Herzunterbrecher
04-12-2005, 04:24
The girl was pretty: long, wavy hazel hair curling down, dappled by the thin rays of some late tropical sun, shading the left side of her face; small mouth creasing into a shy smile; thin, ringed fingers sweeping a stray curl behind her ear; body swaying gently in some lost rhythm, young, happy, free. Her bright, shining eyes, half-closed against the evening glare, glanced up with a warm, piercing stare. And she was upside down. Helmont gently swivelled the photograph in the young man’s bandaged fingers.
“He’s blind.”
“Really.”
Fucking doctors. Once, when he still walked tall and proud, before the cold flecks of winter had spread to his hair, they had told him that the next drink would be the last. They’d gone to great detail: scans of his liver, blood samples, heart and lung readings, tests and charts and unpronounceable words that should have been walking the stage in some blood-soaked classical tragedy. But they couldn’t tell him why; they couldn’t tell him if the fact that he’d end up all cold and yellow was any worse than curling up in the corner all shaking and bleeding and wanting all the same; they couldn’t tell him whether it might have been worth missing his comrades falling, missing the horrors of thirty further years watching them pound the shit out of each other over lines on a map and words in a book, missing watching worlds crumble and burn and die. Whether it might be better that this boy would not see the scars and holes traced across his flesh. Fucking doctors.
Helmont stayed by the bed for a while, until the soldier twitched asleep, the girl slipping from his grasp. The night had crept up, and a day of mere strolling through the beds had suddenly taken hold of the general; he was very tired. His eyelids felt like lead as they scanned the blood-boiling horizon; his spine was bending like a bamboo cane in a gale. He eased himself down into the hard plastic chair, and rubbed at his face with thick, grubby palms. The war was over, the battlefields empty and silent, the armies home and safe; and in the cold black night, he sat, surrounded by scarred, burned, battered bodies, a lone set of wetly blinking eyes among fifty pairs, glazed into perpetual death.
An open letter to the leaders of the world:
Esteemed comrades,
Twice in the last fifty years Herzunterbrecher has been shamed by the ills of war. We do not wish to witness a third plague of atrocity descend upon us, and as such are making this call to all responsible members of the international community to unite, putting differences of policy, philosophy and history aside, to work together in ensuring that for every nation, the coming years will be ones of free peace and cooperation. We hold war to be a pestilence, occasionally a necessary one, but never good, nor honourable, nor right, and as such believe that global efforts are required to prevent its reoccurrence blighting all our futures.
We accept that attempts to outlaw or even regulate war are always optimistic, and seldom realistic, and furthermore we do not seek to preclude the possibility of the just use of force in the interest of preserving the greater good. However, we have felt especially strong in our recent history the sting of chemical warfare, and believe that it is in the interests of all nations to come together in preventing the use of such. We have now settled a truce with our adversaries; if it lasts 100 years, then in the 101st the pain of the damage of chemical warfare will still deface our land.
As such, I am calling for the preparation of an international convention to prohibit the use of chemical weaponry of warfare. We do not intend to start a crusade against those who do not acknowledge the importance of this, but do instead intend to hope by our actions to promote a good example that ultimately all responsible nations will be bound to follow.
Peace,
President Saryaka
OOC: Ok, maybe this has been done. I know conference RPs are dull, so if people just want to sign it straight away, that's fine. If you don't want to ban chemical weapons so be it; this isn't for you. I don't suppose this'll elicit much attention, but *anyone* interested?
“He’s blind.”
“Really.”
Fucking doctors. Once, when he still walked tall and proud, before the cold flecks of winter had spread to his hair, they had told him that the next drink would be the last. They’d gone to great detail: scans of his liver, blood samples, heart and lung readings, tests and charts and unpronounceable words that should have been walking the stage in some blood-soaked classical tragedy. But they couldn’t tell him why; they couldn’t tell him if the fact that he’d end up all cold and yellow was any worse than curling up in the corner all shaking and bleeding and wanting all the same; they couldn’t tell him whether it might have been worth missing his comrades falling, missing the horrors of thirty further years watching them pound the shit out of each other over lines on a map and words in a book, missing watching worlds crumble and burn and die. Whether it might be better that this boy would not see the scars and holes traced across his flesh. Fucking doctors.
Helmont stayed by the bed for a while, until the soldier twitched asleep, the girl slipping from his grasp. The night had crept up, and a day of mere strolling through the beds had suddenly taken hold of the general; he was very tired. His eyelids felt like lead as they scanned the blood-boiling horizon; his spine was bending like a bamboo cane in a gale. He eased himself down into the hard plastic chair, and rubbed at his face with thick, grubby palms. The war was over, the battlefields empty and silent, the armies home and safe; and in the cold black night, he sat, surrounded by scarred, burned, battered bodies, a lone set of wetly blinking eyes among fifty pairs, glazed into perpetual death.
An open letter to the leaders of the world:
Esteemed comrades,
Twice in the last fifty years Herzunterbrecher has been shamed by the ills of war. We do not wish to witness a third plague of atrocity descend upon us, and as such are making this call to all responsible members of the international community to unite, putting differences of policy, philosophy and history aside, to work together in ensuring that for every nation, the coming years will be ones of free peace and cooperation. We hold war to be a pestilence, occasionally a necessary one, but never good, nor honourable, nor right, and as such believe that global efforts are required to prevent its reoccurrence blighting all our futures.
We accept that attempts to outlaw or even regulate war are always optimistic, and seldom realistic, and furthermore we do not seek to preclude the possibility of the just use of force in the interest of preserving the greater good. However, we have felt especially strong in our recent history the sting of chemical warfare, and believe that it is in the interests of all nations to come together in preventing the use of such. We have now settled a truce with our adversaries; if it lasts 100 years, then in the 101st the pain of the damage of chemical warfare will still deface our land.
As such, I am calling for the preparation of an international convention to prohibit the use of chemical weaponry of warfare. We do not intend to start a crusade against those who do not acknowledge the importance of this, but do instead intend to hope by our actions to promote a good example that ultimately all responsible nations will be bound to follow.
Peace,
President Saryaka
OOC: Ok, maybe this has been done. I know conference RPs are dull, so if people just want to sign it straight away, that's fine. If you don't want to ban chemical weapons so be it; this isn't for you. I don't suppose this'll elicit much attention, but *anyone* interested?