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Historical Fiction Inspirational Sad

When Sasha handed me the gun, I knew one thing for certain: I was never meant to be a hero. I was meant to be enjoying student life with my twin sister, Viki, in our first year at university, and after I was meant to become an elementary school teacher, a wife, a mother, living a quiet life in our Budapest flat, with a pet canary and making cherry and cottage cheese strudels on the weekend when all the kids and my husband (whom I was certain would be Sasha) were home and gathering around the table, all smiles and laughter. That was the future I dreamed of, that was what I was meant to be. Not a girl with a loaded gun. 


Viki was always the braver one of us. She talked to boys easily, didn’t cross the road at the sight of a stray dog, and didn’t hide behind the curtains when we heard the black car pull up in front of our house in the middle of the night and watched for whom they would take. She didn’t let out a sigh of relief when the ÁVH officers left with our neighbour under the cover of the darkness, not even knocking on our door. Maybe when we were put together into who we borned to be, there was a mistake and she got all the courage and I, all the caution. I believed even if they came for us, they would not smell fear on her.


In razor sharp contrast, I was always a wimp. Risk taking was something I just wanted to steer clear of ever since I was a small child, so I never wished to be brave. When I was six, I cried myself to sleep one night, because I didn’t want to grow up. I cried because I thought if you grew up you grew old, and old people died. Overwhelmed with the weight of that dead end destiny I had no escape from, I lay awake with the feeling of unbearable dread and helplessness. I feared death, and anything that brought it closer to me; ageing was one of those monsters under my bed. I didn’t think that one day, at the age of just nineteen, I would reevaluate risk, and fear not growing old. I didn’t think there would come a time when I had to be brave.


When Viki and I ran out onto the streets with our friends, leaving our university classroom to join the marching crowd already in the thousands, we were high on hope. Excited, even, as the triumphant screams and shouts echoed in the square when the giant statue came crashing down, and the Great Leader’s big head was left there, severed on the ground. He was dead already, but for a moment, as I was looking into its empty stone face, carved deceptively kind looking, I felt a cold chill and fear’s claws closing around my heart.

We are shaping history, Viki said with a grin, our names will be in the textbooks! 

Just like me, she also strived to be immortal, but unlike me, she didn’t think she had to actually live on to achieve it: for her, a mention in a book would have been good enough. As for myself, I wanted no part of it.

I hope not, I replied, people who made history are all dead.

One only dies once they are no longer remembered, she smiled, and I knew then, I had no way of holding her back, if she wanted to be part of the change and go down in history. Whatever the risk, whatever the price. And she paid it in full.


‘Anna, I’m so sorry.’ Sasha said to me in that sweet accent I hated more and more every day, his face twisted in pain as he gave me my sister’s bloodsoaked scarf. I stared at him with tears soaking my face and knew, whilst it wasn’t his fault, it was over. I was never going to marry him anymore, and we were never going to have a bunch of lovely children and mainly there was not going to be Aunt Viki to play with them and there might not even be us, come tomorrow.

My life, from that moment on, was reduced to fear and nightmares of the black car.


Viki didn't flinch one bit, as she reached for the gun. 

‘How does it work?’ she held it to her shoulder like she had seen the soldiers do it.

I knew she wouldn’t be one to hesitate.

The first step to forgiveness is revenge, she told me once jokingly, before dumping a whole jar of hot paprika in her soon to be ex-boyfriend’s lunch, and setting his clothes on fire in the kitchen sink. 

She had a similarly bold attitude towards taking up arms, but for that, I could not praise her courage anymore: if I were in her shoes, I could be brave too, it was one of those things: easy once you were dead. 


My scissors cut into the red of the fabric. Red stood for strength and bravery, but my hands were shaking and I was faint with fear. It was red for blood, our blood, flooding the streets and staining the floors of the prison cells and the blood I washed off Viki’s face. They beat her but they let her go, just to get her to snitch on us, and so she came back and ripped out the hammer and sickle from the middle of a flag and set it on fire right in the kitchen sink, her face shining with the mix of blood and tears lit by the burning flames. 

Soon to be ex-government, I thought.


The building rumbled as the tanks turned the corner and I swallowed the tears of fear. Undeniably, there was no point in being scared anymore, if this house was to go down so was I, and there was no place left safe. But fear didn’t want to reason. I moved on to cutting through the white stripe. White was for our rivers, all of which should remain only ours. White was for faith, the faith in our cause, in our revolution and that Sasha and I would live through it. I wished he would return soon, I wished they would let him walk free, like they let Viki go the first time. I didn’t like being left alone, with the ghost of hers. White was also the colour of the walls around me, my everyday prison, painted in the colour of freedom. Freedom… The reason why Viki and I had been filling up bottles with petrol, stuffing their necks with any excess textile day and night for the resistance. I worked and schemed tirelessly, unable to stand this birdcage and living life on everyone else’s terms, and quietly hating those who forced me into it. Stepping outside wasn’t something I could often bring myself to, not since they made it so lethally dangerous. I wished to be free of it all. Maybe Viki felt the same, before she traded her life for… nothing in return, just yet.

