The Rose of Peace

Click here to view the image that prompted this story.

“No, love! Don’t go nearer!”

The little girl moved towards the barricade of soldiers. Everyone held their breath as they looked at her, the lone figure walking in the undesignated space between the military and the protestors.

She looked up to see the grim, towering bodies, and saw only sad men who needed cheering up. With a small smile, she held out a bright red rose to the nearest soldier, who kept the gun level on her head.

Seeing no response from the imposing figure, she crept closer and placed the rose in the gun’s barrel.

Everything seemed to move slowly after that. The sound of a gunshot, the girl falling to the ground with a headshot wound, the screams of the people, the rumble of bodies, the crying soldier who held his daughter’s dead body in his arms.

Nobody noticed the single rose petal that fell on the pool of blood that formed on the streets.

Image source: deviantart.com/gedogfx/art/Peace-537977759
First written November 4, 2017.
#35

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