Moonburned

By: R. Warren Smith
September 10, 2008

I almost can’t make myself do it.

Almost.

I can see the moon’s brilliance, but I sit here, safe within the shadows. An owl calls through the night sky, its haunting voice carrying across the field in front of our house, and it brings an unbidden tear to my blood-crusted face. I spit out the iron-tasting liquid that trickles across my lips as my tongue scrapes the inside of my mouth until the only taste that can beat through the numbness is the fresh warmth of my own blood.

Again, I see the shiny brilliance of my destroyer reflected on the shards of the broken glass that had been our large living room window. The children, Georgia, and I use to spend hours watching the wind gambol through the wheat under the warmth of the sun. That is all gone now. Nothing remains but to step outside.

“Do you fear their wrath?” a voice prompts from somewhere deep within my mind, and I respond from the heart, with disgust and loneliness, hurling the couch against the far wall. “Who is left to fear? Who, except myself?”

The couch crashes to the floor, taking their pictures with it, the sickening crunch of glass assaulting my ears. What is left of the bile in my stripped stomach comes up and I cannot even cry out, caught up in the throes of dry heaves. Wooden-legged, I walk to their pictures.

I can feel the glass splinters penetrating my fingers and palms as I pick up all that remains of my family. With a mirthless croak for a laugh, I grip the shards even harder until my hands are impaled and the wooden frames shatter.

“My little girls . . . Alicia and Stella . . .” ragged breaths fight their way from my lungs, and I look to the girls’ baby brother, Graham. They were the center of our world. Georgia and I . . . but where is Georgia? Where is my wife? Where is her image?

“Georgia?”

Ahh, there’s your picture! I move my feet to see her auburn framed face of delicate features. “You are all together; together in a peace that I want to have.”

“Why? Why did they do this?”

The terrified, pathetic screams of my children as they were dragged outside into the clear night air . . . under the moon . . . still resounds in my ears. Georgia . . .my wife running to their smoking, writhing forms to cover them with her own body.

It was cremation by moonlight.