THE SMILING CORPSE
by W. Scott R. Brownlee

In the aftermath of the great battle, the sloping, once grassy fields were strewn with the bodies of the dead soldiers, from both sides. The early morning wind was silently blowing the grass gently along. Most of the field had been blown apart, charred, trampled, muddied over or was still smoldering. Smoke billowed from a burning tank near an outcropping of sheared poplar trunks. Soot sifted languidly downward in the orange amber dawn sky, tickling the sweaty cheeks of the corpsman that crawled in the midst of the carnage that was once a sea of grass. Screams were silently frozen on the faces of the dead. Melted faces bared teeth jutting awkwardly out of molten globs of skin like candle wax. Amongst the dead were a few survivors, moaning exhaustedly.

Yesterday the battle had raged on and on until finally settling down beneath a late summer shower; thunder claps eclipsing the sounds of machine gun fire and the eminent roar of the artillery. During the night the rain ceased and the stars shone. The night had grown strangely cold, keeping the stink of the dead, rotting flesh down. It was autumn like, crisp, cool and refreshing, numbing the pain from severed spinal columns, fractured skulls and broken limbs. Dangling intestines were still steamy and dirt speckled in the dim, early morning light.

Through the slick mud the corpsman slithered, searching for the wounded so that he could administer opium, bandages and sulfa powder. His mission was to keep their moaning down so that the reconnaissance units scurrying ahead of him could keep their nerves under control. They were to scout the enemy’s perimeter with binoculars, then radio in coordinates for the next artillery strike. Their binoculars lenses were kept immaculately clear. The corpsman crawled on top of dead, mutilated bodies, their muscles raw and exposed, piles and piles of them, cold and slimy, their dead flesh sticky from coagulated blood, their uniforms saturated with blood, mud, dew and rainfall. The corpsman slid past a dead soldier that was naked and what was left of his pale white skin was charred. Tattooed on his buttocks was a smiley face. The only sound heard upon the silent winds of the battlefield was the medic’s unexpected chuckle.