Summer Blossom

Leaning over to press my forehead against the wood of the floor, I could see through the crack where the floor had split. There was a slit through the wood and I could see through easily; though when I moved to stop my knees from aching, dust leaked from the wooden floor and irritated my nose. Peter pushed against my leg as he tried to find another gap in the floorboards, and I turned to see Ant moving slowly towards us, carefully placing his hands on the rough wooden floorboards. As he reached the dying light of the candle he blew fiercely to distinguish the light, and the entire room was swamped with darkness. This made the cracks and holes in the floor easier to find, and Peter pressed his face to the floor to look through at the room below. The barn felt cold now, and the air was rising from below and bringing the smell of damp hay with it. I watched the empty room below, the entire time gritting my teeth. I could feel something shaking and I turned my head to see Peter’s fist clenched next to my head, so hard that it was shaking against the wood. I touched it with my hand and he jolted away, and then relaxed. I looked back through the floor and waited for Eliza to emerge and frantically open the hatch into our hidden room.
She appeared in the space below, and I could see her heels shuffling through the wet hay as she fell into the room. Someone had pushed her, and she fell sideways and bounced her hand off the hay to steady herself as she stood again. Her hair looked messy as if she had ruffled it up in the wrong direction, and I watched whilst holding my breath. A lean built soldier walked up and stood beside her, he was a little taller than her, and much wider, with his muscular build and wide shoulders. I wondered what was happening and watched her carefully, feeling Peter’s fist tense again. Ant creaked a floorboard behind me and I cringed and waved my hand angrily in the darkness for him to stop; I knew he couldn’t see me but terror was streaking through my veins at the man and Eliza below. I looked back in time to see the German soldier reach forward and grip a clump of Eliza hair, wrenching it forward and straining her neck. He pulled her to him and spat something German in her face, pressing his nose close up against her cheek. She stood up on her toes as he pulled her hair upwards, dragging his fingers through it a little then gripping it again and pulling her from side to side in front of his face. He let out a harsh laugh, and pulled her head backwards. I saw her face as she looked towards the ceiling where I was watching her from. She gritted her teeth and seemed to look straight at me, before choking some harsh German words from her mouth, aimed towards his face from the side. I saw him move his head around and look at her face, I could not see his face and I had no idea of what expression it showed, but Eliza’s face was still in plain view and I stared at her. I could feel something crawling across my leg and I shook it quickly, forgetting the noise it might cause, and the soldier’s eyes darted upwards. He stared directly at me, and then his eyes wandered across the ceiling to around the area that Peter was watching from. I pulled my face away from the floor and moved it sideways so that I could still see the soldier’s face through the crack, but he would be unable to see me. My breath caught in my throat and I was about to choke on it when Ant gripped my mouth from behind and I was able to release the choke under his hand, which stifled the noise. The soldier continued to stare at the ceiling, as it creaked when Peter moved away from it. The soldier yanked Eliza’s hair again, and asked her something in German, barking the words in her face with spit. I leant back down and peered through the hole, Ant moving away and back to stare through a hole next to me. Eliza shouted something back and he slapped her around the face, the noise of skin clipping skin ripping through the darkness in our room and theirs. She shouted something again, and then let her sentence trail off as she spat the German words at him. Her accent sounded authentic, though she didn’t have the spitting quite as malicious as he did.
