All That Remains

• Caleb Randall, Grade 9, Stromlo High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

Moussa clawed through the rubble of what was once his home, his fingers torn and bloody, legs senseless and head throbbing wildly, as if a stampede of cattle was raging through it. He saw light and shoved away the last piece of debris covering him to reveal a smoking sky.
“Mother, Father, Asil!” he called, but none answered his pleading cries. He finally pulled himself out of the tiny space he had been cramped in for over an hour, and as he did, he looked at his surroundings.
Dust, smoke, sand, more dust, part of a broken wall – his home, he moved to grasp something to pull himself into the street next to the ruin of his home, and flinched as he touched a piece of burning shrapnel. He cried out.
“Mother, Father… ASIL, where are you?!” Still no answer but the sizzle of chunks of metal from the exploded bomb – Now something else… a voice, faint, but Moussa could hear it. Out of nowhere, a man appears, clad in a white cotton shirt and abaya, and Moussa feels himself being lifted, and carried, away from the smoke into the sun, and then back under the cover of darkness.
His vision blurring in and out, he still cannot feel his legs, and his left ear rings , but he can still make out faint voices and shapes – a man examining his legs, someone cleaning his face and body, another tucking a cushion underneath his head, and another noise, not speech, no, a drum, no, too loud… An explosion. One after another –‘bang’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’. He tried to raise himself, now remembering– Breakfast, Asil, an explosion… Asil, where is Asil, where are my mother and father!
Moussa attempts to raise himself, but a searing pain through his stomach stops him.
“Please… Wh-wh-where is my sis-s-sister… A-A-ASIL!” He cried, and back again, the man in the cotton shirt and abaya returns.
“Shh, shh, calm down. No, don't try to get up. It’s okay, you're safe now-”
“Wh-where is she?! My sister... ASIL!” Moussa cries, panicked now.
“Your sister, I… She did not make it, the bomb, it... It killed everyone except you. I'm so sorry little one.” The cotton shirted man replies, but Moussa simply slumped back, as though he had now left his body, as though he was in another person’s body, someone else’s disaster. It could not be true, not his Asil, not his little sister.
He looked towards his legs. They had been blown off at the top of his kneecap and the middle of his shin.
“Why… Why is this happening to me?” Moussa sobbed at the man, only now adjusting his gaze to see his saviour properly.
“It is not your fault, little one; we've just been caught up in someone else’s war.”