Trench Warfare Terrors

The world spun again, not with the dizzying rush of the previous night, but with a sickening lurch that stole Thomas’s breath. One moment he was on the sun-drenched hill, the scent of dust and sweat still clinging to him, the next he was plunged into a world of perpetual twilight, a world that stank of damp earth and something acrid, like old socks and fear. He blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust to the gloom. He wasn’t on a hill anymore. He was… somewhere else. Somewhere deep.

He was in a trench.

Not the neat, illustrated diagrams Mr. Abernathy sometimes drew on the blackboard, with little stick figures looking vaguely bored. This was a real trench, a muddy, sodden gash in the earth, its sides reinforced with sandbags that sagged like tired old men. The air was thick, heavy with a silence that wasn’t peaceful, but the kind that presses down on your eardrums, waiting for a scream. Above, the sky was a bruised, uncertain grey, and the sounds that punctuated the silence were sharp, sudden, and terrifyingly close: a distant, muffled *thump*, a metallic clatter, a choked cough from somewhere nearby.