A peel of laughter drags me out of my feverish slumber.
I try to open my eyes. My eyelids feel like someone has gummed them together. I can't stretch my limbs. They feel so numb!
Still, I drag myself on my feet and try to look around. Where does the sound of laughter come from? Has someone sneaked into the room? Is there anyone hiding here?
I am like a game animal. A rabbit or a deer. Chased by blood hounds; cornered into this dilapidated mansion at the back of nowhere!
My heart is broken, my body feverish. It has been almost two days since I ate my last crumb of bread, drank my last drop of water.
What am I waiting for? There is no hope anymore! It is the end of everything!
What a fool I have been!
With my small band of rebels I dreamt of overthrowing an omnipotent ruler!
With a few firearms I hoped to win over an array of dreadful weapons!
With a few hundred hungry, broken men I dared to challenge an army of ruthless killers!
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Inevitably, we were torn to pieces; trampled and mutilated. By a freak chance of luck I have survived, but I know that I cannot cheat my destiny for long. It is only a matter of time before they find my hide-out here and flush me out.
I grope my pistol inside my cloth. Two bullets are still left in it. They are for myself. But I doubt if I shall be able to pull the trigger when the time arrives.
Can I be strong enough for that? I don't know!
I drag my aching body out of the room. The roof of the dilapidated four-storied mansion lay stretched in front of me. When I had first arrived here I tried to find a shelter inside the building. But the rooms were all full of dust and debris. Surprisingly, the once magnificent staircase stood mostly intact. I had dragged my injured body up here and found a small room on the roof which seemed habitable. Since then I have been curling myself in a corner there and raking my feverish brain for a way to survive, but in vain.
As I look around, my eyes fall on three little boys flying kites on the roof. In the cold afternoon breeze their kites are flying high in the sky.
The boys are laughing and chattering among themselves and I am alarmed by the way they are carelessly trotting about on the crumbling roof without ever noticing where they are stepping next!
As I watch, one of the kites is blown away by the wind and the boy who has been flying it steps back in an attempt to control the thread and hits the moss-eaten parapet. In an instant the bricks start to crumble away. As the boy loses his balance, my body lurches forward before I know it. I catch the boy and throw him backward into the hands of his friends, but the roof beneath my feet gives in. With a roar the bricks and debris rush towards the ground and instantly, I am airborne. The next moment the ground rushes at me. But before I hit the ground, a cloud of black smoke swirls up and I am engulfed in a smoky darkness which enters my mind like rainwater sipping into my clothes and erases everything...