It's so quiet.
The small, ash- haired boy hides in a crumbling doorway. He's scared. Of the ghosts. He can smell them. See them. Hear them. In his head.
All his friends are gone. Taken away. They found one of them after the slaughter and they took his last friend away. He can still hear the terrified scrams in his mind. He claps his hands over his ears. But he can still hear them. Inside.
His rises to his tiny feet and stumbles away. He's hungry.
The streets are empty and burned and charred rubble litters the desolate scene.
He halts outside his house. He timidly walks in It's almost like a crypt now. He goes quietly into the main room and looks hopefully at the able. There's some food there. His mother had just cooked it when….when the fire- soldiers came.
He can't eat it. It's beyond rancid, covered in flies. Their darkness is swarming all over the food. Just like the way the darkness now festers in his tender heart.
His thin shoulders shake as his little face crumples. He can't stop the river of tears, cascading down his grimy cheeks like diamonds, cutting shining, spiderwebbing tracks through the sticky dust and dirt.
''Mommy…''
His tiny, vulnerable sobs echo through the empty shell of the house.
---
He stumbles outside again. He's so hungry that it feel like a vicious animal is growling and clawing at the walls of his hollow stomach.
His little feet are hurting as he staggers down the deserted street in desperate search of something to eat. He lost his sandals and now the tender soles of his feet are covered with blisters and sores.
He stops suddenly. He can hear them behind him again. The spirits. He whimpers in terror and breaks into a run.
He trips, crashing into the hard, dusty ground. His knee's grazed. It's bleeding. He wipes the crimson liquid off and cleans his hand on his stained tunic.
What did he trip over? His eyes comb the ground. There it is!
He picks it up and holds it in his little hands.
His friend's doll. It's blackened with soot. Burned around the edges. Torn in the chest.
He wipes the soot off with his tiny fingers. The doll looks up at him with black, empty eyes. She's still smiling. He's not.
He hugs the toy against his thin chest as his eyes burn with tears. They drip onto the dusty, dry ground.
He'll make them pay. He'll burn them all to the ground. They'll die screaming.
They'll wish they never came here.
They'll burn.
No one ever again saw the tiny, vulnerable child that once cried, in desperation, in fear, in love, in anguish:
''Mommy…''
Never again.
They'll burn.
