Chair of the Scottish PEN Writers at Risk Committee, Lizzie Eldridge, wrote these two stories in response to the conflict in Gaza. The stories were originally published by Literary Revelations, who have given kind permission for them to be reposted here.
BIO
Lizzie Eldridge is a Glasgow writer with 2 published novels. One of these, Vandalism, was shortlisted for a National Book Prize in Malta where she lived for 12 years. Her flash fiction, short stories, CNF and poetry appear in anthologies and journals, such as Epoch, Northern Gravy and Ellipsis Zine. Her forthcoming chapbook, It doesn’t matter when, is due to be published in January by Naked Cat. She can be found on Twitter (f*** X) @lizzie_eldridge
This is the way the world ends
It was a wreck, with nothing worth salvaging. The flotsam, the jetsam, the scum of debris bobbing on the water like the abandoned clutter of a neglected hovel that you’d never call a home.
No-one cared. No-one picked up the useless pieces. No-one tried to piece together the fragments so any sense could be discerned.
Twisted metal, smouldering ashes, blackened sky and dirt-filled ground. No plants. No blossoms. No trees to offer shade or give shelter from the pain that burnt into the eyes.
No eyes to see. No hand to reach out and offer some last gasping sense of comfort. No rescuing arms to give even the illusion of safety in this dismembered landscape of carnage and despair.
No despair without humans to heave and groan and feel this. No hope without a voice to whisper consolation. No forgiveness in a broken land of retribution. No respite in this aching void of darkness. No song to sing of all that we have lost.
A lone bird staggers through the shrapnel, too weary to peck at wanton bits of flesh. Its wings now heavier than its feeble body. Its final flutter and its failure and its fear. The weight of its futile efforts and the inevitable collapse.
The wailing of machines without a driver. The piercing blinding flashes that cut through the night. Rain falling, and perpetually, with no reason. Nothing to nourish. No soil and thus no thirst.
This weeping and this screaming and this begging. The prayers of those long dead linger silent as the darkness. Those long-lost pleas for mercy and forgiveness hang limp and useless in a blood-stained shroud.
Why, oh why, oh why hast thou forsaken me? Why can you not hear us in our desperate hour of need? Did we not kneel and bow our heads before thee? Did we not ask you for compassion when we called out to you most?
One flicker of a candle would have been enough. One last glimpse of sunlight before this endless storm. One quicksilver flash of a genuine smile from a wise old man who may have seen all this before and reassure us that if we stay calm, then sun will surely follow after dawn.
Gaping mouths stretched taut across the skulls of children. The bones of fingers scratching through the jagged wood. The deathly howls of the deceased whose shadows haunt the devastated streets.
The refusals, the denials, and the bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bombing. The never-ending shelling of a deadly empty shell. The vengeance of the vengeful tearing corpses limb from limb. The withered hand, reaching slowly upwards. No breath left to defend. No air left to breathe.
Wherever life has not died out
Man cannot live on bread alone, but that was all they had. Feeding so many more than five thousand and with only a handful of bakeries left, queues lengthened day by day, parched mouths desperate for nourishment. The people starved as the smell of freshly baked bread rose into the autumn sky.
A blinding light, a fire to end all fires, shatters this same sky violently, such terrifying noise. This same sky is set alight as buildings are flattened, homes sliced in two, and limb from tiny limb is ripped apart and torn asunder.
The tantalising aroma of gently rising dough is choked with the stench of sulphur and scorched flesh. A heavy, gut-wrenching, sickening smell staggers its unyielding way through the screaming darkness. The pungent nausea of the dying hangs stagnant in decaying streets where, moments earlier, the living gave grateful thanks for the bread they were about to receive. A motionless baby lies etched into the blackened ground. A mother claws at the ash-filled air in feeble hope of an answer to her prayers.
Burnt-out husks of homes remain where children once watched TV while parents spoke about a future that perhaps, one day, they’d see. The skeletons of cities – where roads once mapped out familiar pathways to school, to work, to the waiting arms of relatives – now smashed, decapitated, a shapeless mass beyond all recognition.
A silence descends after the shrill piercing drone of danger bursts into thunder, gaping inside a hell so bleak that those who find a final anguished ounce of strength to push their hands through rubble, heave stones away, wish, with all the force that pounds against their wounded heads, for resurrection. Digging frantically with broken hands, they pray for mercy. What is this life, survivors groan as, heaving their mutilated bodies upwards, they find those hands they thought reached out to offer help belong to corpses.
No respite. No shelter. No quiet comforting haven where families can embrace each other with reassuring warmth.
No compassion. No release. No gently whispered bedtime stories.
No hushing. No soothing. No forgiveness.
No end to this interminable night. No comfort for those condemned to writhe in agony until that last snatch of breath becomes too much to bear. No daybreak and no dawn.
No moment when the weeping and the wailing and the grieving can pick up shattered thoughts, let splinters drop from their limp fingers, fall into the smouldering cinders of wicker baskets which once held soft bread, reeking now of coffins torched by hatred marching, relentless, demanding an eye for a clawed-out eye.
October and November are the cruellest months, meting out fear after fear with bloodthirsty lust.
What is that sound? Please. Is someone there alive?
We’ve come, my friends, with shrapnel bones. We’ve come to join the dead.