You must remember. They came to kill women and children.

A woman is driving a knitting needle through the ear canal of a wounded and captured IDF soldier. Before October 7th the woman made a living knitting clothes for babies and threading the eyebrows of the mothers. She was a devoted wife hoping to get pregnant. Her husband was abducted by the enemy. Whereabouts unknown. Before October 7th she was the kind of person who furiously scolded a man for beating the donkey pulling his cart.

Things have been a little bit different lately. Twice she’s let a stranger have his way with her in exchange for baby formula for some of the mothers she knows. Her official story is that she found it in an abandoned building previously occupied by a group of IDF soldiers.

Now she is poking around in the ears of a wounded guy. In broken Hebrew she’s telling him that she’s doing it so in the next life he will hear better and refuse immoral commands. She doesn’t even believe in reincarnation, but at present she is feverishly convinced that the toxic soul of this fallen baby killer will be inhabiting a new human form soon. And you know what? Better safe than sorry.

He is asking for water, seemingly oblivious to the pain she’s causing in his ears. She stops what she is doing and spits in his face. Not much spit comes, cause she’s unbelievably thirsty. Clean water has been hard to come by. She spots that the soldier has a canteen. She grabs it, opens it, and mumbles ‘quaff oh quaff this sweet nepenthe.’ She had a phase in her teenage years when she was obsessed with Poe. Specifically The Raven. She got it from a Simpsons Halloween special.

The man cannot move. Both legs are torn and twisted. If the fighters find him alive they will make a big deal out of him, hold him captive, use him for prisoner swaps. She has decided he will not make it back to whatever privileged life he took a break from to come and make life hell for women and children.

She is starting to realize how much anger she’s kept pent up in her 23 year old body. She feels like multiple tsunamis are raging through her body. She’s already beat both his hands into bloody stumps with a stone. You must remember. They came to kill women and children. These motherfuckers have made a sport of sniping kids. Of aiming at the testicles of teenage boys.

He keeps staring at her in disbelief. He’s tried to crawl away from her, but his legs are too messed up.

To confuse him and humiliate him she strokes his cheeks and sings a lullaby to him as if he is a little child that’s woken up from a bad dream. She’s never seen someone look so puzzled.
His face coul function as a question emoticon.

She ostentatiously pours the last bit of water into the dirt.

In Arabic she says: ‘This is the deal. When you beg me to take off your testicles I will slit your throat and your misery will end. As long long as you don’t beg me for that I will keep causing you more and more pain.’

The soldier doesn’t understand. She sighs. ‘Then I will have to make you understand.’

She cuts the word baby killer into his forehead with her knitting needle.

He tried to cover his face with his arms, but she took a rock and beat him with it right in his stomach. So many times that he vomitted. He offered no more resistance then.

As a beautician she always has a pocket mirror with her, so she makes sure he gets to see her work.

She shrugs when she realizes he can’t read Arabic.

She goes through his pockets and finds a family picture. She rips it up and says ‘You will never see them again’ in English.

‘Why you do this?`’, he asks. Must be a local colonist cause his English is as shitty as his morals.

She sees the hordes of amputee kids rolling through her mind again. That’s why.

She considers standing over him and peeing on him, but decides against it. It would also be degrading for her.

Instead she wonders how long it would take to kill him by slapping him.

A man gets punched in the face, but a worthless sack of shit gets slapped.

And so she slaps him. Again and again and again. If he raises his arms to cover his face she hammers his rib cage with clenched fists. When he tries to turn on his belly, she grabs him by his hair with one hand and pulls his head up and manages to keep slapping him with the other hand.

It took 6,5 hours.

You must remember.

They came to kill women and children.

She will never see her husband again.

She will tell only her sister about what she did, but her sister won’t believe her and will categorize her confession as delirium brought on by not knowing what happened to her husband.

But her wrist will always remind her of what she did, because she’s developed some mild, but chronic pain in it. The soreness never leaves unless she doesn’t use her hand for days. But then lifting as much as a bucket to mop the floor will bring back the nagging scratch inside her wrists. Like a tiny piece of metal is stuck there forever.

She has no guilt over what she did.

She did it out of love.

Love for the innocent.

When she could see in his eyes he wanted to be dead sooner than she wanted him dead she even slapped less hard.

America executes criminals for less.

She was plunged into lawlessness, so she became her own country. And her country allows the death penalty for those committing acts which are extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile.

She knits with unprecedented determination.

With a mantra on a loop in her mind.

These hands keep babies warm and safe.