Jez (On Review Hiatus - Sorry for the Inconvenience!)

Screams rent the once still air, piercing through the silence like the shriek of a banshee. Those who were sleeping were awoken with a start, looking around with wide eyes. The crackling of flame and the stench of burning wood and thatch permeated the night. The gentle breeze, welcome on any other night of the sweltering summer, only caused the fires to spread. The sparks leapt from thatched roof to thatched roof, each building consequently going up in flame. The sounds of burning, of screaming, of struggle; all were heard on this night. People were running, or hiding, but none were safe.

A man’s bloodcurdling scream ended in a guttural splutter.

In the midst of it all, a little girl flinched at the sound of his head hitting the ground separated from his body. She was crouched in a produce stall, with her head tucked between her knees and her small mud and blood smeared hands were white from gripping her hair so hard. A number of her reddish-brown hairs were limp in her hands. And yet no matter how horrific the scene before her, and no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t force her eyes to close. They were wide in fear and disbelief and tears were streaming unbidden down her cheeks, leaving tracks in the dirt and grime that covered her skin. Her dry, cracked lips were mouthing words that no one heard. The dying man’s spluttering seemed to last an eternity, and when it finally ended it was replaced by fresh screams.

The screams of the toddler made the girl shift where she could see through the cracks, wondering what these men were going to do to the younger child. All that lay before her once innocent eyes would forever stay etched in her memory to serve as a reminder of the horrors of life that all the grown-ups had always kept secret from the children.

A woman screamed as she fell forward, dead before she hit the ground. The hidden watcher almost cried out, bringing a small hand to her mouth as she spied the arrows in the young woman’s back. The woman sprawled across the corpse of her husband, whose throat had been slit and whose blood still ran from the wound, and even as the hidden girl watched, the toddler crumpled next to his parents.

His head lay four feet from his mutilated body.

Unable to stop herself, the girl doubled over and retched. The sound seemed magnified in her ears and she felt that the cruel men outside the produce stall must have heard her, must be heading toward her hiding place right now.

As soon as she was done retching, her head was yanked painfully back by her hair. A cry finally escaped her lips, tears rolling down her cheeks as the metallic scent of blood assaulted her nostrils. As though she were something useless, she was dropped to the ground. Not too far to her right lay the head of the poor younger boy, and she tried to ignore it as the contents of her stomach once more ended up on the ground. Her entire body was shaking from the force of her sobs.

When there was nothing left in her stomach to force its way out of her mouth, she was roughly yanked back to her feet. The slimy, sweaty, dirty man holding her crouched to her level, examining her with a calculating gaze. She wriggled, her hair pulling painfully, and the man shook her.

“Stop movin’, yeh brat,” he ordered, his voice gruff. She stiffened as he said, and noticed the leather armor he wore. He was clearly not an official soldier. Even at her tender age of six, she could tell that he was bandit, or one of the slave traders, or even a mercenary hired by the slave traders.

“That one’s about the right age, ain’t she?” another man, out of the girl’s line of sight, squelched nearer on the muddy ground. It had rained prior to the attack on the village, but even the dampness had not kept everything from being set ablaze when these men had come. The girl cried out when her captor shook her by the hair once more, laughing in his gruff tone. She clenched her eyes closed then, more frightened now than she had ever been in her life.