Hadi Atallah

This world is evil. It should be destroyed before it destroys us. 

“No,” my heart said. “We will fight this thing. We will win over it. We will have our chance.”

Like sheep before the butcher. My heart never resisted or even protested before. All of the time, it had been trying to rescue something of the old peace. There was nothing to do but to save oneself. Now the darkness was closing in, now the music of evil filled the night. An evil beyond thinking.

“Do you remember yesterday?” My heart said. 

And then I saw a little glow ahead of me, and then without interval a tall flame leapt up in the dark with a crackling roar. Every cell in my veins rushed to sense the flames tall and furious, they saw the roof fall. The cries of warning. 

“Who?” My heart asked. 

I did not know. The flames were darkness and all shapes of darkness. 

“Not for long,” my heart said. “Perhaps we found another life.”

My eyes had become hard, cruel and bitter. 

“The wind is good,” my heart said. “Go with God.”

And through my fear of dark and the devils that haunt the night, there came a rush of exhilaration; some animal thing was moving in me so that I was cautious, wary and dangerous. At last the waning moon arose, and when it came up the wind died down, and the land was still. The music of love triumphant in my head.