He ripped her shirt open then and revealed her pretty pink undergarments. She writhed and struggled with his muscular arms, attempting to tear his hands away from her torso and failing. She let out a cry and then began to struggle with his other hand that held tightly on to her hair, all the time pulling it away from her head so that they were moving around in a circle. Underneath me I felt the floor shake a little and felt Peter stand. He walked carefully over to somewhere next to the wall in the darkness and stopped. He was rummaging through something and I looked back to the floor to see the soldier using his free hand to rip through Eliza’s grey skirt. She fell over backwards and one of her heels slipped off her foot. She bent over backwards as she slipped on the wet hay and the soldier pulled her back to her feet, as if she were dancing on her tip toes in an attempt to loosen his pulling on her hair, and slapped her again. This slap was harder, and I grit my teeth as she yelped in pain. She had not begun to cry yet, and in a sudden rip on energy she began to slap her hands across the soldier’s butch face. Her slaps were in vain, and he merely gripped one of her wrists and twisted it around her back. I dragged my fingernails across the floor and felt guilt ripping through me; we had to help, but we had no idea how many other soldiers were below or around. Ant was cursing very quietly behind me, and I could hear him punching his hand with a fist in the darkness. Peter had grown silent, and I searched the space he had disappeared to in the darkness, but could not see him. Something creaked behind us, and I saw the trap door that lay in the wall open, the darkness from outside looking navy and blue compared to the black nothing that engulfed our room. Peter’s figure moved into the gap and he shut the door gently behind him. I felt panicked at this, and I turned to see Ant carefully lifting his gun from the floor. The whites of his eyes were visible in the darkness, and I could tell that he was scrunching his eyes as he tried to load the gun quietly. I looked back down to see Eliza lying on the floor, punching at the soldier’s arms and torso, his head held away from her as he abused her vulnerability. She began to say something in German, which then switched to English as she cursed him. She was being very quiet and I could not understand why; then I realised that if she shouted she would draw more attention to them. Maybe that was what he had said; were there more German soldiers around?
I heard nothing below before I saw Peter appear in the gap where the back door to the barn lay, and he stood looking at the soldier who was hitting and tearing at Eliza’s clothes. She was now lying in her underwear, and she was trying her hardest to keep his hands from touching her, her face contorting into awful expressions at him. Peter stepped forward, and I dug my nails in to the wood of the floor. I had not noticed Ant leave also, and he stepped in to the barn behind Peter, gun in one hand and a large sheathed knife in the other. He closed the door quietly, letting it fall in to place whilst holding it back with the palms of his hands. Peter advanced towards the German soldier, and whilst he did it he unsheathed the knife in his hand. I gathered my breath and asked myself whether I wanted to watch this, but I could not draw my eyes away from the scene. I suddenly knew that if anything was to happen I should not be left here alone. I heard the German soldier say something and then a sudden movement just before he cried out. His voice was muffled and as I strained to listen to what was occurring, I jumped from the floor and ran towards the door in the wall. It was pitch black outside, and as I steered myself towards the big barn door that Peter and Ant had just closed, I could hear nothing of what was happening inside. I saw a slither of light escaping from the barn that was situated about a quarter of a mile from ours, and then disappear in to the darkness. I slid in through the barn door and turned to see the men. Eliza had rolled away from them and was sat up with her hands frantically feeling around her head. She sat in her underwear, her skin seeming pale and sickly. I looked back to the men and saw Peter inflict one last stab to the German soldier’s back. His uniform was drained of its original colour and was now dyed a deep red, which seemed to have a hint of black to its thickness. I watched as Ant rolled the soldier over and kicked him, hit boot leaving the body covered in blood; the scuffed black leather stained with it. I stared at them, and Eliza looked up at me. Underneath the man the hay had also been dyed crimson, and it began to trickle away from his corpse in a thin slithering river. Peter moved some hay over the blood and wiped it with his foot, bringing the back of his hand up to his face and wiping his mouth. His hand still held the knife, which was now embellished with jewels of blood, and it shone in the light as he wiped his mouth. He knelt down and took a section of the soldier’s trousers between his fingers and wiped the knife as clean as it would go. Ant dropped his knife, and tucked his gun into the back of his trousers. Behind me, the door clicked closed, and I fell against it whilst still looking at the men. Eliza sniffed beside me and let out a cry of pain and relief; she begun to cry and her head slipped in to her hands. I wanted to go and comfort her, but I could not move my limbs. My face felt contorted and stuck like the wind had blown and I would stay that way forever. Peter turned when he heard the door click, and stood looking at me. Feeling a tear run down my cheek I felt a sudden urge to kick the dead soldier. I stepped forward and I could feel the anger building in my face as I saw the bruises that were already staining Eliza’s legs and stomach. I grit my teeth again and clenched my fists, a noise of anger released from my mouth that I did not know I could make. My breathing grew faster and I could not control it; Peter moved over to me as fast as he could, whilst wiping his one hand of a streak of blood on his trousers. He took my head in his hands and kissed my forehead, rubbing his thumbs on the side of my face. I felt something wet on his hands and realised it might be blood. Tiny splatters speckled his right cheek, and I looked behind him to see Ant wiping at his hands frantically. He looked like a mad man, writhing his hands around together, picking up hay and rubbing it on his palms. The colour faded a little, but the liquid looked like oil; no matter how much he scrubbed it just spread around his palms and stained his skin.
