A Train Ride

How it all began

Fire

There was fire everywhere, and he couldn't breathe, let alone see. The odor of burning flesh was suffocating him. Xander, thirteen years of age, was witnessing the utter decimation of his quaint village at the hands of the military.

———

Mommy, he thought, where are you, mommy? Help me, I can't see. I can't breathe. I can't find you. Where are you, mommy?

His thoughts were frantic, his breathing erratic, his seven years old body couldn't keep up with the effort he was exerting to simply stay alive, let alone find his family.

———

Amabel, where are you? He thought, searching for his younger sister.

Adrianna, where are you? Even his older sister was missing, and young Xander felt lost. He never felt this lost, even when he lost his way in the village and cried for a whole night until his parents found him until his mother engulfed him in a hug that made all the fear disappear.

———

Suddenly, he could see again, and he found those he was looking for: his mother and sisters.

Oh sweet lord, please make this a nightmare he stood there, rooted in his place, and watched.

He watched the corpses of his family. His father was without a head. That unnerved him, shook him to the core. But what made him crack, was the sight of his mother and sisters.

They were all dead, but they were naked, and when you grow up in a village like his, you know all about rape and what it means. They were naked, and it was clear that whoever killed them had his way with them, several times.

Even sweet Amabel was naked, and her tiny body looked broken, with her arms bending at awkward angles.

———

No, he could feel his whole world crashing around him, in spite of the roaring flames, no, this can't be. Amabel, my angel, no, this is not happening. This is not true. I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming. Life is not this cruel.

Suddenly, he heard raucous laughter, rising above the sounds of chaos and death.

It was them. The military dogs. They were still here. And at that moment, something inside young Xander snapped. His tears never stopped flowing, but his face was stony. Calm, collected. Betraying none of his thoughts or emotions. He found a small dagger embedded in the ground his father's so he picked it up remembering the time when his father used to train him to protect himself, and marched forward.

He hid behind the rubble of what used to be his home, now a pile of stone and ashes, and watched. He watched the soldier toasting, one of them standing guard, right in front of what used to be his home. It was a successful raid, and they razed the whole village to the ground. Not a single being was spared. Even stray dogs and cats were killed. One of them was boasting, how he raped three women in front of their father and husband, how one of them was at most six.

Xander had no idea what was happening. His body was moving on its own. And when his father's dagger sank in the guard's neck, he only distantly felt the blood splatter his face, yet he didn't care.

He simply picked the small blade up, and kicked some stones to make a disturbance.

The drinking soldiers heard it.

"Oi, Arthur, what's wrong?"

When the guard didn't answer, one of them volunteered to go look for him. And when he found the corpse of his comrade, he barely understood what was happening before a heavy rock hit his head, and he knew no more. He didn't even feel the dagger slitting his throat.

———

Xander smiled. It was, in one word, unnerving. A smile that did not reach his eyes. And his eyes were like ice. Cold and sharp. Deadly.

He dragged the soldier's body, until he was visible to the dead man's comrades.

"Now, who would like to be next?" He said, with a crazed grin adorning his young face.

It took ten minutes. They were mostly drunk, and their guns were out of reach. They were clumsy and disoriented. He was driven, nimble, and he had a single goal in mind: massacre all of them.

And massacre them he did.

After scouring the whole village, and finding that he was the only survivor, he found one last soldier, looking through rubble for something valuable to salvage. He had found a pendant, shaped to the likeness of  a full moon, hanging from the nearly severed neck of on of the village elders.

Xander sneaked behind him, and hit him on the head with a rock. He fell down, barely conscious. He was then hoisted by his collar to face Xander, who now looked like an angel of death.

"So you couldn't just leave, after killing them all. You had to pillage the rubble for some loot, didn't you?" His voice was but a whisper

"W-who are you? Brat, I'm a soldier of the military! Let me go immediately or you won't like the consequences!" He tried to put some fight, but, surprisingly, Xander's hold was strong enough to keep him in place.

"A soldier, you say? Magnificent. Tell me, Mr. Soldier, you like this pendant, do you not? Then, allow me to give you a gift."

———

After Xander finished his work, the soldier was unconscious from the pain. His body was covered in blood, his clothes were stained. The pendant was now hanging by a leather band around Xander's neck.

He went back to where he used to live, and collected all the bottles of finely brewed wine his father used to make at their famous winery. He put them, along with some stored meat, in a satchel.

Time to finally see the world, eh?

As he walked away from the village he used to call home, the rain started to pour.

"Do Heavens weep for your sake, son of man?" He mumbled to himself, as he hit the road.

And this was the start of a really interesting journey.

End.