The sun was setting over misery. The shadows of night that call imaginary monsters and dangers to exists in the mind of children, were in this case a blessing by hiding a reality too painful to be looked at.
War had annihilated normalcy. War...the ultimate gamble and game of the sick and the perverted minds. It gives imbeciles the power to stop normal lives for ever.
An old man and a puppy were the only survivors in what had been a village. Doors, windows and roofs gone, the ../moon and the stars replaced them. They were the only beauty available.
The last two lives in the devastated scenery sat on the dirt by a fire made from twigs and dry grass. It was a miserable attempt at survival that was not going to work.
The old man looked at the puppy with shame. He loved it , but he could not stop thinking about eating him although he did not have the physical strength to kill him.
The puppy, desperately hungry, was chewing a small branch, choking and coughing on the splinters. The old man felt sorry for him and guilty because he had no food to give him.
So, in despair, he walked the puppy south, where there might be some food...or surelysome bones ...in the cemetery.
Once they arrived the puppy began to smell the earth promontories with great concentration, but did not start digging as expected. It started pulling on a wooden cross and got it off the ground. Then began chewing it with delight.
The old man left overwhelmed with emotion, he had buried his wife of 60 years in that grave; may be that was the reason the dog had selected it.
He came back to the small fire. It was dying, just as he was. He put his hands over it for a last feeling of warmth.
Then the puppy came back, it had been digging and digging and was carrying something in his mouth. He laid down and began chewing happily on it, pulling pieces of dry skin and hair.
A golden front tooth reflected a ../moon ray and shined, that 's when the old man knew he was looking at his lover's head.
He walked slowly in the dark, just away of that ultimate horror. In a little while the puppy followed him currying the skull and wagging his tail.
Something cracked in the old man brain, and suddenly he felt happy. They were together again, he and she and their beloved pet. And so...the three together kept on walking into the shadows, with equal opportunity for happiness. One had lost her brain, the other his mind and the puppy never had one.
"God ," said the old man, as he fell down with weakness, "let me die first so my puppy has something to eat."
That's War.
1 January, 1996
rgualda@inetworld.net
