Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
A single bullet was all that was needed to start the last ever war on earth. A bullet and the head of a small child to put it in.
Innocent, in as much as she surely had in her possession a life less used. But then so did many of the lifeless things that now lay beneath this land of wasted ruin.
Things. Numbers. But she was different. The daughter of a man who held sway. Her blood more precious than most.
Aio stands drawing circles in the sand with her bare toes as oily smoke twists beyond the glinting razor-wire border. There’s a snap and her eyes twitch as her ears reach out and draw down the crack of its echo.
She feels warmth as the thumbnail-sized nib punctures the soft puff beneath her eye, but not the expanding hand as it scoops out the maw fruit of her mind and punches it through the back of her skull. She drops, her tiny toes curling in grotesque contraction into the ancient red soil at their tips.
Vast volumes of resolution, treaties that had for years rolled the bitterness of belligerent peace behind radium stained teeth, evaporate as if never written. Such fury as the man’s words tear away at the shroud, the battered nation-less flag cast long ago and pegged down at its corners with bones. It that snapped to a blur, smudging for the world tales of the righteous and those who would throw stones at bullets.
He’d flattened his daughter’s warm hair as the desert wind held and picked and played at its wisp. Now he’ll rip all of their faces to rags and they will catch on the ruins and flutter like banners, and he will melt the red sand at their feet.
And so the code does fall from his lips and long maligned missiles finally they breath and the wolf tempest pouches and bites.
This is it, the last ever war. And it will last for ever more.
This is horribly real life for a fantasy piece… Hopefully it will stay ever a fantasy though.
I hope so too. Common sense and humanity, seems simple enough.
Ha….
Ha… exactly.
Good all the way through, but the last line is a real killer.
Thank you so much, David. Reading your comments is always great encouragement.
You have so much happening here in so small a place. It Just all feels so sadly real.
Thanks Emma, I hope this is a reflection of the intractable belligerent mindsets that allow such atrocity to breathe.
A tight hard hitting piece. Much enjoyed.
Thank you. I am trying to tighten up my writing and shed some of the dangling bits that hang off the sides 🙂
A hefty concentrate of indignation and wraith. Well condensed. You got me with this one, Hari!
Dear Adam, of the people who read and offer feedback on my work you were the last one I expected to comment. I am well aware that my (hopefully) evolving writing style is not to your taste. And so, I am somewhat taken aback, yet, much appreciative of your comments. Thank you.
The hell of war wonderfully put.
Thank you very much andreavolpe34. What is it good for?