Alone and lonely

The sun didn’t shine that day, the panic never came — neither did the rescue.

What did come was a blazing heatwave, gushing over the massacred battlefield.

They weren't just soldiers, but fathers and sons — corpses with beating hearts.

And in the midst of it all was I; alone, lonely, and always waiting for something. Anything.

Maybe it was the deus ex machina the world had promised decades ago – when the first bomb struck. Maybe it was the feeling of home in a world of rumble and ash. But it was something.

Because war doesn’t just take your life, it takes your will to live.

I never understood what that meant back then, because ten-year-olds were meant to write stories, not their wills.

“Cameron?”

Brusque and slightly worn down by debris. And a name that didn't match mine.

The man spoke once again, his eyes rimmed with the crimson staining the sky, and a few words buried deep within the soil.

“Help me, please.” He heaved, but my legs didn’t move; shock weighed them down.

Hard.

Hard enough until I realised his hands manacled my ankles in desperation.

Hard enough until I fathomed the weight of it all.

“Sorry, I– I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

Another plea. Another tear. And another — BANG!

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Where they all disappear

The world erupted.

The soldiers were still there, but I wasn’t.

I should’ve comforted him, reassured him with a lie.

But I couldn’t.

Not when my will was eroding under the heat.

Not when I was alive.

So, I ran.

The world blurred. It turned, flipped, crumbled. My knees screamed, joints splintered with a screech of help.

But I ran. And ran.  And ran. And ran — until the missiles looked like meteor showers.

Yet, my intestines still coiled into knots anyway, whilst my feet ached louder than the sirens outside. And in spite of it all, I had left a soldier to die.

Alone and lonely.

But weren't we all soldiers? Fighting, hoping, and dying — yet wars never truly die — they linger.

They stay within your bones long after your heartbeat fades away into ash, within the pages of history, within every gunfire haunting each night – it stays – within every sunset just a little too red.

War flares.

War sparks.

It erupts. And by the time I reached towards the edge of the universe, clouds shrouded the canvas of vermillion in a deep grey, which seemed to groan with pleasure.

I turned back for a heartbeat anyway.

The soldier had still been there, his screams muffled by gunshots and smoke rolling into duvets and the roaring thunder, but his face — God, his face.

The same one that once pleaded, cried, and whimpered had then whispered. I almost heard it, and maybe I did. But his face was a snowflake etched with ruin and rumble, cold and pale, dissolved into the Earth until a mass of red and grey remained.

The blood wasn’t the frightening thing, but the way his hand curled — waiting – for something. Anything.

All alone and lonely.

A few days later, when morning forced its way through the night, when the troops moved on to another land, I found myself.

Alone and lonely.

Warisha Nadira is a student of Manor Lakes Prep – 12 College in Australia.