Pitch darkness, black as oil.

The heavy air is still; the only movement is the laborious breath of two dozen refugees. Prisoners, locked away from the light, intoxicated; mind and body together in a wispy cloud of slow poison.

Each breath pulls in the fumes of the higher class. The mind rises ever higher and separates from the body, seeking release from the scoured wasteland that held life, but now only invites death. And silence, except for a dull, faraway roar.

Scar tissue, charred with exquisite agony.

Harsh coughs break the quiet like razors. While one of the twenty-four suffers from the burns they all share, there is nothing to say; nothing to do but wait, until it subsides. Then everyone lapses into their own lethargic nightmare once again.

The despairing wail of a child is heard too, and this is more painful. One pities the child, but in most there is no strength left for pity. Just a hopeless, toxic dream, of Technicolor fields under a flaring red sun.

* * *

Only when the dull roar abruptly stops, with a noise like a million agonizing screams, do the two dozen refugees wake from the dream. Acid blood floods corroded veins as the heart panics, pumping death in a rushing waterfall as the fuel truck screeches to a halt. Yet through the fumes and the poison, the mind and heart as one hold on to one thing – hope, like a sparkling diamond shining through a tarnishing layer of injustice.

A ray of some incredible bright substance falls across the damp floor, and for a second time stops as twenty-four human beings see the first sparkling beam of their diamond.

“Let there be light,” comes a hoarse whisper

Suddenly, the truck is flooded with light in a blazing rush, and the prisoners shield their eyes as an angel armed with a rifle is silhouetted against what must be the glory of heaven. The angel sees the refugees, ragged but clutching at the straws of hope.

In that momentary shift of space and time, where there is no movement, he slowly nods. He will let them through.

The door slams shut, and there is only darkness.

* * *

David Zhuravlev, age 15