She peered up at the dirty, scraggly men dressed in green beside her grandmother and mom as her dad chatted stiffly with the guides a few feet away.
Her fat legged little friend that had entrusted his favorite bear to her after his mom had told him he was too big for toys (and was now the man of the house) had left weeks ago.
No one was left.
But them.
She caught one of the guides as he malevolently sized up her mother. She got visibly upset and started to protest.
Her grandmother quickly slammed a thick hand over the little girl’s mouth and yanked her behind her before she could say anything.
The price to get out had tripled on the sight of them.
After they’d had to scrounge for weeks to find the equivs to cover the cost of passage for all four of them initially quoted.
“We can get you out for that… barely,” the green man with the mottled skin barked absently.
“It’s crazy out there now.”
“Actually, you could probably be a good use to the-” the green man with the yellow tinged face said darkly, “…to us.”
He stopped just short of saying the quiet part aloud but it wasn’t short enough.
Her dad went gray as it dawned on him in a flash that all those who’d thought they’d been paying for safe passage to refugee outposts were probably dead, at best.
Her Dad vehemently yet cheerfully refused. He sounded muffled but tinny, like those cheery commercials full of fake folks he’d always railed at the TV over.
“You know what?”he laughed, “ you guys can just- we’ll figure our way out some other- just- & you know what? Just take all the- This…for the cause, right?”
The little girl’s eyes bulged as her Dad told the men to keep all they’d scavenged and hurriedly herded them back home down a completely different, zigzagging path.
*
They’d been lucky, her gramma had assured her.
She’d continued to as she’d rocked her to sleep every night, too. Before the night she never woke up from.
“LUCK,” she spat, then stared off into the ruins of everything they’d not been able to sell when they’d been trying to escape.
“I want no part of luck-” she muttered angrily to no one in particular.
The little girl sat pressed against the wall in what remained of the only home she had ever known for the short time she’d been alive.
Incessant waves of beeps undulated through the space, followed by distant explosions that echoed across a charred landscape that had once been a vibrant, accepting community.
She buried her face in her knees and tried her very best not to be triggered by the sound.
The explosions that boomed to her left were probably hitting the little school again. The one that all the kids who had once lived there went to with her before Hell began. If the bomb went off to her right it had to be hitting one of the smattering of churches and mosques that had organically raised themselves up across blocks from each other.
It was as if whomever was behind all the brimstone raining down on them was intent on wiping all vestiges of worship away from the world.
The threadbare teddy bear from her friend that she’d promised to watch was tucked in her lap. The little nub of yarn where there had once been a second black button eye protectively scratched against her chest.
Riya remembered the exact shade of gray he’d turned as it all flooded up to overtake her again, against her will.
“He was an angry gray,” she thought to herself.
Scary…but not for them. He’d been gray like a chunk of charcoal that still had a little bit of fire in it on the hearth. The mad look on her father’s face that day had been the last time she’d felt safe in the midst of all of this.
“It’s Okay Bearnum~ or…it’s Going to Be okay- Or…umm-” her voice cracked.
“…Don’t worry, somebody will come- They have to- they just have to, Riya-” Bearnum muttered softly into the heavy heart of the shell-shocked child.
The only constant in the forever strung between then and now were the whirling and clicking noises made in the throat of the one she used to be able to call mommy without getting slapped against what was left of the foundations of their destroyed little house.
They were haunting, spastic, incessant gurgling noises caused by the woman choking on her rage day after day.
He’d gone out against her wishes.
“Riya needs to eat!” he’d harshly whispered.
“We all do- baby, look at you-I -I promise…I’ll be safe-” he’d said as he’d headed out to scavenge whatever he could in the abandoned homes that had once been full of friends and neighbors.
Riya’s had seen him coming down the path, arms laden with food and supplies. She’d squealed and ran to get her mom, who’d been beside herself in the dark.
“Mommy! He’s back! He made it!” Riya had yelled happily.
Her mom had run to the door and flung it open. She’d dropped to her knees, sobbing in relief at the sight of him. If she hadn’t, she would have also been hit by the shrapnel of whatever had cut her husband in two right in front of them both.
He’d died in her arms due to a mortar hit right outside their front door .
Rght after he’d ordered his wife to gather up what was left of the scavenged food for Riya to eat.
Riya focused on that angry gray, not the ashen, desiccated gray of what was left of his body that his wife had begun to lovingly prepare solemn repasts from for her and gramma to survive on. At the urging of his own mother before she joined him on the far side of whatever this was. Just so that Riya could eat all that her dad had given his life to find.
