Content warning: This story is about the Armenian genocide, from a child's perspective, and features several atrocities that come with a genocide. Feel free to ask for more details.

It also doesn't have LGBTQ+ rep, if that's a problem, but it fits the vibe and themes of discrimination of this anthology.

***

Three soldiers stand in our house. The tallest one holds mum against the wall, her arms above her head. His leg between hers. Her hair drapes over her shoulders. She cries. I push Nineve's face into my chest. Do I close my eyes? One of the soldiers that hold dad looks at me. His eyes are black, darker than the sky outside.

The tall soldier pulls up mum's dress. He ... I don't blink, blink a lot. Mum moans.

I look at dad. He stares at mum. The man with the black eyes slaps him. He bleeds from his nose and mouth. The soldier wipes his hand on his trousers. There are already stains on them.

Mum sinks to the ground: first her knees, then her belly, then her arms. Her hair lies over her face. The soldier turns his back on her.

Dad stumbles forwards and almost falls. The two men that hold him yank down his trousers. They open their own trousers. The soldier with the black eyes grabs dad's hips. He ... Dad makes a noise deep in his throat. I look at mum and hold my hand over Nineve's ear.

The soldier that did the thing to mum ... He laughs. "Let that Christian bitch feel it!"

My eyes shoot to dad. Now that other soldier ... Don't look. Don't look.

Lord, please help us. Help Your children. I beg You.

***

My throat is dry. My tongue too, and my stomach. Everything. It burns. If I had only one droplet of water, I could quench. Or two, or three. Or a whole ton. A tub full of water would be blissful.

***

The sun scorches my skin, but the sand is worse. It's everywhere, even in my mouth. It cuts into the skin around my eyes and into my legs and it's like a thousand red-hot needles in the open wounds on my feet.

***

The corpses by the road hold back some sand. Vultures are circling above us. They're hungry. Me too.

***

Mum is dead. She fell. Nobody stopped. I don't cry. I need every drop of fluid.

She gave me her food. "I don't want to see you die as well," she said.

***

We stop. All men have to come along. I'm not a man yet.

They dig a ditch. The Turks watch. Their guns are the whips of the Egyptians, we the Jews from then. We trek through the desert too, but God hasn't delivered us yet.

"Down!" an officer bellows. The men lie down in the ditch, on their belly. The Turks walk behind the row of their feet. Push in the ditch whoever's still standing. Some men lie next to the ditch. They're already dead.

The guns thunder. We watch. God will avenge us.

***

I see mum walk before me. She flickers. I speed up. Stumble. No, don't fall. Back to my own pace.

***

The river is full of corpses. Did the Nile look like this when Moses turned it into blood? I drink from it anyway. Water is water.

I sleep on the ground. The nights are cold, but the woman that used to sell garments on the market lets me sleep with her and her daughter. They're Armenian, I am Assyrian. "We're all Christians here," the daughter whispers.

We pray together. I don't ask their name.

***

The Turks walk through the camp. Someone grabs my arm and drags me along. Women cry. Two girls walk before me. They look like Nineve.

The Turks pull a boy as tall as me from the arms of an old woman. We are the oldest.

We stop on the bank of the river. A soldier pushes the boy onto the ground. And another one. I am the third. There's sand in my eyes. Someone breathes in my neck.

The soldiers throw more children onto us. They sob. Above me, and above them. Next to me. I don't. I'm already empty.

Between the arms and the heads and the feet before me, I see how the sun reflects on the swords and bayonets. I turn my head to the side.

Someone screams. And someone else. A sword goes straight down, right through a girl. It stops just above the neck of the boy next to me. It rains blood on him. On us. Nobody breathes in my neck. I am quieter than the dead.

***

It's dark. There's blood in my ears and in my clothes and between my fingers and my toes. My heart thumps. Too loud. Maybe the Turks in their tents can hear it. Quieter. Slower. Breathe.

Could I drink blood?

***

Author's Note: I have a morbid fascination with genocides and when I originally wrote this story in Dutch, I worked with flashbacks as dreams and parts in the present about how Turkey still denies the Armenian genocide happened. When I rewrote the story for a contest last year, I deleted the parts in the present and expanded the flashbacks. Most of the plot of this story is inspired by testimonials from survivors that I read and photos I saw during my research. If you want to learn more about this "forgotten genocide", I'm always willing to tell you a little about what I know. (My main sources were in Dutch, so I can't recommend those.)

A very short summary: the genocide took place in 1915, Armenians and Assyrian Christians were forced to trek through the desert to camps. Some of them were deliberately shot (that thing with the ditch actually happened), others died from dehydration and the other hardships they suffered. Turkey still denies it was a genocide, even though it has been sufficiently proven it was an organised attempt at "ethnic cleansing".

As always, I love feedback of any and all kinds!