There was smoke everywhere. The continuous gun-shots were fired at a heart beat pace. People were screaming, people were dead and dying all over the street. People were running everywhere and they fell dead as they tried to flee the violence that was upon them. Sadists, blood thirsty sadists, killing off humans for no solid reason.
In the midst of all this, a twelve year old boy sat, huddled in the shadow of a wreckage of a car that was partially in ashes. The street around him was in rubble and ruin. His grimy, black-smudged face was obscured by his small, dirt covered hands while tear tracks glistened from the corner of his soft brown eyes and down his bony cheek. His clothes were blackened with smoke and an array of stains. His legs were popped up in front of him, the blue-denim torn at the knees and caked with a small splatter of blood displaying the result of a very recent fall. He was wishing for his parents, who he had not seen for nearly a day. His elder brother and sister were long gone too; they had gone to find the whereabouts of their parents, and he, the youngest, was left alone in a lonely flat above a street shop when the firing had started. The street was teeming with people both forever still or standing and fighting. The stench of death and the salt-rust smell of blood clouded his brains while the smoke of the burning buildings choked him, burning his throat and eyes. The street and its once handsome shops were an inferno and they charred away into black smoke and black dust in front of his eyes. The flames devoured shops and houses that had once been displays of delicious sweets, trendy clothes and shelters of loving families and friendly people.
Dead bodies were scattered and he watched people burning alive, the smell of charred flesh making the bottom of his stomach convulse in horror and disgust. Blood was all around him, pooling rich-red under the gunned down mangled bodies like carpets of the deepest burgundy, splattered like paint on walls and shattered windows while at his feet, shards of glass were scattered like high cut diamond. His shut his eyes and covered his ears with his blackened hands, trying to block this nightmare from his thoughts. The noise of the explosions and the fatal screams were at a fever pitch. He thought of his family and he wondered what had become of them. He tried to drive the demons out, the gory beasts that attacked his young mind, scarring it with their sadistic actions, he was trying to shut them out but all was of no avail.
He remembered his family and a tear fell down his face. He thought of his mother and in his mind, he saw her soft, beautiful face and long dark hair and from a sane corner of his mind then sprung a memory of his mother singing a song to him. A song she always sang to him and his brother and his sister when they were sad. Remembering her words, he began to sing to himself. To drive the horrendous scene around him away, to tune it out, he sang her song. The fighter planes flew overhead, the guns fired continuously and he sang her song, tears running down his face because he wanted to shut it all out.
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom let it be
The explosions increased in sound and the screams increased in frequency. He kept singing to himself, remembering those times of his life that made him truly glad for living. Now, it seemed like memories out of another person’s life. The happy times he remembered seemed unreal amidst this war and this hate. Yet they were there, still and frozen in time, always to be reckoned with as a happy recollection.
He remembered how his father picked him up and flung him around, pretending that he was a flying a plane until he was screaming in delight. He remembered one time when his brother had taught him to carve animals out of driftwood bark and they had made a whole family of bears with the driftwood. The memories of his sister playing the large, gleaming black piano with him came to him in a rush and then saw his mother in his memory, dressed in her large yellow apron, piping icing onto cookies while him and his sibling decorated the with their father popping cookies into his mouth when he thought they weren’t looking. The memory made him smile. The rush of colour and vitality in his memories were overwhelming in the black and grey setting he was now in. They shone strong and bright against the dull, muted greys of the hate and sadism that surrounded him. As the memories rushed on in his head and his lips sang the song, the blur of the recollection was a rapidly moving, vivid film-reel of images, some moving some frozen forever in time. He watched them, and in his is young soul, he was thankful for the happiness he had had for he wasn’t certain of living longer under the situation.
His eyes flew open when something fell on the ground next to him. He saw the body of a wounded, battle-worn soldier, a gunshot wound in his leg and arm, his uniform covered in blood and grime, and his faced gashed and bleeding, his hands shaking in uncontrollable pain, life slowly bleeding out of him. A fallen hero. He watched in horror as the blood dripped out of the soldier’s wounds and his body tremored on the street. The boy, in a selfless moment of desperate empathy reached out to the soldier’s large hand and covered it with both of his, holding it tightly, to trying to tell him that it was alright and showing him that he’s there, next to his battered body, keeping him alive for heroes like him were not meant to die. Maybe the soldier understood, because he smiled at the boy and breathed free for after what might have been years and held on to the small boy’s hand. The boy closed his eyes, tears dripping down his nose, and sang his mother’s song again, and amidst the hate and violence of the war stricken street, both the man and boy both found a moment of peace and serenity in their minds as they shut all other things out.
There will be an answer, let it be
