Anthony Caso ’26
Remember the crackle of unending machine gun fire ripping through flesh. Remember the sizzle of caustic gas burning through empty holes that were once eye sockets. Remember the brutal screams and bloody howls through the nights that you couldn’t have possibly slept through. Remember why you’re here: the many men you slaughtered all in a row upon turning the bluff, the fear that ran through you, the molten lead shredding into your legs, the fall backward into the cool mud and waking days ladder swaddled in white sheets and thick bandages. Try not to remember how pleased your commanding officers were, as they commended your “bravery”, your “resolve”, and your “loyalty to the motherland”. Try not to remember the many medals they bestowed upon your breast as if you hadn’t destroyed the lives of men and the dreams of families. Try not to remember your reward (if you could call it one), your “redeployment” as they officially called it. Try not to remember her or the child she bore, what you left behind. Feel the fear of the lost.
Once you arrive at your wonderful reward courtesy of the Czar, trudge through the high piled snow and blistering cold. Watch the massive prison, its spires reaching toward the heavens, surrounded by a wire fence growing closer and closer. Notice the strange manner of the defenses, not a single gun pointed outwards into the vast snowy fields of northern Kamchatka. This alone wasn’t strange as the prison was hundreds if not thousands of miles from the front. However, the several machine guns and light artillery
pointed inward toward the prison insinuated sinister intentions. Feel the fear of the lost. Feel the weight of the unknown.
Attend several meetings and briefings on the nature of the subject matter being studied within the thick, oppressive walls of the prison. Understand which rooms are classified except only to the men in white lab coats and which rooms are never to be entered regardless of rank. Learn plenty but know nothing of what is contained within the north wing of the prison besides the non-stop warnings from officers to never open the small wooden door that serves as its only entrance. Ask every soldier you know about the rather mysterious nature of the north wing. Some think it’s filled with bodies, infested with the next plague to ravage the country. Others believe it’s a new weapon, something to end the war. A select few deliver disturbed answers about dreams and loved ones before disappearing in the night. Sense the ever-growing, ever-oppressive terror that pollutes this hell like mold running through the veins of a long dead corpse. Understand that you should be content with the good rations, simple tasks, and lack of mortar shells shrieking overhead. Curse the feeling that stops you from your peace, that accursed north wing and its foul secrets. Speak to the men in the white coats and sense their fear in the cryptic answers they give about the vanishing men as if they believe themselves to be dancing with lady death herself. “Can you feel it’s voice, can you feel it’s need, can you?” says a disturbed thin man with gaunt features and wide eyes through a voice sputtering like a clogged factory machine. Notice the next day and that the man who spoke these words is now gone as if he had never existed. Feel the fear of the lost. Feel the weight of the unknown. Feel its calling.
Begin to suffer from headaches that strum with pain so bad it feels like thick mud is being poured directly into your brain. Try to pick up your rifle one morning but let it clatter to the floor for your grip to become too weak and frail. Sling it over your shoulder instead as you head to the mess hall for morning rations. Don’t eat your morning rations or your midday rations or your night rations. Actually, stop eating all together and make excuses to miss any communal meals. Use your war hero status to shame officers who have never even killed a man. Become distrustful of your comrades in arms. Assure yourself that you never liked them anyway and they would never understand it. It being the only solace you can find from this twisted, evil place, from the cold blanket of snow around the prison, from the memories of an unending war, and from the pain of the headaches, starvation, and weakness. It is sleeping. Fall into the world of dreams and feel that lovely, singing voice calling to you. Refuse to wake, when it shows you fields of ecstasy and makes you feel them as well. Listen when it calls to you, and it calls you to open the little wooden door, sealing away the horrors of the north wing. Feel the fear of the lost. Feel the weight of the unknown. Feel it’s calling. Feel the compulsion of love.
Volunteer for night watch and walk the twisting hallways that extend before you on your journey to oblivion. The men in the white coats notice you but refuse to stop you from walking off your designated watch route. You know they’re afraid of you or what you might do or maybe where you might go. Don’t fear any of these things as you turn the knob of the small door leading into the evils of the north wing. Swing the door open and run into a dark room with air thick like blood and a smell like the rot of death. Turn around to leave but realize the door is gone in exchange for more pitch-black empty space. Turn a second time
and see them. She stands holding the hand of your child a light emanating through the endless dark. Run to them thinking only of the love you have for them and all the horror you have endured up until now. The war, the prison, the dark, none of it matters now as you break through the black each step growing faster. Reach out to them, open your arms, and prepare to throw them into a deep embrace. Question why you tried to forget. Question why you didn’t return to them sooner. Question what the point of your whole life was if it wasn’t for this exact moment. Remember what your wife and child felt like to hold and remember that they are long gone. Realize that what you’re not holding is neither your wife nor your child. Step back and stare into the burning eyes of the creature.
Stop Feeling