The person you made me

1. Cattle transport

It was like a song in my ears.

Like a song, but not music. Music was something different to this. Music was to the ears what a soft lover's caress was to the skin; music was something good in this world.

This song was all but good. Not a caress to the ears but like a whiplash to them, over and over, until they started bleeding.

It was the song of screaming young men.

I closed my eyes, which enhanced the feeling of the train wheels on the railways, its soothing rhythm, smoothening out the whiplash song in my ears. If this is the song of screaming young men, what is the song like on the other train?

There had been two trains waiting for us on the station that morning, one on each platform. Trains was honestly a too good of a description; they had clearly been used to transport cattle. The men of the town had been forced on the one I was now standing on (it was too crowded to sit down, and maybe that was just as well as the floors had obviously not been cleaned since the last cattle transport). Onto the other train the soldiers had forced the women, children and elderly. I was certain that whereas the song made on this train was agonising, the screams of women and children and babies would be much, much worse.

I jerked as I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders and looked up. A man, not much older than me, was looking at me with pleading eyes.

"Help us", he begged. 

I looked around me with a frown. I saw some were casting looks my way. I swallowed when I realised I even recognised some. I had seen them in town when grocery shopping. I had seen them holding their children's hands escorting them to school. Some had even come to my home, where I healed people from different illnesses. Was that why they turned to me now? Because they knew I was a medic? 

But no... No, that was not the reason. It was because I was one of few who showed no trace of emotion.

All were not crying. Some were enraged, screaming straight out. Some were trying to speak reason. But all were doing something. I, however, was not.

Stop it, I begged the man in front of me in my mind, the man who had asked me for help. Stop it. I'm not brave. I can't help you. I'm just as frightened as you are.

I took the man in. He was slender, quite short but still taller than me; most men and even women were. Whereas my hair was thick and black and long, his was quite flimsy and blond. His icy blue eyes pierced my warm-brown ones.

I swallowed. I turned, placed a gentle palm on his cheek and pushed his head down until it rested on my shoulder.

"Try to sleep", I said, which would be as useful as asking a diver to light a matchstick. 

At first, he tensed up, but then, I felt him relax. His head was a gentle, cotton-like weight on my shoulder. Around us, people took notice and started their heads on each other's shoulders to enable themselves to sleep standing up; the only way.

I stayed myself awake until I was the last one who wasn't asleep, watching over the people of my town until the song of screaming young men had died down completely.

"Get up! Filth!"

I blinked myself awake. The light streaming in through the opening of the train door was so bright, it burned.

The light wasn't particularly bright, I realised. It was just that the carriage had been so dark, every string of light could blind you. The gentle weight of the blond man's head was removed as he woke next to me.