Another blast from the Freshman Year past! This story is rare for my Freshman year because it is the only story with complete freedom. For all I know the prompt might have been: You must write a short story about the cold and do it before the administration notices you are being creative. Well create i did, and i am rather proud of the result. Like the guy who invented champagne I was quite pleased to open my hard drive and find this bubbly document waiting for me to put on the internet (note: the history of champagne and its discovery have been changed dramatically to meet the demands of the simile.)

I remember my grade for this because it made me very angry (whadduya mean B-?). I think my grade was reduced because i didn't name my character or something stupid like that. I think at one point in one draft I called the nameless private Comrade Coward, but even at 14 I knew that people wouldn't get the subtlety. I probably should of called it The Man versus the Cold, but I'm sure I feared people would expect either a story about the Cold sticking it to the man, or some sort of bizarre boxing tale.

It shocks me that even at 14 I could start out with a confusing inner dialouge spoken by an unnamed character and finish with three innocent people dying for no real good reason. The moral: don't let Doug go a year without a monthly writing piece or else he may kill fake people he fake made up. Fake.

Patrol duty sucked. Everyone knew that, at least, every Army member knew that. Patrol Duty consisted of walking slowly back and forth in front of a big gate. Then you were yelled at for not looking hard enough at the horizon. Occasionally an officer would stop you and take away a blanket from you and smack you with it, then return it.

That intense misery was nothing compared to live combat, the private thought shaking nervously. He was assigned along with half of the patrol to engage the sneaky and deadly enemy, the enemy were said to live in the forests, so here they all were in the middle of a dense smelly green forest. Naturally their “superiors” walked them straight into an ambush. At least half of his comrades fell to the angry bullets of the unseen opposition, well maybe more because fifteen shots into the one sided fight the private ran away at a full sprint towards the direction of the fort.

Well at least he thought it was the direction, but after twelve or so minutes of a full out sprint, he could not go on. He came to a stop next to a mighty oak, he was just about to whip out his map when he heard foot falls approaching his position. He was being followed! A mental image of the enemy ran in his head, and it scared him to his core. He peeked out over the brush and saw the two menacing beings coming closer, he did not think, there was no time, he simply yelled and fired his rifle.

The private dragged their bodies into a cave he had found, the first one he stumbled upon that shielded him partially from the icy wind. He quickly constructed a fire and turned to face the two enemy whose lives he had ended. He wanted to inspect the bodies and shake away that guilty feeling that had been building up inside him. He wanted to look into the face of those who attempted to kill him, he wanted to assure himself he made the right call.

But searching his kill had a severe opposite effect. It didn't take long for the now trembling sick private to realize that he had made a grave mistake. The men turned out to be part of his ambushed unit, they probably had just saw him run away and followed. The private wept openly at this revelation, his tears froze before they hit the cave floor, their pitter-patter the only sound to accompany his sorrowful cries.

But with sorrow came the need to survive and after exhausting most of his energy the man decided to make the best of this tragic situation, maybe the fresh meat would help him think of a way to get home.

He ate the fattest one first; the private’s now roaring fire (a fire built with all the clothes that would not fit the freshly dead) cooked the fat man’s outer skin quickly and soon revealed eatable meat. The private had never before prepared his own meal however and in no time the haphazard spit he was using collapsed into the fire, dosing it immediately. Now the he was without his precious fire and he only had one more body to eat.

The private assessed the losses quickly and decided action was necessary so putting on his coat he ran out into the forest to grab some more firewood, he came across a clearing that was the final resting place of a giant oak that had been blown over by the fierce winds, the private lost no time and soon had a large bundle of frozen lumber. He hurried back to his cave at a fast pace, knowing that every second without fire was a second closer to death. He unloaded his heavy load and was running all out through the cave when an untied shoelace got caught on the corpse that was lying in the entrance way.

His legs flew out from under him, the cold ground seemed to rush up and meet him as he feel headfirst into it. He heard a sickly snapping sound and immediately felt immense pain. He tried to life his broken body and turn to see the body he tripped on, but the time for moving was long passed. The only sensation left to the poor private was death's icy fingers sapped his slowly-freezing body. The cold pain moved up his arms and legs working slowly and painfully to his heart, and then, he felt nothing.