It seemed like from another life even if it was only two years since he was last time home. He missed his family. He didn’t hear of them for long and he was worried. He heard there were some attacks in this area, but he didn’t notice burned houses or anything similar on his way. It should all be fine. And it’s finally over, the end of war was official, he was released three days ago.

Road was dry and dusty, so much that even with slow walking, he was creating a dust trailer in the air behind, which would remain for a second or two, before settling down and waiting for the next passenger to disturb it. A layer of dust caught on his shoes made them completely brown, fitting along with the worn out, gray military uniform that he used since the last battalion gathering over a year ago where he got it. The uniform was full of stitches, with few most recent holes and cuts that he did not sew yet and, he thought with returning smile rising on his tired face, he will not have to sew it again.

Distant human voices and giggles made him turn his look up, away from his shoes. And then he remembered there is a water source behind the oak tree, always busy with people. He recognized few of his neighbors, some filling their water tanks and others washing the clothes. Everyone seemed to be euphoric and smiling - though the faces were still frowned, you could see they didn’t smile for a while. The source was the main water supply for several houses around. Not many people had wells here. It’s a hilly area, and it’s hard to track the water. There was a carved wooden shell, planted below the source, filled by the passing water. It was mostly used for washing the clothes, or bringing the cows and horses to drink there. He didn’t see anyone from his house at the source, but he was not impatient, his house is just on top of the hill and he will be there in no time. He was very thirsty, he walked nearly twenty kilometres today, and he will stop and refresh for a bit before he starts climbing the hill. He would never pass here without stopping to drink. This hill was quite steep, the hardest part to walk when they would return with pigs after running whole day after them. So he would always stop, take off his shirt, splash water over his face and neck to clean the sweat, and then joining two hands hold the water and drink it up couple of times. There was no better feeling than this, drinking the fresh cold water in the summer after the long walk.

Already passing the tongue over his dry lips while thinking about refreshment, his attention was drown away by something weird. In the corner of his eye he noticed, just before the source, near the blackberry bushes, a lot of kids gathered. They were probably picking blackberries, he thought at first. But then he realized they are standing around an old lady, a neighbor of his. Something was wrong here. Blackberries are not ripe yet. He remembered her from before, a very old woman who was already getting caught by elderly dementia. He would always try to avoid her on the road, because he did not know what to say or how to behave and it was unpleasant feeling for him. She would start talking to everyone whom she comes across, thinking she knows them. But what was she doing with those kids? Suddenly he felt again this unpleasant cold breeze wave starting at the bottom of his spine and spreading all the way up to his head, making the whole body shake off. This would always happen to him in the panicking moments during the war when he would meet someone on the other side of the road and didn’t know was it an ally or the enemy, or when he would hear a noise while walking in the woods during the night, praying it is an animal. Trying to release from this feeling, telling to himself it is a false alarm and everything is fine, he heard her distant voice saying to them:

"Don’t worry kids, granny will break it. They should have taken it with them when they were leaving!" She started hitting with the stick something in the bushes, he couldn’t see what. The kids were laughing and cheering. "Maybe it was a dead animal, or somebody threw some thrash there", he first thought. People would be throwing away a lot of different stuff into these woods.

"Is that what she meant?", he thought confused, "but why hitting it?". And then, a second too late and to regret forever, he realized about what and whom she was talking about. At the moment the thought was forming in his head :"Nazis left something, a bomb!", he heard this terrible sound that was frosting the blood in his veins for the last few years and he could recognize it in the middle of the night. It was the ’stick’ bomb that was activated by a hit. Once activated, you would have few seconds to throw it away. The initial panicking breeze spread from his back over the whole body now, and his stomach and all the muscles contracted, making him sick and dizzy: "Why the hell did she do that?! There is at least 10 kids there, they are all going to die if I don’t do something!".

He wasn’t so far, he could just have enough time to reach to it before explosion… There was no time to think and make decisions so he started running towards it shouting to the kids to lie down. Nobody except him realized what happened and people were stunned and surprised seeing him running towards the kids and shouting. "You broke it granny!" he could hear one of the kids cheering. "Is this really happening? Am I dreaming?", the questions were coming to his mind to challenge the absurd of the situation, while he was hurtling towards them. Closer he was, the more obvious it was - there is not enough time. Few moments later, he was already grabbing it and swung to throw it away from the kids. He hoped it was one of those wet ones which took few seconds longer to explode. But it wasn’t... It exploded in his right hand, in front of his eyes, just when he was about to release it. The last image carved in his brain, just before the explosion: kids behind him still with smiles on their faces, still thinking this was a game, people shouting, once they realized what is going on, and the old woman, with no expression on her face waving the stick and saying something to her chin. He remembered how they would describe in the stories near death experiences, saying how whole your life passes in front of your eyes. But no such thing happened to him, there were no flashbacks. There were no retrospective and past, there was nothing in his head except for HERE and NOW. All his attention was focused on the ticking piece of metal in his hand. Everything happened so fast that there weren’t even time for fear, or to fully process and understand what is going on. It almost seemed like it was happening to someone else, and he was just a far spectator. “This must be a dream!”, was his last thought, half ironic, half desperate. And then the white blast masked everything.