Emovisceration

[Lucien]

The sounds of battle were crisp and clear and rang out like music through the countryside. Shouts mixed with explosions to create one harmonious sound of mayhem and chaos that would make any sadist wet with excitement. And the light show that accompanied the symphony was equally spectacular. It was a fire fight, bullets streaming through the air as their tracers embedded into the backs of fleeing peasants. Black uniformed troops marched through the fiery remnants of cobblestone cottages and charred corpses that had eerily similar black skeletal frames to them. Night no longer seemed so dark with glowing plumes of smoke rising into the air far overhead, lighting the way for those committing the massacre to see any stragglers.

Not all were shot, however. Many of the more youthful villagers were simply smashed in the head with the butt of a gun, and dragged into an ominous-looking dark tower that had seemingly appeared from nowhere, with blackened tentacles reaching deep within the earth like roots.

And watching it all was a silent witness hidden behind a moss covered rock. He was curled into a ball, his nails dug deeply into denim jeans for some small measure of security. As the shock waves from blasts traveled through his tiny, timid and tender body, the boy could only close his eyes and hope for the best as his soft attempts at whistles failed.

So engrossed was he by his comfortable fantasy, that the boy failed to notice the gun butt heading towards his head.

[Lucien]

It was an endless motion towards a red, searing tunnel. Familiar music played off in the distance causing wisps of smoke to dance causally like friends in embrace. It was strange, ethereal almost when looked through the eyes of a passerby. Yet despite the commonplace feel, it was still alien. It was all a foreign visage trying to pass itself off as an old acquaintance expecting a nod.

It was a dream. And it ended all too quickly for Lucien, who found the conscious world a lot more unforgiving. His head felt like a special-ed marching band was practicing inside, and they'd run all out of juice. It was an angry pounding that stemmed entirely from a bruise on top of his head.

The boy, regaining some semblance of cognitive thought, realized his was in a metal room, cylinder in shape, and filled with occupants just as confused as he was. They were all young, men and women not yet thirty, filled to the brim with youthful energy that was squandered on the current climate of fear. They wore rags and cloths as simple as any peasant village the boy had seen, and aside from their youth they seemed rather unremarkable.

Still, he was an outsider; the stranger curled up into a ball near an ice-cold steel wall.

"They all know each other," he thought. "They won't trust me. They might even try to blame me." Lucien was overreacting; if he had bothered to give the situation some logic, he would have realized the others too worried about their fate to care about an outsider.

The air was stale and repugnant, recycled and circulated only through the breaths of the inhabitants. Lucien pleaded with some higher to give him answers.

[Lucien]

The still droning of those air filters was as maddening as any heart buried beneath a floorboard. It was constant; always reminding the room's occupants that they were trapped like animals in a cold and strange place. There were murmurs and whispers of all kind, rumors as to what sickening fate lay ahead for the captives, or mourning for the dead they had seen felled by strange and blaring weapons. The small glow that emitted from hidden sources gave an eerie sense of comfort; at least the captives could see their friends and thank whatever spirit they weren't counted among the dead.

As time passed without acknowledgment or pity, logic began to slip its pervasive tentacles into the room. The peasants, while uneducated, were not simple minded. Rumors gave way to theories and demands for answers and action; a near hysterical need to know the truth gripped the villagers into a frenzy of shallow words.

"I don't care what has happened to us!" Said one, with a fury in his belly fit for the greatest of battles, "we need to think of a way out of here!"

"How?" Another replied, his words dipped in nihilistic cynicism, his tongue rolled in dramatic flare. He rose up and presented his terrible shadow in silhouette against the rounded wall, gesturing all around to the seemingly inescapable metallic dungeon.

"It doesn't matter how! We need to get out of here!" The first one shot up with a passion contrasting the second. "You saw what those things did to our village. Can you imagine what they'll do to us!?" His was a voice fit for the pulpit, ringing through the cell with cries of fire and brimstone.

There was a moment of peace; an armistice between the two men as they reflected. It was brief.

"That's exactly the point," he murmured, his voice much softer than his rival's. "It is what they will do, not what they are doing. We have this time to think, to plan, not just to smash our fists against the walls like beasts."

Another brief pause in the action as they circled around one and other.