Impurities

One

Their faces still burned in my mind from the night they first arrived. While the fires raged everywhere-in homes, cars, stores, the parks I had grown up playing in-their eyes blazed ever fiercer. Blue. Every foreign eye was blue. Different variations, perhaps, but blue nonetheless. What used to be my favorite color had changed due to recent events.

Now I preferred green.

The night of the invasion was the first of many nightmares to come. Everyone I had ever known, all the people I loved, were arrested and taken to makeshift camps in the city streets. While we were shoved and herded like cattle, soldiers bearing the red shoulder patches were rolling out strips of barbed wire. They intended to cage us, so doing their jobs would be easier. Whether they would kill or simply scream at us in a language we couldn't understand had not yet been revealed to us.

We were Americans.

This was the first time someone was holding an assault rifle to our heads on our homeland, and we didn't have a chance to save ourselves. This was what we saw on the television in distant countries, far from the security of our streets and conveniences.

Amidst the chaos and fear, I managed to lift up a prayer to Heaven. God, be with us, I pleaded. My nation had been blinded by the acid-blisters of sin, having turned its back on the framework the Founding Fathers had structured everything on. We, the Christians, knew a time was coming when God would lift His hedge of protection from us. In spite of His abounding love for us, He wouldn't stand for wickedness. And, seemingly unlike everyone else, we saw it coming.

Blue eyes narrowed onto me as a soldier rammed the pointing end of his gun into my side, attempting to spur me on faster. With a cry, I doubled over and gripped my ribs as agony tore across my body. My father pressed his hand against my back, forcing me to keep moving. Though I shoved his hand away at that moment, I was later grateful for the way he always protected me. He knew they would shoot if I stopped moving. I was too blinded by my anger to see it then, but by dawn I would have a better understanding of the monsters who had done this to us.

We were told to sit down after being squeezed together, elbow-to-elbow. Being so close made breathing close to impossible and everyone was taller than me, so I couldn't even see what was happening. After people began sitting down, slowly at first and then in waves, I realized how many of us there were.

Thousands.

We filled every inch of every street. I wondered if the people out of city limits had been forced here too, and if so, how far they had to walk. My best friend lived out of the city. Was she here? Was she as frightened as me? As furious and confused?

"Flora," my mother whispered. "Flora, look at me."

Reluctantly, I tore my glower away from the closest soldier and found my mother's eyes. The green in her eyes seemed to hide from the darkness of the night and only the light brown showed. If I dared to look beyond their mere color, I could see the panic and fear in her eyes that she tried to disguise. I chose not to look deeper than necessary.

"If we get the chance," my mother told me, whispering, "I want you to run."

"So they'll shoot me in the back?"

"Better dead than alive sometimes."

Her words sent a chill down my back. Where was the warm, affectionate mother I knew? I needed her to give me better words than these. Besides, I didn't know if I would have the courage to run if given the opportunity.

My father was fidgeting restlessly on the other side of my mother. I pitched forward, drawing my knees against my chest so my movement wouldn't disturb the grumpy old man in front of me. The way my father's face was arranged-locked jaw, darting eyes, bulging forehead vein-was nearly as alarming as my mother's words. While I wanted to punch one of those guards in the face and maybe taunt them for thinking they could harass Americans, my father was ten steps ahead of me. Revenge curled his lip downwards in a scowl. He wasn't even a violent man. What I didn't know was that he could imagine what events were about to unfold and how much worse our situation would get. His murderous revenge didn't make sense to me quite yet, but it would.

An hour or so after we'd been ordered to sit, a man climbed onto the roof of the deli with a bullhorn in hand. The device shrieked loudly when he turned it on, making everyone wince. Except for the soldiers.

"Thank you for joining us tonight," the man said. His Russian accent overpowered our English words, crushing the syllables and smashing the consonants. His mockery tone made it worse. "My friends and I are delighted to spend some time in your homeland. So, please, be courteous to us."

As if. I was pretty certain I wasn't the only one who wanted to ram my shoe into his nose.

"We are going to separate the women and children from the men. Please-"

The uproar cut him off. One man stood up and starting yelling, only to be accompanied by hundreds more. The soldiers took their aim, switching back and forth between the biggest threats. My father sat beside us, shockingly quiet. Even from where I was, being jostled and bumped by the rowdy crowd, I could see the muscles in his arms taut with restraint. My mother grabbed my hand for support while we remained on the ground.

"Sit down!" the man on the roof shouted. "Sit! Sit down!"

No one obeyed. He yelled some Russian gibberish and a few soldiers lifted their guns to the air. The warnings shots were louder than intended, ricocheting off the glass of the storefronts and the cars they had disposed of in the alleys. Acting on instinct, everyone crouched down, covering their heads.

Stupid, I thought. Like your arm is going to keep the bullet from killing you.

"Now, sit down before I shoot at something other than the sky," the commander-guy said through his bullhorn, clearly displeased with the way things were going.

"You can't do this!" a mid-aged man cried out, rising an inch from his cower.

The commander's ugly blue eyes bulged from his head as he shouted a word
unfamiliar to our ears and spit frothed at the corners of his mouth. I decided to refer to him as Rhino after that moment. The soldier nearest the protester took aim and fired. At first, everyone was silent, horror-stricken as one of us crumbled to the pavement, his brains splattered on those around him. Then chaos ensued all over again. People started attacking the guards, trying to take their guns. Others started barreling down the street like a mob. I rose to my feet, either to run or steal a gun, but my father grabbed my hand and yanked me back down to the asphalt.

"You stay right here!" he shouted.

I was too stunned to argue. My mother wrapped her arm around me, hugging me against her. The gesture, unfortunately, wasn't comforting; her grip was too tight and fearful to be of assurance.

Gunfire broke out. Bullets sprinkled the air like confetti and bodies started dropping. I had to roll out of the way before a particularly large man fell on me. This was really my first encounter with death. Of all the reactions I thought I'd expected of myself, the emotional detachment I felt now was my least favorite. All I could do was stare as my fellow Americans fell to the ground, collecting in heaps. Our numbers were suddenly declining too fast. Our chances of winning were becoming ever more unlikely.

Meanwhile, Rhino was hollering into the bullhorn. Nobody was listening. Except for his minions. They heard the Russian phrase for "mow them down" pretty well. After half the town lay in piles of bloody corpses, the other half sat quietly on their haunches, stunned. I couldn't decide which were braver: the dead or the living. But I did know who the lucky ones were.

They certainly weren't us.