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Noel clasps his shoulder. It’s time. This time, Charlie is going to die, or Noel will—the same fear he has before every run, because the odds are always against them. After all, machine guns and bombs and bayonets and their mindless, impersonal death awaits them at every turn.
Every time, Charlie thinks he will finally say it: I love you. And, every time, he doesn’t. He shows it, instead, clasping Noel’s hand where it sits on his shoulder and looking him in the eye.
The order rings out. The surge. The scramble. Fear is replaced with a grim determination; all he has to do is make his way to the next foxhole, the next trench.
Charlie runs.
Time slows down. That might be the worst part, the world gone sluggish, every second stretching beyond itself. Each step is a nightmare-step, never fast enough to escape the inevitable. Someone to Charlie’s left goes down; they scream, and scrabble at his boot, and so he drops, too, in case it’s Noel, or in case there’s something he can do for them. Bullets strike the muddy ground around him, sending it up in sprays. Charlie turns the man onto his back, but his face is half-gone, his grasping nothing but muscle memory.
Charlie scrambles to his feet. There’s a hole up ahead, created by a bomb God-knows-when—a reprieve for him to catch his breath before his next sprint. He’s almost reached it when he makes the mistake. There’s another dropped body, another maybe-saved, and he pivots to look at them, and something punches him in the stomach. He staggers. When he collapses, he slides into the foxhole, mud gathering thickly under his collar, his helmet. He touches his belly, where the pain sings.
His fingers slip on something.
He stares.
His uniform has been torn. From it, something pale slithers out. For one wild moment, Charlie is sure that it’s a snake, somehow, that it hid in his uniform and the enemy has torn it out of him, somehow, and, somehow, that makes more sense than the alternative, which is a truth that he knows and cannot deny. He’s seen this before. He’s seen men’s guts torn open, and what comes out of them.
He is looking at his own intestines.
A scream wrenches its way out of him, tearing his throat as it goes. He tries to scramble back, to get away from the horror spilling out of him, but that jostles the wound and makes another loop, then another, tumble out of him, and no, no, that’s worse; he can’t let them slither loose.
His hands are filthy with mud and grime; in his shock and panic, it doesn’t occur to him to care. He frantically gathers handfuls and tries to push them back inside. They are slick and fat and, as if with a life of their own, try to slither out of his grasp. He’s not screaming anymore, but something altogether more horrible is happening in his body, a catching moaning wheeze, over and over, his lungs heaving like bellows but giving him no air; his panic steals it all.
There—there—he manages to push a long strand in, but the pressure makes another loop push out. He fumbles and sobs wretchedly. No, no, no, he has fistfuls of his own body, and as he pushes them into his opened belly, more fistfuls plop lazily out, unbothered. A simple fact of death. His efforts are as useful as Sisyphus’. He is fighting Newton’s laws, and God’s laws—but fight he does; he must. That is clearer than all the rest: He must keep fighting.
He cannot give up. He will not give up. He won't. He won’t, he won’t, he won't.
Someone drops into the foxhole. Someone sees his futile struggling and crawls over, and bends over, and puts their steady—steadier, anyway—hands over Charlie’s. They look at one another—strangers, at first, and then, at the same time—their eyes giving them away, eyes they both know, eyes that have said, over and over again, I love you, I love you—they know one another.
”Oh, Charlie,” Noel moans. “Oh, no. Oh, Christ. Oh, no, no, no, no—”
”It’s not all that bad,” Charlie lies, through his teeth, because if all else fails, a little levity always helps, and he can’t bear the thought of their last moments together being riddled with pain. “Jus’ a nick.”
But Noel’s not listening. It’s Noel’s turn; he shoves Charlie’s hands away and takes up their duties, gathering and gathering the slippery organs. Maybe he’s got a better angle or something, because he actually manages it, more or less. He presses both hands over the wound, and so far as Charlie can tell, only a little bit of the intestines are peeking out now, politely, their pink-gray edges peering around the curve of Noel’s hands.
“There,” Noel says. “There. Hold on. Medic! I need a medic!”
But how could any of them hear? How could any of them reach them? What could they do, really, if they managed it? They realize this truth together, the two of them, the total helplessness of it all, and again they’re looking at each other, and again, unspoken, yet understood: I love you. I love you. I love you.
Except—that isn’t actually how Noel is—
No. Charlie's mind refuses to accept that particular truth. Always does, until it can't anymore.
Noel’s hands ease up on their pressure. The intestines, as if curious, unspool a little more at the edges of his grip. Noel swallows and leans down. “Oh, Charlie,” he says. “You’re really in it, now, huh?” He licks his lips and swallows. “How’s it feel?”
What an odd question. Charlie lets his head thump on the ground and watches the murky swirling clouds, the silhouettes of men running past, just shadow play on a cave wall. “Not so bad,” he says.
“No?” Noel’s hands are shifting, still, and, because Charlie is studying the world, he doesn’t register what they’re doing at first. “Interesting.”
And Charlie makes the mistake of looking. Noel has curved his fingers down and in, tenderly. He enters Charlie’s body; he buries himself inside of Charlie’s body.
“I suppose,” Noel says, low, gentle, “I’m not surprised.” His fingers are palpating now—and they are tender, aren't they? So profoundly tender—and as they do, the loops of intestines spill back out, bulging from Charlie’s body, triumphant at once again being witness to his death. Noel’s fingers are moving in, in. Noel’s fingers are fucking Charlie, like they never did in life.
And then it hits him.
Ah. Yes. Of course.
Charlie lets his head thunk back again. He shuts his eyes. The horror doesn’t subside, not really, but the shape of Charlie’s consciousness adjusts to accommodate it. “You like that, huh?” he says, like they’re in on the same joke. And they are, now, aren’t they? He traces his bloodied hands over Noel’s, which are moving faster, and which are losing their bones, becoming fluid and loose, indistinguishable from the intestines. “You are a fucking freak,” he mutters, but his body is responding, and so it must not really matter if that’s the case. The numbness is passing. He can feel them, now, every long and slippery inch. Pain on pain on pain, and yet, through the pain, or because of it, his body stirs.
Noel’s hands are inside of him. They are becoming him, or Charlie is becoming him; it is pointless to distinguish. And the war is just child’s play after all, firecrackers popping off on the fourth of July, puppets dancing at the edge of the foxhole. Why even bother? Charlie wonders, as he loses his body in pieces. After all—the King in Yellow need not put on any show, if this is all he wanted.