of his face and thick black hair with a hand just as dirty, he hiked out of the vicinity of the tent. His current clothing consisted of an almost demolished, used-to-be bulletproof vest, complete with shrapnel, blood stains, and a large rip across the lower right-half. Some equally-demolished black pants, pockets filled with dog tags of fallen allies, covered his mutilated legs. His shirt that used to exist under his vest was discarded the week before, when he had received the kind gift of a bayonet slash to the stomach and a stomp on the chest from the enemies heavily weighted boot.

     Their ingenious boots released a small amount of burning phosphorus upon a command from a button upon the wrist. It was a brilliant tactic, lighting whatever they desired on fire with a brilliant green blaze, a tactic designed to frighten the Congo's natives. It also burned like boiling hydrogen peroxide upon a large scrape. Only one-thousand times more. The mark it left was of a charcoal skinned torso, and the bleeding imprint of a boot upon his shattered ribs. And he was one of the lucky soldiers. He went unconscious then. Most of his comrades weren't so lucky, screaming in agony as their body was shredded by bullets, knives, or sometimes falling towards the bottom of a cliff, to their joy. He was snapped out of his flashback by the side of a dead tree colliding with his skull. He didn't care what everyone told him. He didn't care what mental issues they claimed he had developed. He didn't care about any damage he took.

     This tree needed to be sent to Hell, now. Screaming like something out of a nightmare, he assaulted the tree like he did everyone else. Fists pummeling dents and cracks into the tree, screaming an insane yell, he sent splinters and whole pieces of the innocent tree flying through the foggy, polluted morning air. The tree was non-existent anymore, but he needed to hurt something. Badly. He ripped the knife from his belt and tore through his forearm, laughing as the blood spurted out, dripping to the ground. Stab and tear out, stab and tear out. It appeared in his mind suddenly as an apparition: WHAT am I DOING? He yelled and whipped the knife off the sloped cliffside and ran back to the tent. The affected forearm was not in much pain, being dulled to pain as it had been experienced so much lately, but with the remembering that he had killed about 30 different things yesterday, gangrene was sure to occur. With this in mind he sprinted faster than he had when his wife was being slaughtered.

     Oh well, he had thought afterward. Death was a normal thing now, with half the Earth under control of that horrid country. The blood was now pretty-much clotted, with the half-hour sprint back to the tent. Dashing inside, he screamed

     "Doctor! My arm!" but soon realized that there was nought but bodies in his tent. Again. He suddenly, instinctually, slid underneath the table and grabbed the rifle he  had duct-taped to the bottom of it. Always a useful tactic. He stopped his breathing, and listened to the voices outside. Idiots, he thought. They hadn't even noticed his yelling. They must be preoccupied.

     "Yes, sir. Area's been cleared, and's bein' double-checked by uh small group uh soldiers."

     "Quite impressive, sergeant, this was their largest regiment, far as our data covers." He heard the official-sounding footsteps of what he assumed was the last one talking, and saw a pair of legs enter the tent.

     Opening the   miscellaneous rations locker, he pulled out a cigar and heard a lighter click. "Southern bastard. Lost 3 men killing 20. Ungrateful prick." The man said hatefully, and he exited the tent dutifully. He gripped his dog tags, as a reminder of who he used to be. He already knew what they said, "Adofo ----------," his last name was scratched out, as a reminder that nothing matters of his Egyptian heritage anymore, as Egypt was no more. It had other information, but that was gone as well. Adofo gripped his rifle tight, and crept over to the section of the tent where countless emergency packs were piled. He quickly grabbed an ammunition satchel, clipped it to his destroyed belt, not caring what kind of bullets it contained. He gripped a ration pack with one hand, thrust it onto his back, and bolted out the doorway, heading straight to the small forest that was just a cliffside away.