Chapter 12: Heaven on Wrapping Paper
Now there were only him, Lauren, a middle-aged uncle and two children left in the team, and they looked at the forbidden area in front of them silently. He could detect intense fear in the eyes of the two children, and every time he crossed the forbidden area, it meant that someone else was leaving, which was the worst nightmare for the two children. He and Lauren stepped into the restricted area at the same time, but were pulled back by the uncle behind them.
"Go through this forbidden area, cross the fence on the opposite side and you'll reach what I'm talking about in heaven." The uncle didn't look at the two of them, just looked at the fence made of simple wire on the opposite side, and he took out a piece of paper from his pocket, which was a bread wrapper, with a string of addresses and a number "TL0626" written in an unknown pen. The man stuffed the paper in the child's pocket: "I don't know if I can take you all the way through this road, or if you two can finish this way, but I promise that I will take them over the fence to the place where I wrote, where someone will re-enter the light of you." The man then walked into the box without saying a word, with Lauren following behind at a distance, and the man walking last with the child. He's actually not good at raising children, but this time he wants to be a hero who protects others.
The middle-aged uncle still did not escape the catastrophe, and with an explosion, the uncle fell in front, and his flesh and blood were blurred. The two of them were in place, and he wanted to take the lead in place of Lauren several times, but Lauren reasoned that he would not take care of the child and let him walk last. Lauren turned around and crouched down and told the child to protect the note in his pocket, and if the two adults fell asleep here, they should follow the path where the adults had walked and cross the guardrail and show the note to the people outside the guardrail, and they would help them find a place where they were really safe. The children nodded incomprehensibly, and Lauren glanced at me and walked ahead without looking back.
Maybe someone cleared the fence closer, or maybe we were lucky enough to get out of the restricted area safely. The moment we crossed the guardrail, we both crouched on the ground and cried. We returned to the place where Uncle had fallen and took his mutilated body out of the restricted area, and a military vehicle happened to pass by, and we showed them Uncle's note, and they took us out of the Land of Nightmares. When we arrived at the aid station, we learned that this middle-aged uncle was a retired officer of the peacekeeping force, and after retiring from the army, he volunteered to follow a charity here to help refugees and the wounded. The number on the note is the number of the uncle in the charity, and the day of the uncle's death happens to be June 26, the same as his number 0626. Uncle was tasked with finding undiscovered survivors, so he met the old man and us, the demons who had been blinded by greed, and he used his last strength to redeem us. But in the end, I didn't have time to say "thank you" to my uncle. Before I could say thanks, they were all gone, except for Lauren.
The uncle's funeral was solemn, accompanied by the names of the old man Mosa, Aziz and the soldiers who died to keep us alive. Everyone who attended the funeral knelt down to pray for the uncle and his companions, praying that they could rest in peace in heaven without war.
Later, a few of us went to France with another older man from this institution, and with his help I became French nationality with my children, and with his help I returned to China. The owner of this theater is a retired soldier of the French Foreign Legion, who returned to China to take over the theater and provide jobs for many veterans. I lost a leg in the war, and I couldn't do acrobatics like everyone else, so I had to do a choreographic, and I was quite content with my life at that time. As the two children grew up, I adopted them, and whenever I saw them, I would think of the teenager who was lying on my back to help me hold out the shock wave. Taking care of his younger siblings was my atonement for the absurdity and ignorance of the past, and the peace and serenity of the country and the warmth and kindness of the people around me slowly healed the wounds in my heart and my heart.
I take my kids to my hometown every year, but I only stop near home, sitting in a rented car watching my elderly parents pass by, watching my brother pick up my nephew, who I haven't been close to, to and from school on a scooter. I don't know if the way I look now is hurting them, and I choose not to disturb their lives.
It was already dark when he remembered this, and he clenched the dagger in his hand and slowly got out of the car and walked to the entrance of the apartment. A slashing throat was his usual method, and he would recite a prayer as he did it, praying to purify these filthy souls and redeem the demons in his eyes. Lauren had always disagreed with him and tried to stop him from resuming the killing, but when he showed Lauren the post he had stumbled upon, he saw the same anger in Lauren's eyes as he did.
The post recorded the extreme comments of some arrogant people who advocated violence, trumpeted the benefits of war, and even made wild statements that "war is justice", and even hoped that this quiet and peaceful country would extend its hand of sin to the land of war suffering, and the man felt that he had seen the demons that Lauren had listened to the old man Moses.
Lauren was familiar with the operation of modern technology, and soon found the addresses of several speakers who were radically speaking, and when he went to meet the first person, the man hoped that he would repent of his mistakes, and at first the man was very confused about how I had found him, but when he knew the purpose of the man's coming, he smiled and said to the man, "What does it matter?" Only the strong will attack others, don't you say it? They are nothing but weeding out the weak. After hearing this, the man was completely shocked by his shamelessness and cruelty, and his eyes flashed before his eyes the fragile face of the child he had killed, the appearance of the old man Moussa clutching his cane to test the bomb, the closed eyes of Aziz, and the fallen backs of the uncle and his companions. The man secretly gritted his teeth, and the next night, on his way home, the man slashed his throat and threw him into the garbage disposal like garbage.
The second, the third, the fourth, each of them was the same, they had no repentance at all, they were all scum who worshipped war, and as before, the men killed them, and they looked at the men with wide eyes before they died, and they looked incredulous, and in order to wash away their sins, the men recited prayers for them.
Later, the website was down for a long time, and Lauren could not find the address of the next speaker for the time being. At the same time, the theater was bought by a movie theater, the troupe was disbanded, and the head of the troupe did not have the ability and energy to reorganize the troupe in the location we had chosen, so some of them returned to their hometowns with severance money, and the rest of the people chose to stay in the cinema like men, not wanting to leave the place that had brought them vitality and joy. The new cinema retains the theater where the troupe used to perform, and has been converted into a screening room, each of which is a popular war movie, and the man never understands why people talk about the cruelty of war in peacetime. Probably because these plots evoke the darkest memories of the old people, stimulate the most secret pain in their hearts, and those who stay slowly leave the cinema, and the man is the last to leave.