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The Old Cure that Never Aged

by  Scott

Posted: Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Word Count: 751
Summary: A short fable




"Run" screamed a young soldier, to who he didn’t know since everyone was already doing just that

"Stand your post,” shouted a Captain as his heart brokenly, wept with self-pitying fear<

No one seemed to take any heed of the now seemingly crazy leader standing still alone and so he lashed out and grabbed the first young pike he could get his hands on

"Stand your post man!" he order to the man in his grasp<

"Why" cried the bewildered young boy, no older than fifteen, "What’s the point?"

The captain let go and looked at what marched to greet them, he had no idea why he or anyone else should stand or run, they were doomed either way, there was nowhere to hide, perhaps somewhere beneath his crushing feat he accepted his fast arriving fate and wished to bow out with the grace he had carried through life with him

In the distant, beneath the weeping heavens and the thunderous claps of the sky marched forward a force far more frightening than the worries of death

On the ground slowly stepped giant men who had long left their earthly cadavers behind, on their shoulders lay smaller soulless beasts who held to their breasts long spears that reached far out in front, upon their backs stood more men who upon their shoulders lay more small demons and so on and so on. Towards the small town of Smithwytha herded a black wall of men over a thousand man high, devil on top of devil, swaying and drifting in mid air as the giant beasts below carried them towards their own certain destruction. Those at the top had no weapon other than their own bodies, around their chests they wore spiked iron to create more havoc once they were to descend into free fall and crash like bombs into their prey below

The captain stood still still as he watched the black wall of men trap the last specks of sun behind them and cast shadow over the town he was born to and would now die in.

What was the point, he wondered, when his enemy came crashing down they would win but only with the death of most of their own men who they used as suicide bombers, they would win only in mind but no one would win in actuality, wouldn’t it be better if both could just come to an agreement and both walk away alive and with a life to be happy with.

Instead they all soon lay dead with only the seeds left to plant what would grow in their children’s heads and their children’s and a hundred generation children’s minds.

The Captains before his statics death was just a man called Bernard, Bernard Kilkard, Smithwytha was a peaceful town, untouched by outsiders for a thousand years and so had no need for an army and so Bernard was quickly made a Captain by name just because he was a man of education, a man who others believed could rule a crowd of frightened men like he would do a class of children who needed to be taught how to act. Bernard taught medicine as a life line, by night he studied and sought a cure for a illness that ravished his town for as long as books had been written, in recent years the deaths were growing more frequent and he had wanted to do the world a great service by finding a cure.
Of course the evil came to town and every man, woman and child were called to arms, they hadn’t a chance, the men of the mystic west were champions of war and no small band would break a sweat in their goal of absolute rule

Looking into a time that might have pasted I can see what Bernard would have been, should have done if not man urge for the counter strike destruction to all the unique wonders it can create, instead of being a man crushed by the tidal wave of human bullets that fell from the sky in the name of their religion he would have gone on to create the cure for what we now call cancer. In five hundred years since he died without ever being buried we still haven’t came as close as he had.

Just think how history may have been so different if no man ever laid murdered, all those chances and lives destroyed, not only their own but others and perhaps the world