A Child's Dream

━━━ I want to die.

This is a story of a child.
Roaming alone on a vast wasteland.

No trees to be spotted.
No grass to be stepped.
The world is nothing but a boundless red.

The child, with his tattered cloth, walks forward with his bare foot.

━━━ I want to die.

That is the story of the child.
Walking alone on the vast wasteland.

His home was razed into the grounds.
His people was burned to ashes.
He watched them burned, struggled and eventually… die.

The men got their limbs cut, and the woman got chained with their clothes torn.
They set the child free and told them to run, so they can hunt them later, treating them just like pigs and boars in the forest. Running to be hunted

The men screamed in anger,
The woman screamed in pain,
While the children screamed in terror.

Even as an orphan, the child was never alone.
He got no elders, but Rema always give him a fresh toast in the morning.
He got no parents, but Julia and her husband always called him in for dinner at night.
He got no brother, but Larc always invite him whenever they played around the field when the sun is setting.
He got no sister, but Lia, Julia’s shy and awkward daughter, always give him her precious sweets she kept in her pocket when they met.

The child was born with nothing.
But the town he used to call home, gave him everything instead.

-----But that, is nothing but the past.

━━━ I want to die.

It’s hell.

Even as someone who could not write, read, nor count, he understood that everything that unfold in front of him that time, couldn’t be described as nothing but hell.

Living in the outskirt, he saw black smokes rising.
He ran.

The farther he ran, the louder the screams he heard.
And so, he ran.

The smokes getting thicker.
The screams are getting louder.
Between the sounds of crashing debris and human cries, he could hear a faint laughter.
And, so he ran.

He stooped in front of a collapsed building.
Inside it, he saw a remain of an oven… with a hand of an old woman below the rubbles.
Cold, rigid and Motionless.
──And, so he ran.

He ran straight to the corner of the road, turned left until he saw the remains of a flower shop and turned right when he saw the remains of countless cattle.
In front of him, is place he called home. But instead of freshly made soup and mashed potatoes, the only smell that enter his nose is burnt wood and blood.
No remains were found in the house.
────And, so he ran.

The closer he got to the town’s plaza, shrivelled bodies were found lying down the road.
Even with all of the dead bodies, no screams could be heard from the place he stood.
────────And, so he ran.

The child reached his destination.

There, he found two things that helped him understand the situation: The answer and dead bodies.
The men, the women, the children. All in one place.
He couldn’t determine which stabbed him harder. The fear and terror in his heart, or the disgusting stench of corpses, the burnt one and not.
He felt something weird and painful inside his throat and stomach.
He screamed and cried in fear and horror. Upon this grotesque view, his leg started moving on its own────

───────────────And, so he ran.

He slipped.
The child kneeled and throw everything inside his belly out. He kept vomiting until nothing came out of it anymore.
Yet he kept running.

He kept running in tears, passing the fences of the town, the forest, the meadow, the cliff and river, and eventually, the waste land. Even with all the memories he had, he knew that the village is not a safe place anymore. Returning to his shed in the outskirt wouldn’t help his situation either.

Why did he run?
The child asked to himself.
Even if it’s for his own survival, there is no meaning in it for him.

No bread to be eaten.
No water to be drink.
No candy to taste nor people to talk.

Even if his body lives, his heart already died with his home.

━━━ I want to die.
He tried to close his eyes when the moon rises.
Sometimes he thought that maybe, if he closed them, he could probably meet with those people again.

────But the sun and his merciless light is only the one who greets him when he opened his eyes.

━━━ I want to die.
He thought, by sleeping in the wild, some snakes or predator could take his life on his sleep.
But unfortunately, none of those scenarios happened when the sun rises to crushes his hope and dream.

Upon his journey, his thought also wanders around whenever he walks aimlessly around the land.
Why did this happened?
How could this be?
Who did this and why?

No matter how many times he asked himself about it, the answer seems to be distant.
All he could remember is a flag. A red and golden flag that flutter above the sea of corpses.
The only people who have the flags are those who were chosen by the gods as their follower.
But having the answer that the followers of gods were the one who did this, just make no sense and only gave more questions than answers.

Aren’t the gods all-kind, all-knowing?
Aren’t the gods all-powerful and sow peace among humans?

But if the gods really sought peace among the human…

…Why did the blessings they gave function to shed the blood of other humans?

────Or they never actually care about us to begin with?

With those question revolved around his mind, the boy, once again, walked upon the boundless waste land. Stepping forward with his little bleeding foot. Until eventually in the middle of the day, the child collapsed. Rotting in the middle of nowhere, carrying his fear and hatred inside his hollow husk.