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Blitzkrieg

Carys Goodwin

    The situation underground was comparative serenity to the hysteria of outside. Bea sat in a huddle, pressed against the ever-vibrating walls of the bomb shelter, watching without seeing. It had been less than two hours since the ordeal began, but each minute felt like years, and Bea’s thoughts plagued her in an incomprehensible swarm. She closed her eyes and leant back until her head made a dull clunk against the wall. Under her breath, she began to murmur the notes to her favourite piece of music, just loud enough to hear the tune wavering from her lips.
    While she repeated the phrases, an orchestra began to build in her mind, the crescendos fabricated by the wail of tired violins. And as the shelter began to rumble once again, the timpanis played a deafening rhythm, forcing Bea’s head to jolt in a ‘1, 2, 3, 4.’ One beat for every bomb.

***

    Bea is bored. She knows the answer to her teacher’s question, but feels compelled to give the other girls a chance. Judging by their faces - expressions of embarrassed ignorance - they can’t figure it out. The teacher surveys her class, an interrogative glare, before landing on Rose in the front row. Tiny thing, as delicate as her name.
    ‘Rose, could you please tell the class your answer?’ Bea imagines the teacher taking delight in the squirming girl, interpreting the straight line of her mouth as a sneer. Rose shakes her head, a blush creeping down the back of her neck.
    ‘Ah,’ the teacher says disapprovingly, ‘well, does anyone know?’ Despite her intelligence, Bea is uninterested in relieving the class of their discomfort. Instead, she twirls a curl around her index finger and stares out the window. The scene around her fades into nothingness as the outside-world takes hold.
    Clouds hang low, giving the field a ghostly look; only enhanced by the crumbling ruins of surrounding buildings. Bea begins to plan a story, her self-perceived brilliance turning the idea into an arrogant assumption of her own talent. With her head on her chin, she imagines her characters; the doll of a girl, the handsome boy, the eerie night at the abandoned shelter... She sighs, slightly annoyed at her inability to escape the terror that suffocates her country. Her inability to escape the idea that any second she could be obliterated, dead before making a mark on the world she thinks she deserves.

***

    Bea fell out of her reverie to an awful scream. A small girl had been dragged below by one of the teachers and was seemingly unconscious. Her face was smeared in red, and, from what Bea could see, one of her arms was missing. It took Bea longer than usual to understand, but when she did, she wished she didn’t. For the girl was none other than Rose, the flower, crumpled into an unnatural heap, cradled in the arms of the teacher who tried to rescue her.
    After one paralysing moment, Bea rolled, only finding a bare patch of ground with seconds to spare, before heaving the contents of her stomach onto the sickeningly smooth concrete. Shelter be damned. Bea knew that the basement-turned-safe-house was nothing more than a death trap, the closest part of school to hell - where they all would soon reside. She wretched once more.

***

    The bread Bea is eating is disgustingly dry, as per usual. She spits out the mouthful in despair, wishing for the days when sugar was more than a myth. The action earns an ‘ahem’ from the supervising teacher. Her friend Allie giggles into her mushy peas, and they exchange glances as the teacher begins to approach. Smoothing her dress, Bea prepares to debate the nutritional quality of stale bread in her usual argumentative fashion, but she is distracted by the ground starting to rumble.
    In the lunch room, conversation halts, the atmosphere instantly transforming into one of dreadful anticipation. Another rumble, bigger and more terrifying, rocks the room. One of the first to do so, Bea leaps to her feet, her eyes growing as she watches her school-mates comprehend what is beginning to happen. She tugs Allie up, and as chaos sets in around her, heads for the door. With each step she becomes more aware, and abandons plans and ideas for one thought so strong it’s all that pushes her forward. Survival.
    Once she reaches the lunchroom door, Bea turns, and in an explosive cacophony, the air-raid alarm sounds; Luftwaffe planes audible over the blood-curdling shrieks of realisation. A soft ‘no’ escapes her as the ground shudders so violently her knees buckle and she has to reach for the door-frame to stay standing. It stops, and Bea begins to run, her feet forming a sick rhythm as they clap against the floor.
    Reaching the stairs to the basement shelter, Bea notices Allie isn’t behind, her blonde pigtails lost in the crowd. The true magnitude of what is happening crashes onto Bea’s shoulders with such force that she cries out, her eyes spinning around so fast the room blurs and warps. Each tiny movement she makes as she struggles to walk down the stairs is a split-second decision, and her mind is at such a speed it takes off without her, leaving her stripped of all but basic instincts. She is an animal of the hunt, a terrified rabbit thumping her back leg in warning, screaming to her warren in agglomerative wails (run! move! help!) of one-syllable words (please! move!) so compulsive she loses all diction.
    ‘Run!’
    Behind her, not twenty yards away, the building is hit by an onslaught of bombs, shattering the bricks into a thousand tiny pieces.

***

    Someone placed a hand on Bea’s back as she vomited. After pausing to make sure she had finished, Bea looked up and saw that it was her teacher, the one whose class she had been in before lunch. The teacher’s hair was a mess of straw-like strands, her lipstick smeared against her cheek. But she was familiar, and that was enough for Bea. Tears began to slop down her cheeks, mixing with the sweat that already glossed her face. Her teacher pulled her in tightly, whispering ‘Beatrix, oh darling, hush, hush,’ into her ear.
    They sat, sobbing, holding each other, for a while.
    ‘Ms. Wright,’ Bea gurgled, breaking the silence, ‘I knew the answer.’ The teacher paused, before pulling back.
    ‘What do you mean, darling?’
    ‘In ‘current events’, you asked who Germany invaded. It was Poland. I knew it was Poland.’ Bea felt Ms. Wright pull her in tighter, clasping her hands together behind Bea’s back.
    She hoped the bombs would stop falling soon.

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