Remembrance [a short story]

My name is Kira and I can’t hear or see anything.

I am standing completely still, waiting for a harsh wind to lift me off my bare feet and carry me away to a place where happiness exists. Though I know there’s a bigger chance that I grow wings than that ever happening. There is no happiness in this world and if I hadn’t experienced it myself a long time ago, I wouldn’t believe there ever was such a thing as happiness.

I am deaf.

But, then again, there isn’t much to listen to anymore. It’s been 137 days since the last time my ears picked up a sound, and even those sounds I wish to forget.

I am blind by choice.

I refuse to open my eyes. I refuse to see what has become of my hometown, of what used to be a small town in the south of Oklahoma, USA. But even with my eyelids sealed closed I can tell exactly what surrounds me at the moment.

Complete and utter nothing.

It’s been 137 days since everything became nothing. Everything was blasted into oblivion. I think if I’m brave enough to caress the grainy sand, I might be able to find the traces of what used to be my house - my home.

I must admit I have a tendency to torture myself. I can’t help reminding myself of what was. Every day, I repeat the same sentences and conjure the images in my head. I’m afraid I would forget if I don’t remind myself, that I might forget everything I ever knew. Or at least, what I used to know.

I open my eyes. The blinding white orb in the cloudless sky makes me wish I hadn’t. Judging from the light, it’s probably around noon. I haven’t laid eyes on a working clock in a long time. All around me, under my bare feet, in the roots of my hair and on my dry skin is sand. Sand the ugliest color of grey and black. Remnants of building, homes, vehicles and people I knew.

I imagine lying on a steel bed, the icy metal keeping me from ever resting, and picture a heavy weight pressing onto my chest, breaking my ribs. Crushing me.

It’s all of my mind’s creation, of course. It’s a simple yet affective way to let me know that I’m not supposed to be here -alive- when my entire family is dead. Blown to bits and shot.

I stand a little straighter and let the soft breeze lift up the skirt of my tattered dress and play with my locks of dark hair, the color of the sky on a moonless night. I don’t remember the color of my eyes anymore.

Then I repeat the same thing I’ve been doing for the past 137 days. I say the same sentences I’ve already memorized by heart from repeating so many times as the memories easily rise to the surface, “It was a cold December night.” I begin, “I was sixteen years old, hiding with Kaya,”

My young sister is shivering and rubbing her bare, stick-thin arms in an attempt to warm them. Her dark hair, the same shade of our mother’s hair, is blowing wildly from the careless wind like raging black flames. She’s about to say something when I glare harshly at her, telling her with my eyes to keep quiet. Even a whisper can get us killed. I force her to stay down on the cool ground under the large bush to keep our location hidden from the danger that stands just twenty feet away from us. Kaya stifles a scream as her eyes, wide with fear, spot what I’ve been watching from behind a leafy branch.

Soldiers, everywhere. Soldiers in dark, heavy uniforms, armed with deadly weapons. Not even the darkness of the night can shroud their lethal expressions.

They’re here on a mission.

“We were the only ones left of our family.” I say to the wind.

No one is here to witness me speaking, and no one ever will. This place has been abandoned long ago; everyone –everyone that survived– had sought out different lands to live on. Lands that weren’t destroyed and turned into ruble, such as this one. Not a single tree or a live bird is in sight. Sand and broken houses are the only things I can see.