The little girl shook the recall off and for the first time noticed the eerie silence around her.
Panic hit her as she bolted through the house in search of the crazed woman that had once been her mother, Bearnum doing his best to get her to remain calm.
She exploded into the last room of the house and found her mother hunched over in a corner as if she were staring at something in her lap, her back to the room.
“Mommy! I mean-” she choked on the word as it roared out and instinctively stepped back, cowering. Her mother didn’t move.
Bewildered, she tiptoed towards the woman’s body and gingerly raised her hand to touch her back.
She was as hard as a rock.
Just like her grandmother had been.
“Oh no,” Riya cried out softly as tears ran down her face.
She sat Bearnum down and hugged her dead mother from behind, no clue how long she’d been gone.
Her tears washed over her mother’s dirt streaked neck and shoulder, cleansing them as her eyes caught sight of the picture of them all happily together at Riya’s 7th birthday in her lap.
They’d made the ninety minute trek to Six Flags like they’d done for everybody’s birthday in the family, as usual.
There’d been six of them once, and they all had loved amusement parks. Six times a year, officially, was how they’d collectively decided to navigate that roller coaster monkey on the family’s back.
She hiccuped and wiped at her own weary eyes, gingerly placed the photograph next to Bearnum and hugged the rigomortised body of the woman who’d once been her mother one more time.
The beeping bloomed up out of nowhere again. She peeled her arms from around her mom and slammed her hands over her ears, no clue where the bomb was coming from or going to but knowing she couldn’t bear the sound another moment.
Out of nowhere the bomb ripped through the wall to the left of them, knocking the corpse of her mother over on the picture frame and Bearnum, protecting Riya from the shower of brick by the grace of God .
“Riya, you hafta go…” Bearnum murmured softly to the catatonic child as she came back up to the surface of herself, “you…you can’t stay here-”
Eventually she heard him.
She pulled her taut, hungry, bruised little body up from the floor and blindly grabbed onto Bearnum’s paw to take him with her. But he didn’t budge.
“Let’s go-” she muttered numbly and tugged again before she looked back in shock.
Bearnum was pinned under her mother’s body, which was half buried in brick and hunks of exploded plaster.
“Bearnum! We Hafta go! WE HAFTA-” Riya screamed hoarsely.
“Baby, you-”
“Bearnum! We HAFTA GO, COME ON! Come on-Please! PLEASE??!” Riya cried.
“Baby, you hafta leave me- you hafta-” her teddy bear whispered back.
“No!NO!!” she yelled and yanked at his arm again and again, screaming for somebody to help.
Finally, she heard a rip.
She pulled Bearnum into her lap and broke down in tears, her little body wracked with exhaustion. Riya slumped down against the outcropping of her mother, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath and kiss her guardian bear’s one good eye at the same time. Her tears slid down the stump of what remained of Bearnum’s left paw.
Suddenly the beeping began again and-
*
Bebe startled herself awake under the coffee table with a yelp and continued to shake the way she’d done before Moona had stroked her to sleep huddled at her feet.
“Thank you so much, Jim.” Moona murmured. “The older she gets, the more frazzled the beeping of that smoke alarm gets her. Nothing I did would make it stop.”
“There she is~hi baby~” a male voice as warm as molasses purred as he stroked the startled scruff of his favorite neighbor.
Bebe picked up her favorite toy in her mouth and darted out from under the table to affectionately say “thanks for that” to the guy who took care of the goofy, big black dog across the road that reminded her of a kid she used to know, hoping that he’d see she meant it in her watery, sweet eyes. He bent down to be eye level with her one last time and nodded as if he understood. “Don’t mention it,” Jim murmured and kissed her on the top of her furry head.
“Yeah, it’s always the dogs with the most soulful eyes who have the hardest time with beeping noises, thunderstorms and all. Like they were scared little kids in their previous lives or something,” he chuckled.
“I changed the battery. If it starts up again, just give me a call. And-”
“I know, I know ‘be ready for Fourth of July-’” Moona laughed.
They walked to the apartment door to say goodbye.
“Telling ya, it was night and day for my lil baby,” Jim assured her.
“If it can make that ninety pound, howling, fat-legged big baby Rottweiler of yours calm down in a thunderstorm there’s gotta be something to it.”
Moona thanked him again. “The way she lost it until I got her that beat up, one armed teddy bear of hers and brought it To her Under the coffee table, I think I Am gonna get that weighted dog vest. Maybe even make her a lil soundproofed haven under there for Independence Day. They always go nuts with the cherry bombs around here-”