A Sharpened Blade

It all started with an explosion. I was making my way through the middle of town, and there was a single engine plane droning overhead in the placid blue sky, and suddenly everyone on the street was looking up at the spreading burst of black smoke where the plane had been shot down. There was a long interval of silence where everything seemed to hold quiet and still, and then the silence broke with everyone screaming and scattering and trying to run from the falling pieces of wreckage and debris. No one could afford the risk of stopping to look and see what had shot the plane down, but as we all scrambled for safety, there was an overwhelming sense that something was coming, like the unheard sound of a thousand boots approaching in perfect lockstep.

The attack went on into the next day with random percussions heard throughout the night on the outskirts of town. The invaders started rounding people up as they marched through the streets. I was taken prisoner and brought to a bombed out Spanish church where they were holding several people. The ceiling had been broken open, exposing it to the sky, and there were large chunks of stone and tile scattered around. I was sitting on the floor against a wall with the other prisoners, all of us with our heads hung and the sweat and dirt and soot covering our faces. There was a metal grate just beneath my feet, and I could hear the sounds of people screaming out in pain coming from somewhere below, along with pleas for mercy that were abruptly cut short by the sharp pop of a pistol.

And yet, there was a strange benevolence about our conquerors, as though all of this were being done for our benefit, trimming the weak from our population and honing us like a sharpened blade. A rosy blonde secretary smiled as she handed out blankets to the prisoners that were herded past her in a line, and the officer overseeing the distribution of the blankets patted each prisoner warmly on the back and leaned close to whisper smooth words of comfort to them as they took their blankets and nodded their feeble and terrified thanks before being ushered away to whatever awaited them off somewhere in the dark.

When the moment came for me to step up and take my blanket and this coarse lump of folded brown fabric was laid across my hands and I felt that tender thump against my shoulder, I was determined not to play the part of the pathetic supplicant that the situation seemed deliberately engineered to compel me to accept. I stopped and raised my head and held my glare on the officer, my teeth grit and my jaw quivering. The smile slowly faded from the officer’s face as he stared past the sweat and the dirt and saw the anger in my eyes. And then his eyes shifted away from mine as he made a gesture to someone behind me, and I felt the sharp crack of the butt of a rifle against my back, shoving me forward with my blanket to join the other prisoners who’d gone on ahead.