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The thrumming of his heartbeat in his ears drowns out the loud thudding of his worn boots as they hit the pavement. He gasps, almost gagging, for air as he veers left past a blur of a graffiti mural, the image of a small white cat sticks in his mind's eye for a millisecond before he shakes his head. He takes a left turn into the grim mouth of an alleyway, his head throbs as his palm comes into contact with the wall, crumbling red brick digs into his palm leaving near-invisible indents, his palms sting. His momentum throws him off-balance as he staggers into the sharp corner of a rusted skip bin. Overflowing bin bags are strewn haphazardly about, his hands grip the lip of the rusted bin tightly like a lifeline, a faded logo of a racoon and a ‘Be Plastic Wise’ sticker glare back at him as he rakes in a much-needed breath. He weakly pushes himself off the skip bin.
There's no time to stop.
He stumbles right into the alleyway wall, cracked red brick befriends his face with a painful jolt that has him reeling backwards as the ground lurches violently underneath his feet. Black spots dance on the edge of his vision when his head makes contact with the pavement. Disoriented and confused, his arms shake like jelly in a pitiful attempt to get back to his feet, his head spins as he collapses back down with a thud. He tries again, this time with a renewed vigour, staggering back to his feet he stumbles a few steps before finally standing upright.
There's no time to stop.
He stumbles, deeper into the alleyway's stomach, his lungs burn like a million tiny knives are stabbing holes in them. His pace quickens, more desperate. Momentously, soft melodious notes of sound wash a wave of tranquil serenity over him and his eyes involuntarily flutter shut, he comes to a standstill and only for a brief moment he feels at peace.
His face stings, his eyes snap open.
He stands in a field long knee-high grass has wrapped itself around his legs he blinks, confused.
Oh. It had happened again he had travelled back in time.
He blinks again, swallowing back the bitter tang that accompanied the bile currently creeping up the back of his throat and pooling into his mouth. He felt sick.
Gunfire echoes around him, bouncing like an excited child around the battlefield as both the sky and land are torn to shreds. The wind worriedly tangling itself in the long knee-high grass as he trudges forward, struggling through the green sea. Rain whips back and forth, the yelling voices and cries for help lost in a flurry of unimaginable violence.
A grimace crosses his now dirt-smeared face as a young man falls beside him, still he trudges on, find somewhere safe. He can barely make out the faint yells that are drowned out by the hellfire from above warning him to watch out, to take cover. His ears are ringing, it was too loud yet to quiet all at once. The screams of the dead sounded like tormented howls on the wind like they are condemning him to his already foreseeable death.
His heart leaps out of his chest, beating ravenously against his ribcage as a plane emerges from thick, black smog in the sky, it hovers for a bit as if hesitant then flies off. He watches behind an entrenchment as a far away circle dives, flinging itself at the ground with such enraged speed as if the earth had done something to personally offend it, it probably had. A faint whistling sound accompanies the circle - no the bomb - until its sudden impact, a sound of metal hitting the dirt. Despite the distance, he flinches, getting flung violently backwards, this time his head hit soft dirt instead of hard concrete, sound and time seem to stop and speed up all at once. One by one more planes follow the previous one, like a flock of birds migrating south for the winter months, dropping the bombs consecutively, yet never in the same place twice. Were they aiming for a certain spot, or where they just dropping them wherever they could reach?
A flash of light and a loud bang follows as another bomb hits the ground, this one sends shockwaves, the ground shivers with anxiety below him. His ears ring and his eyes water, his vision turns a bright white and a frisson of terror runs up his spine. Anywhere but here, he willed to be in another time, another place.