Week Four Birth of a Story in an Hour or Less

 

“Jack, come ON!”

“Layla, shuddup.  I am going faster than you.”

“Damn it Jack, help Lillian!” Layla hissed.

“I can’t carry her.”

“And I can’t carry two. You want to leave one of us behind? That’s a good way to get us all caught.”

“They are burning the church.”

“I know it. Christ. Just move.”

“Where was Mom?”

“I don’t know.  Be quiet.”

“Did she go out to the wash-house?”

“Yeah…I guess. Told me to watch Ashe this morning.”

Layla ran tugging the three-year-old behind her.

“Why didn’t she take Lillian? She always wants to go.”

“Jack, please, move.  And be quiet.” Layla’s voice was hushed and breathless.

“She wouldn’t go to wash alone, someone has to help her carry the clothes.  Did she go with Gramma?”

“Jack -” Layla angrily raised her index finger perpendicular to her pursed lips.

“Gramma would have wanted to go to church on the way.”

Jack lowered his voice but insisted, avoiding the dry chestnut leaves on the ground.

“I know.  Jack, we need to get out of here.  Don’t you know where Dad goes to meet the others?”

“Dad’s not a resistance fighter.”

“He is always gone when Angelo goes to the mountains at night.”

“Jesus Layla.  What does that mean?”

Layla skidded to a stop.

“Shh. Shit, did you see that?” Layla whispered low over her shoulder.

“Look, what’s that?” Jack spoke slowly.

“Jack, Jesus, what? Did you see those bushes moving?”

“Layla, turn around.”

Jack’s voice was serious and earnest. 

“It’s the church,” Layla said turning to stare at the glow.

“It’s all … red.”

 “It’s on fire.”

The four of them crouched low and looked toward the village, Layla kept her head turned sideways to hear in both directions.

The men are all in the hills.  There were only women with babies and old people in the village.

“Eveline's there. She’s expecting. Why did they do that?”

“Quiet!  Lemme listen.”

“Jesus, they were closing the doors with people inside.” Jack had turned away from the glow.

“Shhh. Be still.”

“Stop crying like a baby.”  

Ashe was squeezing his fists into his eyes.

“He is a baby, Jack.  Shuddup.”

She stopped and picked up the toddler, putting a protective hand around his head.  It was slower like this, but Ashe could not keep up.  Jack had black hair that curled at the neck like their father, but his eyes were a cold grey, instead of the sad dark brown of both their parents.  He was still shorter than Layla, all nerve and muscle. He bent over, hands on knees catching his breath, against a tree. They stood for a moment.  He was everything Layla detested; unapologetic, calculating and self-serving.  Layla saw the book snug and hiding under his belt.  He would wrestle the devil, argued with the wisdom of the prophets and would wait patiently if he could get what he wanted.  The book was safer with him for now and Layla needed to herd along with Ashe and Lillian.  Lillian’s soft brown curls hung in her eyes, her smooth cheeks were pink with effort, lips always slightly parted as if she were about to speak, but she had never expelled a word, not even to cry since she was born.

The boy in the green uniform was young.  He had wispy black hair like her father. He was as tall as Layla, shoulders drooping.  He held the bayonet loosely, bouncing it carelessly by his legs, his eyebrows arched in question.   Holding the baby, Layla looked down at Lillian to prepare her.  Jack was not there.  She heard leaves crunch softly just once when she looked up at the boy and knew Jack would be concealed behind one of the spindly oak trees.  Why did she even worry about him?  Her father’s best friend was a resistance fighter and when he was gone in the foothills to meet with the other fighters Layla’s father was always gone too.  Her father never talked about where he had been, what he did nor had he taught Layla anything.  The boy’s profile was directly in front of her, looking off into the trees.  Layla knew she was in his peripheral vision.  He stopped casually, gave a sharp, decisive wave to the side with his head.  Layla knew it was a pass.

“Go,” Layla mouthed mutely to Lillian.

Instinctively, she slinked away in silence.  Maybe her father had taught her something with his silence and shadowy presence.  Ashe clung to her neck.  Lillian’s small feet pattered rapid and silent next to Layla, Jack would catch up. 

The boy in green turned toward the invisible companion, “No one here.”

His muffled grumbling directed at the vast woods, Layla heard him indistinctly, “Can’t-see-anything-in-these-woods-when-are-we-going-to-eat?”

No pause, one thought.

She ran with the baby in the bend of her right arm, jostling him on her hip awkwardly and holding Lillian’s delicate fingers with the other hand.  They slid down the sloping ground.  They were nearing the side of the mountain with the smooth rock cliffs.  No trees there.

“Damn you, Jack.”

The men were dressed in green uniforms, like the boy in the woods with wispy hair and question mark eyebrows.  Five of them carried a long, thick plank of wood and were sliding it across the front of the church through the massive metal door handles where Don Giuseppe secured and bolted the tall wooden doors when he went back down to his house in the valley after evening mass on Tuesdays and Fridays.  The plank ran the entire width of the front of the tiny village church.

The message the night before warned trucks had arrived in the valley after dark.  It would take 45 minutes to climb the narrow winding road slick with dew at the first light in the morning.  The men had gone off from the village in the dark, without a word the same night.  The soldiers would leave when they saw there were no men.  Men were a liability.

The boy in the woods had black hair, like her father. The tall and tensed-faced soldiers were not from here.  The black-haired boy with them was from the valley.  One of their own holding a bayonet and looking for villagers hiding in the woods.  Layla knew some of them did that. 

Men, if captured, would be used for forced labour.  They left for the foothills that night, confident nothing would happen to the women and children left at home.

When the troops arrived at Sant’Anna, soldiers ordered them to line up by height along the wall of a house, then began firing with pistols and machine guns. A “strategy of terror” that was implemented in an operation against the resistance movement by commander-in-chief K who was concerned about the growing activity of the resistance.  K issued an ordinance authorizing all repressive measures to crush the partisan movement.  Hundreds had fled to the supposedly safe mountain village to escape fighting in the surrounding area. Only 400 of the victims could be identified.  After killing other civilian with hand grenades, buildings were set on fire to erase all traces.

The assignment asks us to write a 3-part skeleton to expand on – part of the story is about before the dialogue, one part during the dialogue, one part after.

I started this story with two ideas in mind: one is a true story of a massacre during the war, the other is a fantasy story I read about three siblings who travel through time, by means of an amulet (once it is a book and then other amulets) to find where their parents have disappeared to.  The last part added takes me in the direction of the massacre and someone should probably die (sorry) or I can backtrack and experiment with time travel and disappearing characters.  That would make for less death.  Not sure how to write about death.  Jack has a book, it could be a gun.  The massacre might be better for a short story, not sure what to write about the massacre at length.  The fantasy story could be made long.