Bad Taste

We went paintballing on Remembrance Day.
Bad taste.

Going out to war we were laughing, arms looped, blurting jokes through plastic masks. And through the masks, blurred with steam and scratches and spit, the sky was the bluest blue. The leaves were all the colours autumn leaves should be, all at once, all in one wood, and the soft ground underfoot was green with moss and red-brown with the dead leaves and blue where the bluest sky had fallen in puddles. It was beautiful. And the tree-trunks were splattered green and yellow from the bullets bursting. They burst on our backs, too, and our arms and legs and hands. They bit so hard into our cold flesh. The wetness of the paint. The pain. We were surprised, each time, to see no blood. Our feet, our hands, were bitter-damp. Our fake masks couldn't keep back the fake gas and so we choked. The sound of the gun-shots. The screams. The thudding of our hearts. The fear. And when the game was over, the silence fell. The heavy silence that only falls where once was devastating, deafening noise. That only falls when everyone, everything is dead. That silence rang throughout the wood. And then we remembered them. We remembered them. We remembered them.

We put our cold guns down. Took our masks off. Ran our hands over our dirty faces. Ran our tongues over our lips, wet where bullets had burst through the mask. Thick, lurid paint.
Bad taste.