Off

William Alexander Delemonte sits on a bench awaiting the stage coach that will take him to the train. The last train he may ever ride upon, this train may take him to his death, it may take him to glory, it may lead him to insanity. He wished he could run, but he knew he wouldn't make it far with out being caught up by one faction or the other, either way he would likely end up dead. Better to live fighting then to die running, he thought. He never thought much about death before, until the letter came, but since it had come it was a new burden that weighed on his mind. It was enough that he had to work two jobs to feed his mother, who was sick with the consumption, and his two twin sisters who were only three years old. His father died in the war four years earlier and he had to quit school in order to keep food on the table after his mother became too ill to work at the yarn factory. But now he had been conscripted by the imperial army to go fight the cossacks, and now he waited. He waited for the bus, he waited for the fight, he waited on the edge of insanity and knew that it would soon be here to take him away. To the fray, the blood soaked battle grounds, to the piles of bodies being picked at by carrion, to the peaceful madness. He would never be the same, if he made it back alive he would never be the same man he was this day. He knew that for sure, he knew that he would see things that would never be unseen, things that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his natural life.