The Night Divided

• Sarah McKean, Grade 5, Hughesdale Primary School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition

My hair curled around the wind as the realisation came to me that tonight is the end of the world.
The light came closer; every flash was followed by screams. Gunshots could faintly be heard as my mother frantically sprang around the house collecting items for our ‘trip’ away. Her face full of heart as disturbed sorrow filled the air. I gazed in the flashes from my porch, flashes of red covered the Star of David on the synagogue. With only the thought of Nazis gladly destroying everything cowering behind it.
We hid in the thick, dark woods out the back of our lonely house. The wood was humongous, miles and miles of long, thin pine trees towering above us like Nazi officials with guns pointed at our heads, laughing. We began to persistently climb a colossal mountain face. The rocks were slippery every grip fell from my grasp; heaving my way up I finally made it to the top.
We zigzagged across the crackling hill in a way no one could follow us. My eyes leaked with tears as the thought of everybody in the village being slaughtered filled my thoughts. DEATH. POWER. TERROR. My sight blurred as I clung to my mother's arms. We began walking down some steps, I was placed on a hard surface with something around my shoulders.
When my eyes had cleared as I realised that I was sitting on a hard bed in a small stone hut. The air was strained as I noticed 12 children younger than me huddled at my feet, shivering, listening to my cries. My mother scurried across the room while 4 other mothers worked at the gas stove, getting as food.
Screams could be heard; one after another the children cried in response. My mother glanced at me, pleading for something to help. I began talking to the children, trying to get some peace.
BOOM!
The safe hut had been destroyed. I was lucky but not everybody was. Pieces of stone had been flung miles and miles away from where the hut originally stood. Shrapnel from the stove pierced my body as blood circled around it. I found my mum standing in open ground. The shouts and yells were coming closer now and for the first time, I realised...
The only thing I could see was my mum’s body. I knelt beside her, gun in her hand. I knew what I had to do. I took the gun. The man facing my mother looked down, I couldn’t see his face, but it didn’t matter.
BANG! BANG! He lay on the ground blood all-over, dead. A swastika was imprinted on the man’s worn and broken leather jacket. I looked around me, bodies and bodies of monsters and humans crowded dead on the floor. They had left me…