My mother was beautiful that night. The light played off of her hair, highlighting the bright copper notes intermingled with the brown. The wind blew it about her face, an added touch of power and mystery. Her eyes were hidden in shadows. The chipped incisor was hidden as well, leaving her mouth perfect and unblemished. I remember the softness of her skin, as her cheek pressed against mine, the strength of her hands as she held me close. Her nails were ragged; she had a habit of biting them. Her thin neck jutted upwards, my arms wrapped tentatively around it. I could smell her hot breath and detected the lingering scent ash and bile. When I laid my head against her chest I could hear her heart pounding and pounding against her ribcage as if it was trying to escape. The ribs themselves I could feel pressing through the thin fabric of her dress. It was a new one that day. Light blue, with a pattern of daisies around the skirt hem. A scalloped collar. A thin white belt. The week before, when she had received it, she had laughed her familiar bubbling laugh and held it out for us all to inspect. My older sister had run her hands over it in fascination. My brother and I had also been transfixed. My father had smiled wanly and leant back in his chair, truly content. I was glad that she had gotten to wear it at least once in her life. I leaned my head in closer, burying myself into my mother's embrace. Her sweet perfume filled my nostrils. I felt her hands clench around my shirt.
The sound of the gunshot was barely audible. My ears were already ringing from the earlier explosions. However, I knew what had happened without hearing it. My mother fell to the ground, taking me with her. The road was hard and when I hit it my head collided heavily with the stone. My vision blurred. The last thing I remember is my mother's face, so beautiful to me at that young, tender age. My mother's face staring blankly at me through glassy eyes as she lay beside me on the pavement. Her hair tangled over her face, concealing it like a veil. The burning flames around me lit up her features, revealing the blank expression. Frozen in an expression of fear. The thick blood pooling around her barely had time to reach me. It just touched the tips of my fingers when the world spun and blinked out. I succumbed to the black.
Sounds and words mashed together, none making sense. I remember a pair of arms scooping me off the ground and running down the street. The world was spinning, splitting into two, then reforming into clarity for brief fractions of a second. The person carrying me had a hard, pointed shoulder. Each step they took sent a shudder through me as I jolted into their bones. Something warm and sticky was trickling down the side of my face, but I couldn't raise my hand to touch it. Something had happened and I could barely tilt my head.
I lolled against my carrier, trying my best to look around. All I could see were the flames raging, destroying the streets where I had once walked. Here and there were strange lumps lying on the ground. As we passed one, my eyes rolled round to alight on it and a burst of recognition swelled through me. It was my neighbour, the man who used to play his violin in his garden. He would sit on a wooden stool out by the pavement, his body twisted over from age. The battered instrument had rested beneath his chin and, with gnarled hands, he had bowed out such incredible music. My sister loved him. She always begged for him to play, requesting songs we knew from school. He had always smiled a crooked smile and obliged. Now, his head was at an odd angle to his shoulders and he was lying in a mass of rubble. His mouth was crooked still, baring his teeth in a snarl.
My tongue felt hot and leathery in my mouth. I doubted whether I could make any words. However, I twisted it about behind my dry lips and managed to croak out, "Mum?"
Nobody answered.
I called out again. My voice was weak and feeble, it could barely reach my own ears. My eyes began to glisten with tears. As the fires tore through the city that night, I slouched forward and murmured for my mother, as the tears slicked down my face. My hand clenched tight against the back of the man carrying me. His shirt was ripped and bloody, the fabric was course to the touch. But it was all I had and I clung to it with grim desperation.
The man was a merchant. I had never spoken to him before, but I recognised him from trips around town with my family. He was tall and thick shouldered, with crazed eyes that might have been blue once, but now burned scarlet. When he got too tired to run and carry me, we took refuge in an alleyway a few streets down from my school. Even here, there were fires and rubble. The walls were scorched and black from the soot of explosions.
I had stopped crying now, but still whispered for my mother. The man did nothing to comfort me. He merely looked up and down the streets, poking his head out from behind the wall. There was another explosion nearby, that rattled my teeth and made me give out a loud sob. I hunched over and buried my head in my knees. I just wanted it to leave.
There had been no school that morning. I'd been pleased when I'd heard that, we were meant to be having a test. My brother and I decided we'd play outside. However, it was when my father told us that we were to remain indoors that I was confused. Why weren't we allowed to go outside? It was a day off of school, what else was there to do?
Numerous times in the preceding weeks I had heard my parents conversing in hushed tones, sitting by the TV set late into the night. Sometimes my brother had been with them, leaning forward and listening but not offering any of his own thoughts. My sister and I were both in the dark, being younger than my brother. He was fifteen, my sister was thirteen, and I was ten. The baby of the family. Mummy's little boy.
