The Solace Of Trees by Robert Madrygin

Author:Robert Madrygin [Madrygin, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2017-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

“What happened next?” Dr. Caron asked. The physician’s voice was kind, yet its encouragement wasn’t so much in the gentleness of its tone as in the strength of its neutrality. Steve Caron had heard stories from the mouths of young war victims that few would be able to listen to, even in brief, secondhand detail, let alone while watching the faces of the children as they recounted them. The last thing such children needed was the incredulous, horrified reaction of an adult unable to believe such things possible.

“The man, the captain they called him, he take out all of the bullets from his gun but one and then he make my mother take his gun.”

Amir spoke calmly and without emotion. His eyes looked down and away without meeting those of Dr. Caron, whose gaze passed back and forth between his notebook and the boy’s face with no attempt to force visual contact. The dream sequences Amir had described to him carried within them a surprising amount of detail, much more than any of his previous accounts of his family’s death. Dr. Caron wondered whether the memories had been accessible to his recall all along, Amir unwilling or unable to speak them. Whatever the case—whether his subconscious had opened through dream or he had reached a point at which his conscious was willing to communicate the secrets his subconscious held tight—the boy’s mind had begun playing out the full memory of his family’s murder for the first time.

“Why did he give her the gun?” the doctor asked.

“Because they are saying they going to take my sister away and do things with her. And my mother she scream no and start crying, then the captain he said if she don’t want them to take Minka away he is going to help her, so he make her take his gun and said OK just shoot Minka and then she don’t have to worry about the men taking my sister.” Amir paused for a second to take in air, the long run of his sentence and the story it recounted having emptied his lungs.

“And then…?” Dr. Caron prompted.

“She could not do it,” Amir continued. “My mother, she could not shoot Minka, and she start crying even more. So the captain and the other men they are laughing like it is the big joke, and he take the gun back. Then he said it would have to be me shooting Minka.”

Amir quit speaking then. The behavioral pediatrician was not shocked to hear that the paramilitary commander had given a gun to Amir’s mother with which to kill her own child. He had heard sadistic stories like this one before, and yet others still even more horrifying.

Dr. Caron saw the boy looking at him. His eyes seemed to beg the man to finish the story for him. “Take your time, Amir,” the physician said in a calm, neutral tone. “Just breathe deep and let your mind relax.”

“I can’t take the gun,” Amir replied in slow, nearly whispered words.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.