A chink lets in a shaft of dusty light. Irene, wedged inside, shifts her legs and shuffles her torso to turn around. Straining, she leans towards the gap to peer out: the land lies quiet. No-one on their way.

She settles back to wait, resting upon the hard ground. What if no-one comes? How long could she last? She feels achy already, and hungry. She listens for the thud of falling masonry, the crash of concrete in the distance. Right now only a thin thread of birdsong weaves its way through the cracks, into her dim crevice.

Earlier she’d been in school; a normal day. Her mother had picked her up, red-faced, a little late. Irene had whined to join her friends in the playground, but her mother hung onto her and marched her straight home. The grown-ups were always busy. Not wanting to go straight into the house, Irene had run away when they got home, out into the woods.

Now, Irene is bored of her game. She slithers out from beneath the pile of branches and brushes dirt from her pinafore. A few of the long sticks have become dislodged; she hauls them back into place, fortifying the entrance to her hideaway. She runs along the winding path, across the garden behind the house, and in through the back door. Her mother is making supper with the news on the telly.

Irene flops onto the sofa. “How long til supper?” she whines. Her mother is grappling with a steaming pot, hefting it towards the sink.

“Five minutes,” she says, taking in Irene and the television in one quick glance. “Let’s turn that off now. I can’t take any more.”

Irene rolls from the sofa and reaches to switch off the television, another evening of collapsed buildings and grey rubble upon the screen. Men babble in another language, hauling chalky debris. Other men pull a small body from the wreckage. The child in their arms, still alive, swivels a dark eye towards the camera. Irene meets her gaze. Behind the child, the edge of an arm juts from the jagged pile of broken concrete.

Within the mound, a chink lets in a shaft of dusty light.

* 

Lisa Geary has had fiction published in Wishbone, Sepia Journal, Spellbinder, Haunted Words, and elsewhere. She lives near Durham, where she is a member of the Durham Writers Group. Currently, she is juggling writing with the world of two new kittens and kitchen renovation.