Little boys crying in cellars, as the soldiers storm the house and take, taking the family outside to be raped and tortured and killed. A mother giving her life to buy her children a chance, one chance that they will live. Blood splattered on the wall and turns into firelight, burning, burning the children who hid in the attic, burning the children who hid in the passages, burning the corpse of the girl who stayed behind to hide her brother in the cellar, the cellar, the fireproof cellar.

And the children are running, running, trying to outrun the flames, but they can’t scream or the soldiers will hear them. Can’t scream or they will die. And the fire is burning her body, and the fire still burns and the boy is crying, crying, crying for his family who died for one mistake, and his sister who died to protect him, and his siblings who are dying for the sake of unluck, unlucky that it was not they who the sister found and hid in the cellar, the cellar, the fireproof cellar. But a million tears from the thousand orphans will never be enough to wash away the blood of the millions who died, died in the raping or the maiming or the fires.

Little boys crying in cellars, trying to stop it all in their impotence, in their innocence, in their childhood they are not strong enough to save their families. And the fire still burns, but the children have stopped screaming and lay as blackened corpses, burning with their sister in their unluck. They are the unlucky children who died, but the boy in the cellar is not the lucky one, cannot be called the lucky one because he will live, but is the unlucky one because he will live, live alone in a charred world, live alone in a scarred world, live alone in a marred world.

And the fire is burned out and the soldiers have left and the dawn has broken, and the little boy emerges from the cellar to look upon the bodies, to look upon the ruins, to look upon the wreckage of his life and cry, cry for his family, cry for the unlucky ones, cry for himself and lay down, down in the ashes and cry.