That was the crime.
It was the year of 1805, the last war had ended, and now the murdered men, with their empty eyes were returning. Each day one would see the long lines of the trembling broke, carrying their bent legs and filthy rags, back into the city. The towns folk would stand to watch them in silent applause, as the grocers, and the other good men who had stayed; mustachioed and portly,in their crisp waistcoats, saved from the ravages of time; glared back in indifference at these un-intact, dismembered men; whose psyches were tattered and worn. For they had seen the evil of their days, in vast standing cannons, that had pointed out from mean impressive hills, polished black, before their quarry, like, unruly gods, and generals of battles, unceasingly raining their horror to the ground. There the men, far away from everything, had huddled in their burrows, the mud climbing in with the lice and the flies, as the dead stood the hours of the seasons, from dense heat, to thick cold; from night and day, until the weeks like the maggots, turned them over to a generalised rotted, sod; and all pervasive burrowing- breaking down rot. In these hovels of dirt, Side by side, the living would plead with their fallen comrades, who now gathered as invisible witnesses, telling the sacraments of their mass; until the living too, longed for the place beyond life. Until one day, suddenly, it was over. The tide, like the world, had changed, the crimson was no longer needed. And so these last bones of men, had picked up their packs with their rifles, in a desecrating weakness. And on uneven legs, that stood un-fast, had hobbled the long lost way back to home again. MB
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