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By Ryan Saunders
 
Ryan Saunders has always had an affinity for words; he just doesn't know what they all mean yet. His earliest recollection of anything close to writing was looking up, amongst others, words like 'sod' and 'bugger' in the dictionary (in the grander scheme of things its what its there for, isn't it?) when he got hold of a thesaurus and miraculously his insults had variety. Writing only became a career decision for him when he realised he had the unique ability to make a sexual innuendo out of ‘in-u-endo’ (he still giggles).
Currently, Ryan lives and works in Jo’burg where creativity has momentarily taken a back seat to the career of a copywriter, but that 300 page masterpiece is always sitting on the horizon waiting to be written. extract from Brother Evil Captain James Bowman stayed low as he waded through no-man’s land. The war was over, but not everyone seemed to have received the message. Every night cannons lit up the sky in the distant hills. The men considered it simply as fireworks to their celebrations, trying not to think of the numbing torments every flash brought to the soldiers in those hills. Even the crows dared not collect their fees yet.
Captain Bowman trudged onward through the morning fog. The faces of the dead turned to him with open mouths as they floated past. With the addition of the recent heavy rains it became almost impossible to see where mud ended and bodies began. German and English bodies entwined in post-mortal embraces. Twig and bone cracked underfoot. With every step, Bowman’s boots stuck to the red, bloodied glue that coated the ground.
For three years statues of dead bodies decorated the void between the opposing sides. Silhouetted against the burning evening sky, rigor mortis had sculpted them in their final moments. Their hands pierced the sky, pointing to the heavens, asking God for salvation.
Directly in front of his trench there was a cluster of standing and kneeling bodies entangled in the wire. From the trenches the quartet resembled a magnificent statue of four heroes classically posed in a fight against evil. However, now that he was up close he saw them in all their true horror. Their faces hung in screaming terror. After so many months or years their grey, rotten skin sagged off their skulls. Putrefaction had sliced, gouged and carved its way into their tissue and what remained of their eyes were now dark wells where their souls once shone. The oldest of the bodies was now just a uniformed skeleton, constantly marching into battle, waiting for the terror to end.
Finally Bowman came to a halt next to a blasted tree that had dominated the landscape for the entirety of the war. It was the inviting cover that soldiers from both sides had scrambled towards when they went over the top. Just before this unwavering front was built the top of this ominous tree had been cleaved by a German shell. All that remained now was the trenched roots that invited cowering attackers to cringe away from fire and sight.
This was where They had hunted.
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