literature

Memoir of a Space Marine

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SloppyDreamscape's avatar
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Literature Text

You want to know about me?

Your loss.

I was born on a decaying planet. My father was a seaman, whose existence meant nothing to everyone. My mother was homeless filth, and I was the gift bag at the end of her backstreet rape. I should warn you, that’s as glamorous as my story gets.

As a newborn, I had two options: military training at Station V-12, or to hang in the window of the local butcher’s. Don’t look so shocked. On my home planet, human was the only meat left on the menu. My people had long since chewed through all the sewer rats.

V-12 was a legal crime. If an eight-year old didn’t have a gun in his hands, then someone hadn’t properly stocked the armory. It was a place where kids who couldn’t meet the physical demands of their training were packed in a crate and shipped into battle as a front line soldier.

Nah, nobody cared. They were fodder for the endless war. A war where statistics like, half-a-million dead children a month, wasn’t mourned. It was expected.

I was given to the Space Marines. Some say, I got lucky. My purpose was to live a hero, and die a legend. My mission was to kill. My tools were . . . well, they were whatever I could get my hands on. Ammo was sparse. Once, I ripped a Skellig apart with its own fangs. That was a good day.

My team? Hmmph. I suppose you expect me to speak of them as my “brothers in arms”, or something as equally patronising? Well, you’re out of luck.

Conversation was rare. None of us had a name. We were suits of armour with nothing inside but bubbling masses of rage. When patrolling the swamps of Cuur, I’d see myself reflected in the waters. Well, truth be told, I could’ve been looking at any one of us. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

Most Marines went from birth to death as quickly as rain falls. When times were at their worst, rain fell by the bucketful. Not that you’d have heard about those slaughters. No, the human race only cared for the battles we won and the number of enemies our bullets tore apart. In their eyes, I am a success. I will die a legend.

But after the horrors I’ve seen, I turn to those who claim I’m lucky and ask, 'Then why do I fall to sleep praying I had hung in that butcher’s window?’
Having fun writing in a genre I know almost nothing about!
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Comments5
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Chipchinka's avatar
What a potent piece of writing.
It grabbed me from the beginning and held on long after the end.  I love the fact that this sidesteps anything and everything "nice" but doesn't really bludgeon the reader over the head with grimness, despite the fact that grimness is all that there is.  There's a kind of "life goes on" quality to the narrator's outlook, and the ending shows us a real glimmer of humanity, despite the fact that it comes out in the razor-edge mode of the rest of the story.  The narrator praying for that other option that'll never happen now is intense and is the most harrowing emotional aspect of this story.  The world-weary sense of regret is so potent that it just forms a haze around my laptop screen.  This is intense.