War

• Poppy Hughes, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

I tremble. Blood rushes my body. Butterflies, the tiny pilots of their miniature world flutter in my stomach. Together they cause my heart, stiff with shock, to send fear through me in dreadful seconds, simple seconds that become the soul of something bigger and more haunting.
As the lights go out, I watch in awe and agony as three winged blurs silently drift above our heads and drop their dreadful packages onto the earth for the first, and last time. The red and orange flickers over my view of our once beautiful village, as the scene in front of me fills with smoke and my life becomes too cloudy to see its future. I collapse onto the floor, my world shattered, like the shards of glass, sinking further and further into my skin, stabbing in until my blood runs cold with grief.
I hear the screams of my people as they run, run from their homes where they have belonged. Gone. In a matter of seconds.
Crowds of the affected let out their souls for the final time, praying to their gods to save the precious gems they call lives, but no one hears the pleas for help over the racket. Yelling out to those who have not heard the dreadful song. Screeching into the ears of so many helpless people. Spreading the pain and panic. The sound will pierce into each recipient's mind for years to come. The memories will haunt their dreams and finally, allow them to understand that they will never fully recover.
Bodies. Scattered on the floor where someone has carelessly sprinkled them. Filling my mind with dread and pictures that will send goose bumps shivering around my body when I look back at this moment and feel regret for the beautiful, now incomplete families having to face the daunting trut!,, that a beloved has been lost, forever gone.
The mighty sounds, now terrorising some other land, still taunt my ears. We carefully remove ourselves from the earth, thankful to which we owe our life. We reach up and although the danger may have passed, we stand up to face the patient truth. finally, we are forced to believe the reality of this dreadful nightmare.
I watch. Watch the dark engulf our injured world. Shading us from the horrific view. Protecting our souls until morning when we will stand as one and pray that the future holds something brighter than what we have experienced now.