Under The Bed

• Sophia Tranter Sleep, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2018

She hides in the darkness under her bed. Dappled light flecks across her shoulder, igniting a strand of red hair into flame. Her pyjamas are dirty and worn, sprinkled with dust from the smoke and destruction outside.
But here it is warm.
Here it is calm.
Here she cannot be touched.
She can hear the Modules calculating outside, whispering like the wind on a cold morning. She doesn’t know how they think but she thinks it’s with triangles and squares and that on their sensors she stands out like a fire in the night. Her tiny body trembles. Her skeletal face glows in the half-light under her bed. And, as she squeezes her eyes shut, the terror becoming unbearable, she sees her mother and hears her voice in her mind.
“You see this bed?” She’s three and it’s her first invasion. She nods. She’s played through this memory more times than she can count.
“Good.” Her mother pulls her into a hug, wiping away her terrified tears. “Don’t be scared. As long as you’re here, nothing bad can happen to you.”
A smile grows on one side of her face and then the other and her hazel eyes dance. I’m going to live, she thinks, her five-year-old form almost bursting with joy. I’m going to live!
Then the clank rings through the dusk. She turns to run but it’s too late. A module is watching her, its impassive red glare staring into her soul, its colossal metal form rusty from decades of slaughter. A thousand thoughts all flood her mind at once, taking control of her mind and heart and limbs and before she knows it she’s running even though she knows it’s useless and-
There’s a pain in her tummy. It starts subtle then suddenly she’s never felt anything so terrible. She looks down to see a pinprick of blood. It spreads to a centimetre then two, three, four. Soon it looks like a waterlily, spread out in the complex stitches of her pyjama top. In a strange way, it’s beautiful. Her legs turn into wisps and her head into air and she decides to sit down until the feeling passes.
She barely notices when the two come in. She doesn’t pay any attention when the Module erupts into an inferno. She’s too busy trying to stop the room from convulsing and spinning out of control. One of the two moves towards her and says something she can’t make out. A hand touches her cheek.
Suddenly the figure morphs into her mother, her skin showing no trace of the wounds and scars she last saw her with. She knows it’s not real, but in the final moments of her life, she reaches for the only comfort possible.
“Mummy…” she croaks. Her voice is still resonating through the air when her final breath wracks through her body and she stares, sightlessly, into the stars.
When I saw the kid, I cried. But it was all too late. She died before I could comfort her, before I could tell her it was all going to be okay. I searched for years for her family or even just her name, but I found nothing.
At last, I gave up. She was just another victim of another stupid war and another rash decision. Another nameless death amongst millions.