My bedroom, which I shared with my siblings, was at the back of the house. It was small, with bare stone walls and wooden floor, and three small beds lined up along one side. The blankets were hand-stitched from old clothes and curtains and general rags. Made by my grandmother and passed down. That day, my sister and I had sat playing on the floor while my brother spoke to my father. I had no interest in what either of them were doing. The small marbles trundling over the floorboards were all that concerned me.
The first explosion came in the early afternoon. It rattled the entire house from top to bottom and sent me and my sister crashing to the floor. I have no idea how far from us it had occurred, but it had been close enough to send shockwaves rocking through my entire being. The house was in a blind panic, and I remember my mother bursting into the room. She told us that we were to leave the house now. When my sister began to pick up her toys, my mother yelled at her to leave them behind. Then she grabbed her and and hurried her out through the house and into the street. Too scared by the explosion to do anything else, I ran after them.
My brother and father were already out there, looking panicked. They looked so very similar. Short and broad, with black hair and dark eyes. Lysander. That was my brother's name. And my sister, Viola. Tall and skinny, but dark haired. I was the short and bony one, with my mother's fair skin and red hair.
We began to run when the fires began. The heat on our backs spurred us on, beyond any physical barrier or pain that hoped to slow us. All around, I could hear more explosions and gunshots. I could see the flames coming from fires and the causes of these fires were unknown to my young mind. I could hear screams and yells, and the sounds of buildings collapsing and rubble spilling into the street. It was the sound of rebellion, and it terrified me.
How long did we run? Until my breath began to come in those ragged gasps that seemed to claw out of my lungs, and my legs began to work on autopilot. Smoke got into my eyes, stinging them and making them water. Sweat poured down my back and made my school shirt almost translucent. At any other time I would have stopped to catch my breath, but I didn't stop then. I couldn't. Instead, I lowered my head and powered on. My legs worked like pistons, pumping up and down to drive my body forwards. My arms swung heavily at my sides. It felt like someone had injected air into my head, it felt so empty and light. But not painful. I was beyond pain.
The bomb dropped just as I was rounding a corner, a few feet behind my family. They were knocked to the ground and received bruises. I, however, was sent screeching across the ground, my face to the tarmac. Skin peeled away from my cheeks and grit entered my dry mouth. A horrible, high-pitched, loud ringing surrounded me. I lay motionless, waiting for the world to return to its normal volume. When it didn't, I began to scream. I clutched at my head, banging my ears. The ringing pounded through my skull, trapping me in my own world of all-encompassing explosion. All around the bombs fell, and I could hear nothing but the blasts rattling through my own brain. Terror gripped me as I looked to the sky, seeking guidance. I saw great hovercrafts and helicopters, deploying more bombs around the city. I saw the blue sky was almost entirely covered in the thick, cloying black smoke. I saw roofs of buildings I knew. I saw them crumble into ash.
That was when my mother appeared above me, full and powerful in all her beauty. Her hair whipping around her, her eyes resolute. She spoke to me, though I could not hear. Wordlessly, I reached up. Strange, clambering hands silhouetted against the burning sky. My arms shook, although I didn't know why. I realised my legs were weak. Too weak to stand. My mother scooped me up, carrying me at her hip as she had when I was a child. Over her shoulder, I saw another house fall. It separated us from the rest of the family, blocking off the street.
We ran then, up different roads and alleys as the fires blazed and the bombs fell and the guns rattled. My hearing returned swiftly, although when it did I wished it hadn't. It merely brought back the screams and gunshots all around me.
I had buried my face in my mothers dress, begging for it to all go away. I wanted it to all go away.
Back there in that alleyway, my head in my knees, the tears had returned. Blood was trickling down my cheeks, mingling with the tears and creating a slippery red solution. I don't remember getting to my feet, but I must have done. I leaned backwards against the brick wall and looked around with wide eyes. The sky broiled above me: thick clouds of heavy grey intermingled with hovercrafts and helicopters. The fires raging all around me beat into my skin, making me prickle with heat energy. The man looked at me and said something that I didn't hear. My mind was a hundred miles away. Instead, I turned and staggered down the alleyway. The open street smelled of burning and smoke. Gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes against the outside world, I began to run.
I tore through those streets, blinded by the tears and blood now coming fast from the wound in my temple. I careered wildly through streets, not knowing my destination. All around me, the world was ending. Smoke and flames and explosions were destroying my home and everything I knew. Something caught my foot, sending me sprawling. Looking back, I recognised my uncle. My mother's brother, with his red hair and grey eyes. A man who'd never married, laughing about how he was waiting for the right one to come along. The man who had helped me with my homework so many times, his voice encouraging and sweet. Now he was staring at me with open mouth and blank eyes. I scrabbled back upright and continued to run.
