Perrot

“Mama, what are those whistling sounds?”

‘Oh, nothing Leo, here take down Perrot down with you.”  Leo’s mother hands him his stuffed elephant with an eye substituted with a button and the other filed with cotton and black ink to make the eyeball.

“But why, mama?”

“Because it hurts Perrot’s ears, okay?  Here, I’ll be down there in a minute.  Jerome, make sure Amalie is done with the hay bales!”

“I know, dear!” Jerome runs out through the wooden door, with a pine-crest door knocker that has been rusting throughout the Bouniette family line in the past six centuries.  He runs out back to see how Amalie has been doing to barricade the windows with hay bales to protect themselves from artillery shells and enemy soldiers.

“Papa, help me with this!”  Jerome faces Amalie from the opposite side of the haybale. Together they lift the dark, brown hay on top the aging ones that were used to feed their three cows, but now they have been taken by the soldiers to use for food and other uses. 

Jerome was reminded with shock as to how strong his seventeen-year old daughter was.  Jerome later thought back as to how all her life she has lifted buckets full of milk from the cows and built stables and chopped down wood for their lovely fires inside their comfy home.

“Good Amalie, now let’s go back inside.”

“But Papa, what about the chickens?”

“It’s alright, I’m sure they’ll be fine.” 

Jerome and Amalie ran back to the entrance of the house and walk back down the cellar where Leo and his mother are already grabbing ahold of each other with Leo gently caressing Perrot’s big ears.  Jerome closes the two doors leading up into the shelled world and slides the bar across the two brown and yellow rings.

“Okay, now we wait until it is over.”

“Papa, how long do we wait?” Asked Leo.

“Not long, Leo.” Jerome leans over to hold his check and smiles his utmost hopeful smile to his son, knowing the world was walking on a mine field.

The ground starts to rumble and there is a sound of clanking machines coming nearer to the house.  The soldiers are running behind the monsters like fire ants, ready to tear anything in their way.  It was only the beginning of the bloodbath that would ensnare a family, a family that didn’t do anything wrong, a family that never cursed others.

It was only the beginning…