Awakening
June, 1943
He blinked his eyes open for the first time: a newborn stealing his first look at the world,
which, in a way, is exactly what he was. Except no squealing, rosy-cheeked infant had ever been
so big, so ugly, or so filled with blood-boiling rage. Never had a child been so appalling. He
squinted at first, letting in only the merest trickle of light because even the wan illumination from
the moon, which loitered over the world like a fat thumbnail, was harsh to his virgin eyes.
Smells came next: the scent of musky earth, the harsh tang of powdery slaked lime—used
to mask the reek of decay—and buried beneath that, the sour stink of rotten flesh and burnt hair.
The sky spit down a misty drizzle, fine droplets of cool water that turned his gray skin
slick. After a few moments more his eyes adjusted fully, allowing him, at last, to survey his
surroundings. Mud and muck, deep brown and goopy, lined everything. It squished beneath his
shoulder blades, clung to his arms and legs, and liberally coated the corpses crudely piled to his
right. Despite the mud, the bodies appeared almost white, like angry specters waiting for him,
welcoming him to this new hell with silent screams and vacant eyes.
How he knew anything was beyond him, since this was the first day of his life, the day—
or rather night—of his unnatural birth. Surely, no baby pushed and fought its way into the world
with dark and grisly thoughts of murder and death lingering in its mind, with knowledge of mass
graves, heinous experimentation, and hasty executions. But he knew such things. Fragments of
memories floated and swirled inside his skull, dancing a slow funeral dirge, parading incoherent
snatches of imagery through his head.
The Wehrmacht march through the streets in their black spit-shined boots and high-
collared, gray wool uniforms. Smart and dashing, those uniforms, dressing up the face of murder
in civility and pageantry …
The Luftwaffe soars overhead. The buzz of the single-prop Focke-Wulf and the
thunderous roar of the colossal Messerschmitt transport planes fill the air with their racket …
He clutches a small boy to his chest, his body trembling as he hides, holding his breath
for fear of being heard. Terror and panic wriggle in his guts as the black-garbed Schutzstaffel—
the SS—make their way from door to door, fists rapping on wood, rifle buttstocks smashing out
windows, booted feet kicking their way inside …
Then, train cars, loaded to capacity, roll through his thoughts. Bodies press up against one
another so tightly he can’t breathe—except he isn’t a he, but a she. And she is searching for her
sister. They’d been separated in all the chaos …
So many images, circling around, each screaming more loudly than the last, each
demanding he lend them an ear or an eye or a hand. He clutched at either side of his head. Broad,
fleshy palms pressed in as though he could simply pulverize the images and send them back to
whatever nightmare they’d come from. But they kept coming, and as they came—faster and
faster, like a hail of automatic machine gunfire—his chest began to itch and burn. It felt like
someone had taken a cherry-red fire iron and jabbed it into the meat covering his breastbone.
A huge hand flew to the pain, his fingers finding crude markings etched directly into the
skin, cut deep into the muscle below. As he touched the mark, the jagged wound, the voices and
visions coalesced into a single demand. A demand for retribution. The anger came next, flowing
from the brand like gasoline pumping through his veins, scorching his insides and propelling him
to action. He lumbered to his feet, the muck squishing around his thick toes, and made for the
muddy wall of his earthen womb. In reality, an open grave. He dug his digits in and used his
flabby, though powerfully built, arms to pull himself upward and free.
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