I wonder, why did you want a canary? Viki asked me from across the room, reading my thoughts. Another thing the dead seemed to be good at.


Feeling like half a person, and not the better half, I wished I was more like her as I looked into the mirror at Viki’s face. We had the same features; the same wild brown hair, the same green eyes, and I recognised her determination sparkling in mine. We were shaping history. Merely a trick of the poor bathroom lighting, but I had to hang onto it. I had to find her strength in myself, summon it somehow, so I could step up and do what a twin could do best: taking her place in her absence.


I tore through the green, the canvas ripping in my merciless hands. It’s our land.


The glasses on the dresser were shaking but I long stopped caring whether they broke or not.

Viki picked up a few bottles and swung the gun over her shoulder.

It’s time.

I took a deep breath, feeling the icy grip of death reaching for me. It was an easy task to be brave, from the other side, but it was bravery I didn’t wish to achieve: at this point, I only hoped my tombstone wouldn’t be marking a life too short.

For freedom and love, I said out loud, and lifted the tricolour flag with its fresh, gaping hole in the middle, and threw it out the window, hanging it up with bitter pride for the Russian soldiers to watch. See that? Go home! And then, we ran, whilst the house still stood, with the last bottles of Molotov cocktails in hand towards freedom, one way or another. My heart was beating against my chest and I wished I could curl up into a ball and hide somewhere, but it was time to pick sides, and following the shadow of my sister, I’d chosen mine. 

I thought of her and whether we would be remembered. Whether I would get to grow old and frail, with grey hair and wrinkled skin, living old life for the both of us. I wished I could make sure I would, I wished I could trade my death with the grim reaper for another day in the distant future, when I would be in bed, lost deep in a dream where Viki and I would be drinking coffee at the kitchen table as the sunlight poured through the window, and we could have a canary without hating ourselves and maybe that hole we cut in our flags and the holes in our hearts would be filled again with the colours of courage, freedom and hope.


That was, what my deal was meant to be with the reaper, but he was busy lately, with no time to stop and negotiate. I had no way of knowing what would come. Was our place really in the textbooks? 

Screams of horror reached me, and the serrated knife of fear started sawing into my heart as I hurried after Viki. I never in my life wanted to hold her hand so much.

Tell me, can we live forever, tell me if this country will remember..?! Viki looked over her shoulder as she was running in front of me down the cul de sac, towards a trapped tank, and her calm, beautiful eyes met mine for one last time.

Green, like hope.


Lighting the bottles, I took the first step to forgiveness.


March 04, 2022 22:17

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6 comments

Mike Henry
14:00 Mar 05, 2022

Wow! What a fantastic story, right from the very first sentence I enjoyed every word and congratulate you on a job well done. Some great lines in there; I found it inspiring and look forward to reading more from you.

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Riel Rosehill
14:33 Mar 05, 2022

Thank you so much for taking your time to read and comment on my work, it's much appreciated! I'm happy you enjoyed reading it.

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Zack Powell
06:45 Mar 05, 2022

First things first, Riel: I'm genuinely impressed in how many different story tags you've hit in four stories, Riel. From Fantasy to General Fiction to Crime to Historical. Makes me want to be more adventurous with my own writing. As for the story: Holy moly, what a great opening line! I love a good hook, and this one delivered. And what a very dark story, too. Lots of really great color and imagery and detail in here. (I love the idea of someone putting hot paprika in someone else's meal and then burning their clothes in the very same sent...

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Riel Rosehill
08:18 Mar 05, 2022

Oh thank you so much! I gotta give you some credit as your story for last week inspired me to think hard on that opening hook! I was not sure whether this story would work as I'm aware this piece of history is not taught in the UK for example (checked with my boyfriend who is english, and he had no idea until I took him to see a museum dedicated to it in Budapest), so I didn't know if my references to stuff that happened that year and also the meaning behind the colours of the Hungarian flag would just read like a bunch of nonsense if you...

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Howard Seeley
04:30 Mar 10, 2022

Nice story! You walked me through every step. Keep up the good work and hope to read more from you.

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Riel Rosehill
08:07 Mar 10, 2022

Thank you!

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