Jojo's Story

CHAPTER ONE

Only me, Jojo

It's dark again. So it's evening. It's the third evening. No, I'm wrong. It's the fourth evening.

It's... Tuesday... Wednesday... Thursday. Yes, it's Thursday. Why do I count the days? Why do I say it's Thursday? There aren't any more days. There's just time. Time when it's dark, and time when it's light.

Everything is dead, so why not days, too? Yes. No more days. No more Thursdays. There's only now.

And there's only me. Why? Why aren't I dead, too?

That's a stupid question, Jojo, I say to myself. You know why you aren't dead. You aren't dead because you weren't in the house. You were in the fields when the men came. But that's not my question. I want to know why I was in the fields. Why wasn't I in the house with my family?

There are no answers to questions like that, Jojo, I tell myself. I have to talk to myself because there isn't anyone else. I think there are mice here. I can hear them at night. You can't talk to mice. But there aren't any other people. There's only me. Jojo.

I know this because I listen. I listen all day and all night. I hide in our stable, where the horse lived. And I hear nothing. Just the mice. The village is quiet. There is smoke now, but smoke is quiet. The fires were noisy, but the fires have stopped. It rained yesterday, and after the rain there were no more fires. Just smoke.

Of course, I'm not the only thing alive here. As well as the mice, there's a dog somewhere in the village. I can hear it. And there are rats and flies. But I think I'm the only person here. All the others are dead.

Everyone in the village is dead. There's only me now and I don't know what to do.

I'm not in our house. I went into our house after the men went away. So I saw my family. All of them on the floor. All the blood on the floor, too. They were all dead. My mother, my father, my sister, my brother. My family.

Jojo, don't think about that, I say to myself. Don't think about the blood. Don't think about those things. But I can't stop thinking about them. My mother had no clothes on. I've never seen my mother without clothes. Perhaps I will go into the house tomorrow and put some clothes on my mother. She must be cold without clothes. But I'm afraid that the men are going to come back.