Poland, September 1, 1939
3:47 pm

I watched the ants scatter when the two cruel children thought it’d be funny to wash away their home with water. I watched the defenseless insects burrow into the many deep and intricately dug tunnels, their abdomens and short, needle-like legs splayed and thrashing, desperately pushing themselves into the holes. Some fled to other parts of the yard, their tiny bodies scrambling up tall blades of grass, the microscopic hairs on their legs making footholds of the pores in the vegetation. The children just turned the powerful hose towards them, the bomb-sized droplets sending and crushing their frail bodies onto the dirt.

They struggled as they carried their unborn children on their backs, the eggs wet and damaged, some abandoned, and others in a pile under the swollen body of the queen. Some daring ants fought back, biting at the ankles of the children, sending the smaller one crying back into the house and the larger stomping on the sodden remains of the hill, flattening the insects under his tightly laced boots.

4:40 pm

I listened to the rhythmic footfall of soldiers marching down the street. A thumping metronome, thud, thud, thud, thud, in that same monotonic beat. Their bombs rained from the sky, an air piercing whistle, a deafening crash and boom, a boom that tells me of the houses reduced to splinters, the streets reduced to rubble, the people who are now nothing but oblivion and charred ribbons of flesh, vaporized in the fire and flames of the explosion.

The soldiers forced themselves into the home of the children. I heard the family’s screams, defenseless, panicked, protesting, pleading yells of terror. Even that mangy dog barked, loyally but failingly protecting his family.

Bangs went off, blasting through the heads of the children. The mother and father’s horrified yells are silenced by two more shots. Another quiets the dog.

7:23 pm

I felt the Earth rumble beneath my feet. The force of people thrown to the ground by the bombs’ shattering explosions, their bodies pressed against the cement, skins lacerated and bleeding, throats raw from inhaling smoke and microscopic remains of things destroyed. Their legs shook with fear, those still on the street stumbling trying to find shelter that was not there. Houses and buildings were reduced to smithereens and ash. The army was overwhelming, comprised entirely of loyal soldiers killing everyone who stood in their way, every man, woman, and child, bangbangbang!

When the last of the bombs fell, the last of the tanks fired, the final gunshot sounded, and the last civilian was splattered on the ground, Death’s fingers lovingly cradled the souls of the murdered and carried them to whatever there is after life. The house, the yard, the ant hill blasted apart. The last bit of the burning neighborhood dissolved in less than a second, reduced to nothing but grains of matter. A crater left in the place of what once was.