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The screams could be heard throughout the valley. The fires made the night sky glow an ominous orange, and the smoke obscured the stars. The little girl cried quietly, lying facedown in the marshes, in the reeds. What had become of father and mother? Where was brother? No answers; only questions. The screams of victims carried from afar. The village was aflame, the men had been defeated. Those left alive would not cling to the world for long, as their wounds were fatal and everything they had to live for had been burned to ash in any case. A dark, dark scene. A story of raiders in the night and families destroyed, livelihoods lost. I write this capturing a feeling, nothing more. I am no storyteller, just a boy overwhelmed. The little girl was cold. Gnats and mosquitoes were eating at her exposed arms and legs. Her frock did not pass muster for hiding out in the swamps. Her mother had told her to run. They had little warning the invasion was coming, but the precious little time they did have afforded her the opportunity to run away at her mother's insistence. She didn't want to. She could feel the danger, could see it in the firmly set lips of the men, the scared eyes of the women. Nothing would be as it was. She ran. She ran and ran and ran until she collapsed from exhaustion. It was only by some cruel twist of fate that she did not drown in a bog, but ended up on a patch of soggy ground somewhere in between what must have been dozens of them. She was so tired that she could only cry quietly. There is no story here...this is just a moment. A human moment to cast it all into perspective. The definition of bleakness, in the face of which everything else fails. Your trivial complaints. Your lavish wants. You do not know the feeling of bleak, the feeling of futile, until you've hidden in the marshes as everyone you've ever known was herded into one wooden granary and buried alive. Mercilessly. Inhumanly. Oh the atrocities...you would shut your eyes to avoid witnessing the pain and suffering of millions, but you do not deserve that respite, no. The images are behind your eyes; they play on the reel of your own mind. A snickering, dark voice. Mockery from the shadows as the tanks roll out and people are plucked from their homes. Was it in the distant or the recent past? Which war? Which people? Which witness? Does it matter? We think time is at the root of things, we want its measure for our comfort, but it isn't the point. Not the point at all. In fact, the essential is timeless. If we exist, it exists. If we don't exist...well, it probably doesn't exist, but how can we know? I have a vague idea that I am insane. I want to believe that I write all of these disjointed, sick words because I am pretending to be out of touch with reality, because I am pretending to be crazy, but unfortunately they are what pour out of me when I let the walls down, when I let the feeling take hold. So what does this make me? I don't know. I don't want to know. I don't care to know. Gunsmoke in the cool breeze, that's what I'll take for a description of who and what and how I am. Gunsmoke. Do you ever feel the magic send shivers up your spine? I do, very often. I am overcome, and it is good, sometimes, but it can be haunting. It can influence you and never quite let you go...it can rule your mind. Ownership. Possession. Subjugation.

-Artem Potemkin