This is the wall that guides my walk upon war.

   My grisly walk upon the pure massacre executed within crumbling cities. A crumbling reminisce of a concrete jungle whom once encaged civilized human beings. Beings that understood that bold, pristine pallet that blended the colours of morality with a sense of dignity. A sense of righteousness, security and personal well being. The morals that stabilized society’s ability to function. To identify the book of right and wrong. Those old, antique pages that have guided civilization from its birth.  And where we very well know if that book were to go missing, all society would inevitably corrupt. Envelope itself in an airtight barrel tarnished with hate, violence, brutality and anguish. The label churned into its sour mist of trauma reading war.

   I hear my footsteps crackle under the broken bones of Earth.

   This is the wall that guides my walk upon war.

  The man began to cough as he felt the sickening dry scent of ash burn at the back of his throat. The constant drill of ammunition penetrated his skull, as a chisel would strike soft wood. His thoughts were left in a vortex of disarray, hammering against the basement of his mind, battering all comprehension to the stale atmosphere of anguish and violence surrounding him. Tripping, and scampering over split concrete and endless litter, he still managed to run his hands along his guide. For he would be lost without it.

   He knew he had passed the worst of it, as the searing explosions and petrified shrieks now lay in the distance, entering his soul in a dull, delayed thump. However the mental distress still stayed with him. It was not the brutal fall that had ripped a deep wound in his leg, now an enflamed ache as the dust-ridden flesh rubbed against raw bone. It was not the freezing cold rain that had splintered upon his skin, now leaving his hair stiff like dry straw. It was not the weeping winds that coated his skin in a sheet of stinging ice, and had caused his body to be colder than it had ever felt before. It was not the physical agony that the war had brought upon him.

   It was the sheer fear that had impaled him while crossing a war within crumbling cities. A dagger that cut him so deep that he no longer believed in human morality. The justice now seemed so distant that it was no more than an ancient whisper amongst the winds. A virtue of the past. It had been packaged, sealed and sent off this planet a long time ago, with a large “no return” stamp stapled to it.

   The man finally ended his desperate struggle. Allowing himself to fall in a heap, wanting to clear the erratic trauma, and release those scrambled thoughts. He put his bruised hands gently over his head, back against the crusty surface of the buildings wall. His shoulder blades ached as they rested against its cold, solid surface.

   The man pushed his fingers through his overgrown mop of hair, feeling the clumps of dirt and grit that stuck to his scalp like dry plaster. He moved his hands to his face, a mould of prickly stubble, with dents and grooves that were rough and pronounced. He then felt his eyes, two swollen holes that made him flinch at their sensitivity, as the wounds were still left untended to. His eyes, he was sure, would never to be see out of again.

   The organ had failed him, in the very first week the war began. But all this was irrelevant to the man right now. He did not need his vision. He knew exactly where he was. Amongst the crumbling cities he could still locate memory. Not all had defeated him. The wall, his map, his only guide to familiarity.

   He still lived to be here. Home.

   Right where he was the moment the war began. A war larger than its two previous competitors. The damage the third world war had brought had shed more devastation throughout the globe than any other. Hell had been brought to Earth’s surface, resurrected from the grave. Extracted from our mineral soils. And this time the conflict was of the purest form. Over Earth itself. The planet was changing, and no one was willing to accept it. The seas blew over the lands, engulfing as much of the Earth’s crust as it could. The biggest migration ever known to the human race was born. There was not enough land, nor funding to support the people. And as the rules bent, the government shriveled. No longer was anyone in control. And that was how the war evolved. A nuclear minefield of hate, murder, loss and utter helplessness.

   The man continued to sit. Allowing himself to breathe in the chalky atmosphere that smelt of the soot and scorched rubble, even though it enhanced his drowning lungs and weak guttering breaths. He had gone as far as he could. No more would he pursue his grisly walk upon a crumbling city. He wanted only to remember.

   To remember a day without war. Without violence or anguish.

   One pristine day.

   So he would think a while. Against the wall that had guided his walk upon war. 

   And soon those dry, but definite breaths would turn fragile and small.

   And maybe, just maybe, he would have a last memory based in a perfect world.