Evacuation - third person

Children line the streets: pavements, walls, corners. Every coverable space seems littered with small children waiting with no place to go, bruised with confusion and scarred with panic. Like pieces of a sick game of chess they are protected and hidden, kept away in case of future tragedy. The surly faced train conductor has been tricked before; he had been told he was fighting in the last war, the war to end all wars, the war to bring peace in our time. And now, less than half a century later, the terror was back, the false lies of glory had returned – only, he had indifference now. These weren’t children anymore – they were reserves. They were the final push in case it was needed. The arrogance and pride of adults dangled their childhood and innocence in the water of battle, waiting for the first bite. They weren’t children anymore. They were packages kept safe for a better day. Only no one would admit that that day would never come. They were those coins kept for better days, only to be used in a time of pain and sorrow.

They were used bullets; they just hadn’t been fired yet.  

Happiness

Sometimes there are moments in your life of infinite happiness. There are moments where you find yourself separated from reality, where the weight of your euphoria seems too immense for one lifetime, where you feel like something horrid has to happen just to balance out the joy. But then you feel yourself slipping from the cliff of rational judgement into the abyss of carefree ecstasy. And you let yourself drown. You let yourself be consumed by the impossibility of your joy, ignoring that nagging feeling that tells you that this can’t be true.

You let yourself be lost in the wonder and delirium of it, lost in the chaos of it all. It no longer matters why, only the feeling is relevant, that never ending feeling of happiness that makes you fly, makes you soar, makes you free.

And then it ends. Then reality comes tumbling back down, tumbling like the pragmatic rocks of rationality to end your paradise, to end your existence. They plummet into you, wounding you, maiming you. They stay after the end of your happiness; they stay in the back of your mind, waiting for the next time to fall, to descend, and to trap you. 

Evacuation - First Person

They made us wait – never ending waiting. They hadn’t even told us what we were waiting for. Abandoned, we waited as told, waiting together for comfort against the chaos, and the fear and the unsaid truths. Some had parents to smile and wave them off. Some had parents to cry and lose sleep over them. I had no one. The younger children had toys, soft teddies to wipe away the confusion and scare off the panic. But I was the eldest; I was the protector. I looked over like the General does his troops, like the King does his subjects. But even I didn’t know why we were being told to wait. I didn’t understand the tears in the sister’s eyes as she sent us on our way. I didn’t understand the sympathy in the train conductor’s eyes as he saw us pass. I didn’t understand the millions of children on the train station with us, the young bawling into the false faced elders than tried to bring reassurance. We know our place: we didn’t show panic; we didn’t show confusion; we didn’t let our tears fall. Instead, we waited. We watched on with false omniscience as the adults walked on by and left us. We obeyed as they loaded us onto the trains like cattle to the slaughter, or starlight into the abyss. And we sat tearfully as the train stared to move, moving off into nothingness and infinity.