A Soft Spoken Confrontation

"Am I going to die?" The girl asked, her voice so blatant and honest that it stung the man to the very core. It took him some time to comprehend the bluntness of the question, and when he finally opened his mouth, even then his words seemed uncertain.

"It is likely." He answered after a long moment of silence between the two. As his comrades were herding the others into the street towards the trucks, he felt as if he were frozen in place, held by those big brown eyes, and that innocent look. The poor girl was in clothing that not even he would dress a homeless man... and there was a soft pang of guilt eating away at his chest.

"Will it hurt?" She asked, almost immediately after his answer and he'd swallow.

"I... ah.... I don't know." He was unnerved by her, the way that she stared so calmly at him as she asked those questions... though even as he answered this one, her expression only changed to one furrowed in confusion.

"Can you hold my hand when it happens?" He'd stop, that swallow heavy in his throat, and he would clear away the knot building there. She was just a child. She was a Jew, but she was just a child... He was angry at her, angry that she was making him feel like this, half growling in his mind that her parents must have put her up to it, but there was another part of him that wanted to reach out and whisk the child away to a place where she wouldn't be smeared on a furnace room floor. He imagined it, and a wave of nausea hit him like a monsoon.

"I.... cannot." He blurted out, voice cracking for a mere moment before he cleared his throat once again. "I'm sorry. But..." He would hold out his hand, fingertips shaking for only a moment. "I can hold your hand now." He stated, a weak, twitching smile forming on his lips. The girl stared at that leather gloved hand, and finally reached up to take hold of it. Gripping it tightly in her hand, they began to walk down the street, steering her around the puddles in the way towards that forboding black truck.

"Okay. My mommy says we're going to a castle. That I'm going to be a princess..." The man would smile, the stinging in his eyes now quite apparent as he picked up the girl by the waist and hoisting her into the truck.

"You won't be a princess. You'll be a queen... You'll be the queen of the world." He said, voice cracking for a moment before he held out her tattered teddy bear, a thing that he had grabbed last minute, an action he questioned himself when it occured, though he didn't question it anymore. The girl smiled and took it, satisfied with the answer that he had given her. He'd wink at her for a moment, before closing the doors to the truck and slapping a palm on the back door twice.

"Take it away."



A small illustration for a class that I had to do. I think it's a terrible illustration, but it's for a Creative Writing thing.

BLEGH. I hate it. But meh.


Song this was Drawn to: [link]