I just remember looking at you… the panicked expression running rampant on your face. I was holding your hand after we dropped down to kiss the bright green grass. It was like some kind of magic movie set. Everything around us was full of bright brilliant colour and absolutely beautiful. Flooded with the most immaculate sunlight I’ve ever seen. A forest surrounded the grassy field where we lay peering up at two lone trees a little way off in the center of it all.
The men stood. I knew I didn’t like them. They were the sort of men who had pocket watches hanging from their waistcoats. The kind who had tailors whose crafty hands still couldn’t mask the bulge of their Jolly St. Nicholas bellies. Yet, there was nothing jolly about them. Rather sinister. Something cruel in their mouths turned upward. They’d led us to this place, and I’m still not sure why we followed. They had something to do with all of this. Not the beauty of it all, but the bombs that were dropping all around. The bombs, which, I might add, were absolutely invisible. Sonic blasts shook the earth, and the leaves from the trees seemed to fall at each blast. But, they were never bare. Each time we looked again, they were full of summer-time leaves. Everything blew around for a moment following the dreadful sound of impact, but nothing was broken or even moved.
Your screams joined with the others with us. Those screams that come from that feeling that all is lost and that we might actually die. I knew better, somehow. Everything sounded horrible, as though the last battle of Armageddon was upon us. Yet my confidence in the fact that we were absolutely safe remained, just as everything around remained untouched and un-phased by this auditory onslaught. I wasn’t afraid. I tried to explain and make you understand. Instead I just squeezed your trembling hand.
All was bright and beautiful.
All was well and would be.
And then it all became quite still…
And then the men disappeared…
And then you understood.
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