Eliza stood up and wrapped her arms around herself, and I touched Peter’s face before breaking away from him and embracing Eliza. I covered her back with my arms and rubbed her cold skin, which felt supple and freezing. Her face was streaked with her dark makeup as tears had run down her cheeks in the past few minutes; more tears than I knew one could produce in that small amount of time. I held her head against me and she felt smaller without her heels. Peter had picked up Eliza’s torn shirt and handed it to me. I wrapped it around her shoulders, and Peter stood close to us and watched, his head tilted to the side, his eyes looking empty and defeated. I pressed my hand against his face as I held Eliza close to me, her body jerking as she sucked her breath in heavily and let out tears. Peter bent his head low and I saw his chin tremble. I could not tell what he was thinking; killing a man would not bother him, but something was disturbing him inside. His adam’s apple jolted in his neck as he gulped down air, or something, and the lump rested again in his gullet.
Ant appeared behind Eliza and lifted her skirt in his hands to give to me. I blinked away the salt feeling in my eyes and took it from him just before he began to take off his jacket. I could see sweat patches on his jacket, around the back of the neck and under the arms, but all the same he still took it off and placed it upon Eliza’s shoulders. She had stopped crying now, and her face was moist. Red blotches covered her cheeks and nose, and her mouth looked ripe and purple, with a bruise spreading across her bottom lip. Ant moved around to her side and buttoned up her shirt and jacket; and she showed no embarrassment at all, she just watched his face as he concentrated on doing up the large metal buttons on his jacket. She stood in the jacket, which was baggy around her shoulders and a little long for her arms. Her legs were still bare and I took up her skirt and bent down towards her feet. She stepped in to it with each foot and I pulled it up around her waist, reaching under Ant’s green jacket and doing the button up around her stomach.
There was a noise outside, though in the distance a little, and shuffling around the front of the bar in the direction of the other barn. Eliza looked struck by the noise; and she sniffed abruptly, her head darting up to look at me again. I turned to Peter and he grabbed my hand and yanked me towards the door. Ant took Eliza round the shoulders and followed after us. I saw her grip his arm just before Peter punched the wooden wall beside the large door which extinguished the electric light in the centre of the ceiling of the barn. Darkness followed after, and I saw the navy sky which was speckled with stars as the door opened. The light I had seen from the other barn had grown from a slither and was now a large, gaping mouth to the barn, where I could see silhouettes of men gathering. They did not look organised, but straining to see in the immediate area around our barn, I thought I saw a few men advancing towards us. Peter pulled me around the back of the barn and I saw Ant and Eliza following. Eliza had taken her shoes from the floor and held them close to her upper body so as not to drop them. We stopped behind the barn and I could see a large, open field ahead of us. In the distance I could see a few lights on a hill, but other than that the view was entirely flat ahead of us towards the horizon. Eliza slipped her shoes on and bent over to secure her feet in them at the back.
