The sky lit up with color as the bombs came from all around me, violent explosions of orange, purple, and red against a deep blue sky. They hit with a devastating force before my very eyes. Anything in their path destroyed; buildings caught fire and crumbled to the ground. Glass shattered covering he ground below as I ran back to the apartment to hide.
As I ran I saw a man lying there amongst the wreckage of the street. Something had to be wrong, I thought to myself. I ran over to the man, he was pinned down by a fallen street lamp.
"Help!" he called when he caught sight of me. "Friedrich? Friedrich is that you?"
As I approached the man a bomb crashed into a nearby building, causing the ground to quiver beneath me. From this distance I recognized the man and ran even faster to him.
"Herr Neudorf!" I cried. "Herr Neudorf, what are you doing here?"
I couldn't figure why someone who had a choice would be out in this mess.
"What am I doing here? What are you doing out here boy?" he asked as I tried to remove the light from his legs.
"I couldn't get into a shelter." I managed to get out. When his legs were finally free, I held out my hand for him.
"Come on," I told him as another building crumbled behind me. "We have to get out of here."
Just as he took my hand he pushed me away and I felt pain in my head followed by a flow of warmth. I staggered to my feet and trudged my way over to where Herr Neudorf had been.
"Herr Neudorf?" I called out.
There was no answer so I called again. There was no answer. That was when I saw right where I stood moments ago, part of the building had fallen on him leaving his body a broken and mangled piece of bloody flesh.
"No one should die like this." I whispered to myself. I looked around me. The city was in shambles, a mere shadow of what it once was, finally I found what I was searching for. There on top of a pile of rubble was a piece of white cloth. I took the cloth and carefully placed it over his face.
As I continued to the apartment where I was to wait, I began to feel very tired. Each step seemed to take longer and longer. The warm flow still continued down my head, and into the collar of my fresh shirt.
I opened the gate, and as I walked down the path, I felt my mind begin to wander. I sat down on the front porch knowing I was too tired to continue up the stairs, when all of a sudden, though I could still hear the shattering glass and the impact of the bombs crashing into the buildings, all I could see was one of my few fading childhood memories.
The ground no longer covered in soot and ash, but instead covered in pure white snow. The raging heat of fire and war replaced by a calm and soothing cold, and there in the middle of the yard was my mother and father. Waiting for me, mother with open arms and father behind her with his hand on her waist, his face more calm than I could ever remember.
As the air got colder and colder I saw them more and more clearly. My hearing was also changing now, I could hear Helga's pristine laugh as she too walked right into my dream and stood next to my mother. She was wearing a pure white dress the color of the snow. I got to my feet and walked over to my loved ones leaving all memories of the war behind. It was like falling into a deep and forever sleep. Finally I was at peace.