Pencil Rain

World War No. 2

Thin layers of hovering smoke trail throughout the endless deep mud-filled trenches. Smells of burning cedar and soft lead permeate your nostrils as you stare in disbelief of the carnage laying before you. Friends and commanding officers alike laying in heaps, their ranks no longer a context for their existence as they life has left their bodies. There is no hierarchy amongst the dead.

SIREN BLARING.

Fastening your protective head gear, you look to the sky. Bright explosion can be seen from behind the thick dark clouds. A faint whistle is heard getting louder, closer. Competing with the warning siren. As if something sharp and pointed is cutting through the air as it makes its way, unrelenting toward you.

With a sharp piercing sound of splintering wood through armored metal, followed by a dull squish and a your body has fallen victim to raining terror of No. 2 soft lead sharpeners to a point. You join your friends in the pile. The Pencil Rain has begun again. . .