All along the streets, I saw buildings I knew, faces I recognised. My teacher. The shopkeeper. A man who worked with my father, who called me 'sonny'. The woman who walked past the house each morning, whistling a song I didn't recognise. All had been alive and well yesterday. Now they were lying limp and lifeless on the stone ground. Life-size dolls that had ben discarded by a bitter child. They passed me, none slowing me down. I had a destination, my subconscious mind was leading me.
I came to a stop at a house that I knew better than my own. My feet had carried me here of their own accord, following the route I knew so well, finding the house I could go to with my eyes closed.
Once, it had been small, and made of neat wood. Hand-stitched curtains hung in the window, and a line of daisies were in the small surrounding garden. On any other day I would have given out a long whistle and stepped back to wait by the curb. After a minute, the front door would have opened and a boy with golden brown curls, freckles, and a round nose would have bounded down to meet me. Andor. My best friend.
Now though, the house was obliterated. One whole side had been blasted away, leaving little more that thick splinters and ash. The daisies were trampled, turned a deep grey by the fire and smoke that still hung thick in the air. I tried to whistle, but no sound passed my bone dry lips. I stepped back onto the curb and waited, but nobody came. Nobody passed by. The streets were empty, devoid of life.
The world seemed to drop into a slow moving, silent dimension as I walked up to the front door. I could detect far-off explosions resonating through my chest, but I didn't feel them. I registered screams, but I didn't hear them.
The door slid open at my touch. The once spotless kitchen was now filled with ash and rubble. A slow breeze was coming from the obliterated wall. As I stepped in, I noted the bodies here. A woman with long, curling hair was sprawled by the door in a puddle of blood. One arm reached out, as if she had been reaching for the doorknob when she died. Trying to escape. I had to step over her to get in. A man was lolling against the back wall, his body twisted and broken from a large impact. One leg was lying on the floor beneath the table. The bone was splintered and detached from the body. I barely noticed him as I passed by. I walked through the kitchen and stopped at a small door. It was hanging off of one of its hinges. When I pushed, it fell and hit the ground with a dull thud, sending up a flurry of ash.
There was a window in the corner of Andor's room that looked out into the neighbouring street. We had rigged up, with tin cans and string, a small phone with the children in the house next door. Quite often the two of us would use it to speak to them, having whispered conversations passed along the string.
Now though, that entire wall had been blasted away. leaving nothing but stray bricks and splintered glass. The building next door was a pile of smouldering rubble. The bomb must have dropped there, destroying that house and half of this one. Small, and localised. I stepped towards where the window had been. Beneath my feet, there was the crunch of glass. It tore through the thin soles of my shoes, cutting my skin and driving into my flesh. I barely moticed. I stood in the centre of the room and slowly, oh so slowly, turned round.
Andor's body had been propelled backwards and had hit the wall, burying him deep in it. His neck was turned sideways, but not enough to break it. The heat from the explosion had blistered his flesh, turning it bubbling and red, and blistering it away to strange red and black mince. His eye sockets were empty, the eyeballs nothing more than melted goo dribbling down through the rest of the skeleton and intermingling with his flesh. The teeth leered out, the hair was burnt. The lower jaw was drooping in a grotesque scream. It was barely human any more. It was a monster. Something out of a nightmare. And yet, I knew it was Andor. For its left hand, the hand he wrote with, was melted to the remains of a silver can. Fused together forevermore.
The screams as my mind tore itself in two seemed to come from every inch of my body. They echoed out of me as I ran. I ran and screamed and cried and bled and wished that I would just wake up in bed and go to school and kiss my mother on her sweet, floral-scented cheek. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. It was impossible that this, all this, everything that had happened, was real.
I was battered and broken both inside and out. A lone child, sprinting through the darkening streets amidst the fires and the bodies. The final bomb fell just as I was passing the schoolyard.
This one was large, larger than any of the others, and it landed right near me. The shock waves picked me up and sent me flying through the air. Tears and blood sprayed in an arc behind me, showing my trajectory. I landed on something soft: a family of corpses. A fraction of a second for my eyes to shut and my body to curl over. Then, the waved of fire stretching out from this particular bomb hit me.
The screeches of pure agony ripped from my chest as the flames engulfed me. I sprawled out of the family of bodies into the street, scrabbling at my chest. My voice raised decibel after decibel as I burned and burned, just as the world around me died. Just as my home broke away along with everyone I loved, everything I knew. I crumpled to the ground, still screaming and writhing in pain. Flames tore at me, beat at me, lashed at me. I was burning and burning, as the hours and days and years stripped by, leaving me in pain for eternity.
Death was a relief.
And yet, death did not come.