Survivors
I crawled over dead bodies and moaning mouths of the dying to get to where my family was alive, hidden in its cave. I had been in search of food and firewood when I discovered I was in midst of a massacre, the killers laughing and competing at who could kill more and quicker in a given time. I hid under a pile of the dead heaped over me that I had dragged by the legs and arms to cover me from head to foot, and I lay face down, not breathing as the killers strolled by, jabbing idly with their knives at the dead to make certain. When the field grew silent, no triumphant, hearty voice to be heard, I slowly and cautiously made my way home on my belly, in case killers in the distance looking back on their work could detect an upright, moving figure.
Now I’m back with my beloved wife and child, and we hug each other in silence from time to time, grateful to be alive, yet sick to our stomachs, unable to eat what I had foraged. Should we too die, we ask ourselves silently, looking into each other’s face, it seems so commonplace and expected, after all those dead who fell like so many apples plucked from their boughs; but we drag ourselves over to the food and force ourselves to eat. Especially I urge our child, insist, command, threaten with punishment as she resists, and she submits, crying and stuffs the berries into her mouth, chews sullenly and swallows.
Page(s) 7
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