‘We’ll have to run for it,’ Peter stated. I thought he was going to say something else, but he stopped himself and breathed in. I thought he was about to say something about the soldiers, but I knew he was thinking that it was the only option to run, or there was a good chance we would be killed. I felt his arm move forwards and he pulled me with him. Eliza took my hand from behind and the four of us began to run towards the thickly growing field. We soon discovered that the field was full of corn, and the thick, waxy leaves slapped against my face as we ran. The corn was tall, taller than Peter, and it rustled as we slipped between it. Our footsteps were silenced by the soft soil below, and all that could be heard was the rustle of the corn. Eliza gripped my hand as we ran, and I felt like a small child in a game of people in a circle, hands held tightly. We continued to run, and something similar to fear sunk through me, and resonated in my mouth. It tasted like iron, as if I had bitten my tongue or mouth and the blood taste was very faint. It felt like nerves, but I had no time to worry about what we were doing as it all unfolded so suddenly. Peter held tightly on to my hand, and I could see his slim torso ahead as he ran, his knee perhaps causing him pain, though he did not let it show. The adrenaline subsided, and all I could feel was the thought of relief that Eliza was safe now. I thought about the thing I had seen in Peter’s face as I had gawped at him in fear of what he had done. Killing the soldier had not bothered him, but me seeing it had.
Walking through the shortest grass of all of the fields so far, we ended up walking on a faint path where a large tractor had travelled through. The ground was wet from late night dew and numbed my feet. I walked barefoot again, holding my shoes at my side. Peter walked beside me, his arm around my shoulder. Eliza and Ant walked before us and I watched them as Ant helped Eliza walk, his jacket still wrapped around her tightly. Peter felt warm and cosy beside me, and I pulled my arm around him, sighing in to the cold night. I could see my breath faintly in the dark, and we followed the faint path in the dull moonlight. It must have been around four in the morning, and the edge of the horizon was picking up a little light, though very faintly. Ahead of us loomed the silhouette of a small barn which we headed for, after having trudged through fields for about two and a half miles. Peter gripped my shoulder and arm and pulled me up. I could feel my head getting heavy and my legs becoming a separate entity to what I told them to do. They went floppy and limp and I thought I was about to fall when Peter lifted me back again to his side, and then decided to lift under my arm and drag my feet over the soft grass as we reached the front of the barn. Ant opened the door and felt around; bumping into a bail of hay, before lighting a match from his jacket that Eliza wore. It was full of hay and so we shut the door behind us and I lay on the floor where Peter had pulled at hay to soften the already hay covered ground. The four of us huddled together in the middle of four walls of hay which we had to clamber over to reach our spot. My hands were cold and so I propped them under my arms and imagined the warmth of a fire, just before I felt my eyes grow heavy and sleep welcomed me at last.

The late morning greeted us with a slanted line of light through the doors of the barn, the wood letting the soft colour seep through its skin. Peter was already awake as I sat upright, and I glanced at Eliza’s sleeping figure beside me.
‘I’m sorry you saw that.’ Peter looked up from where he was sat stripping the outer layer from a thin piece of straw. He threw it to the floor before him and stared at me from across the barn. I was sat cross-legged on the floor opposite him. The light from the barn door spread across the side of Peter’s face which looked tired and defeated. ‘I can’t explain anything to you anymore. I don’t know how, or why. I just can’t. I have something for you to read anyway. I want you to read my diary.’ He finished his sentence at that, and watched me again, before reaching into the dirty green jacket pocket and producing a small bundle of paper in a leather bound book. He threw them over to me and I caught the book in my lap, feeling the rough edges of the battered paper. I turned the package over in my hands, and Peter pulled his jacket further around him. I couldn’t see his face anymore, and the limited light moved off his face on to his hands on his jacket.
‘It’s a bit poetic, you might think that’s disgustingly selfish that I managed to turn such experiences in to words like that, but I suppose we all have our own forms of escapism, right?’
I sat leant back against a bail of hay. The first page was dated September 28th. It was the dirtiest, and as I looked through the covers of the pages beneath it, I saw it was the first. Muddy fingerprints pattered across the cream paper, covering a few words that were just visible through the dirt. Peter stood and flicked a piece of hay from his hand, before bending to kiss my forehead and then left the barn. ‘I’ll be back soon; I just need some fresh air. Maybe I’ll see if I can find anything at all to eat..’ His sentence trailed off as he left the door open slightly.