blackbird

chapter 1-the attack

Chapter one
Lulu was way ahead of me, and if I don't push up further, I might lose sight of his tattered white shirt he is wearing, with slippers that looks to be worn if he keeps up with his pace. My throat is dry, from all the running, from the bullets and chaos we left behind.
What bothers me is my other friend okuto who is currently behind me. He was the more energetic one anytime we played in the field, and now he can't keep up? I wonder, but he looked tired, more than anyone of us, seems he can't keep up with the rest of us.
Others were far much ahead of us, some we have lost on the way, some died from the distance and lack of water, but some who were mostly children have lost their lives through exhaustion and starving.
Many of us are ahead, everybody fearing for their own lives. Children crying here and there have been the only sound in the air. Despair, fatigue, hopelessness, yells of pain and grief, has been the order in the middle of the community we once called home.
I saw my brother cut into half, my older brother; I saw my uncle's leg apart from his body, groaning in pain in the ground until the only sounds emanating from him were groans of pain till he died.

I saw my friend's mother head chopped off and the headless body writhing on the ground till it became motionless, and I saw my fathers' lifeless body on the morning dew, I heard my mother cry with the most painful yells I've ever heard in my short life. I have seen pain; I have been horrified, till I had nothing left in me, but numbness.

My mother and younger sister were among the crowd that is ahead of us, with Okuto and I behind them.
We have been running away for the last twelve days nonstop, from home, when unknown bandits attacked out village and killing anybody they came across. We were among the lucky ones, who have escaped, to the forest, through the river and across the valley, far from home where there have been nothing but chaos and unknown people, with black masks on their heads, carrying with them nothing but merciless motives of evicting us from our land.

At first my parents and other older people from the village were heard whispering of the looming bad omen that will hit our village. There were whispers all over before this happened, of the dangers that lied ahead and nobody knew how it all begun. There have been tensions, the air being thick of the cries of helplessness even before it begun.

And nobody could turn it over, not even the village elders, not even the medicine men who were believed to have magic to turn bad events around. And we watched helplessly, till it came to this, to deaths and pain, to hunger and loss, from beautiful homes surrounded by beautiful memories, to homelessness and alone in unknown lands, from peace to overwhelming rages of unknown motives, but to chase and kill, to maim and reduce to ashes, and I have seen it all.

Unfolding in my eyes, beyond my imaginations, surpassing the figment of my imaginations, the butchery and chopping off of body parts of my family members, more than that what we had watched from the black and white television from okuto's family home.
And we kept running, along the rough paths, everybody ahead of us, with okuto still lagging behind, I paused to take a break from the running, my feet had become sore and turned more white, my limbs have grown numb, and joints wobbly.

Looking behind me, I saw okuto, trying to limp forward, and at the same time, I heard a bullet from a nearby corner, the unknown bandits were catching up with us, with the dilemma, I shouted okuto's name to hurry up and join me, and with one last look behind me, like a slow motion, I saw Okuto falling down by the narrow path.

With the last draw of strength left in my lungs I cried, and yelled for others to hear and come back for us, but none did, everybody feared for their own lives. I ran back to where my friend was lying on the rough maram path.
As I stepped closer and closer, his breathing hitched and they were rushed, fighting for air, but no strength to gulp whatever amount he needed to sustain him, and when I crouched down to touch him, he was losing his touch, the warmth of his skin becoming cold by seconds.

He felt warm to my touch, his skin darker than normal, his eyes getting dilated, which had been beautiful when he had life in them. I closed them, for his unknown journey, for his eternal slumber, for eternity, to his dreamland. I stood up and plucked leaves by the way side, and covered his lifeless body. With a heavy empty heart, I begun running to catch up with the others, but behind me, were the black masked bandits on my trail, like a hellhound at a crossroad!