A Bad Suggestion

Two brothers in war stricken Africa have nothing to rely on but their estranged fathers last advice.

From the seventh floor balcony, I waited for the stars to rise and fall. Just as soon as they went up, they were greeted by another far away star, and together they would dance in a melancholy stupor until they met at a focal point of blackness, and subsequently collided leaving smolder and hot metal parading the sky.   The 7^TH floor of the abandoned children’s hospital was an ideal place to watch them, and I remember doing so with my older brother.  Sometimes we would cheer for more rising stars, and sometimes we would recognize the stars for what they truly were. Our moods were interchangeable based on how we felt, and often, were just interpretations, for they never lasted. In the end it was the same old story. Genocide had swept our nation like a broom, and its only remaining duty was to sweep the rest of us under the rug.  We were of the last ones there; the survivors.   We were alone and had nothing to rely on but each other, and our father’s mandatory last advisement: “Trust No one.” This, of course, was months before his last and more imperative words: “Run!” On this particular night the moon was full, and whenever there was a hiatus in the back and forth of gunfire and floating bombs, we could still see our native Africa illuminate from the same light that had guided our ancestors.  We got tired of listening to the clamor of bullets ricochet, and bored of watching the flares and missiles illuminate the sky. We were hungry, and had nowhere to sleep. It was time to begin our night’s usual routine of scavenging. My brother nudged me in the shoulder, “Come on, we have to go now.”

 We turned around from the balcony and sprinted down the concrete stairs of the hospital until we reached the bottom. When we made it out of the hospital stairs, the smell hit us. The stench of death is something that is overwhelming at first, but just like anything if you give it time, it will either take on the droll task of expected repetition or, it will haunt your every dream, and stalk your every move.  It was most definitely stalking us and it scared us more than ever.  We proceeded to run immediately to our right, through the cold sand, and past the huge tree. Usually, the task of running just on the outskirts of immediate war was enough to urge us to keep running.  However, on this particular night, the leafless branches of the tree collided with the silver radiance of the moon in an utmost peculiar way.  We stopped and watched the branches sway just for a moment. I don’t know why we stopped. Maybe it was just intuition telling us, but our intuition had been sidetracked for so long, we dared not to think that.   Our momentary seconds of splendor were soon over, and we began to run again. The sand whistled beneath our cracked black feet as we ran. I remember the unusual chill in the air, and the warmness that would embrace my face each time a far- away missile would light up the sky, and leave its presence booming in the echoes of the barren desert.  As we ran, the village where we used to live approached our immediate right, and just adjacent to them were the black windows and torn rubble that used to be our home. We didn’t dare look, for if we did we might have tried to decipher our home from the others, which of course would just perpetuate the fact that there were no homes left at all. It was important to us that we carry no baggage, we were free of emotion. We were no longer people, and I only say this because we had no characteristics of any normal person. We were too young to generate any logical conclusions on our non-generic personalities, so we just went with the notion that we had none.

Our feet kept moving until we reached an old tire factory. The smell of burning rubber was still lingering in the air like a flame from an old wick, as we mechanically hopped over the only part of the fence that was not barb wired.  There was a light on in the distance. If somebody was there we would rip them to shreds. We didn’t care who they were or why they were there. Trust no one. That was our motto, and we stuck to it like it was the law.  Perhaps it was the sound of our tearing flesh on the rocks beneath us, or, perhaps it was the flickering shadow that left its impression so memorably on the hard dirt path.  I don’t know what it was for sure, but somebody inside of that room heard us.  We began to run faster as the room beyond us started to rumble with preparation. My brother pulled out a long blade that sparkled in the moonlight. Then, that door opened. He warned us to stop, but we kept on going. We were savages.  As we neared, the outline of the man’s skull began to familiarize itself with the images of my mind.  I paid no attention.  The man pulled out a large assault rifle, and we stopped dead in our tracks. He shot my brother between the eyes and I locked mine with his.  My brother was dead on the ground. He was only following the advice that my father had given him: Run, and trust no one. He did well. Then, it became clear to me and my shadowed counterpart just exactly who we were looking at.  The man I was staring at was my father. As he dropped down in tears, I glanced at my brother’s bloody corpse, and soon after brought my head up to look at the battles in the distance.  I took one hard glance at my father, and then remembered his last pieces of advice to me and my deceased brother. I proceeded to turn around and run as fast as I could.