Chapter VI

Death finally found its way to me, it was a long road I walked, I cheated on it many times but that did not matter because, in the end, I could not escape it. It came peacefully, found me sitting in my old chair beside the window looking outside as people came and go their ways. That was something that I had been doing for the past few years when my body was not able to respond to all of my commands. It amazed me, looking at everyone out there, walking slowly with someone by their side or running somewhere. I did not know where but I liked to imagine what they were thinking, I liked to make them actual human beings in my mind and see them not as just shadows walking the streets of this city. I liked to imagine where they were going in such a rush, running home to their loving families, running late to work, or meet a new person that they wanted to mean something to them. I no longer had a life of my own so I started making and somehow living other people’s lives. They never knew I even existed, never knew how I got here and that I was making up all those stories in my head but to the world, we are all such. Just empty shells that stare at it hidden in a dark corner, and imagine how it would be to go out there, how it would be, to live. Don’t get me wrong, I was not like this all of my life. I used to be a very pretty young girl once, and that was my damnation, there was a time when being pretty, a bit smarter, a bit different was like a death sentence. And at that time, I was no exception. I was born in a small village in a faraway country; I was only fifteen when the war started. In the beginning, it did not feel like that, it was all so sudden that I could not believe that it was real. I lived my first few months into it like I was in a dream and at any moment would wake up and realize that it was all just that, a terrible dream. Being that I could not fully comprehend what was going on around me I was numb to it, could not react, and could not stand for myself. Not that it would have made a difference. They came in driving big tanks and cars all dressed in black uniforms. The first days it was not that bad, they told us that they were just passing through and did not want any trouble with us, that changed in a flash one morning before I had gotten out of bed. The smell of breakfast my mother was cooking downstairs was tickling my nose but it was cold and I was just being lazy thus, decided to stay in bed rather than go down and help her with it. My eyes were still closed until a very loud bang threw me on my feet. My lungs started struggling to get more air and my mind could not still process what had just happened. Then the second one came and the walls of my room started shaking. It felt like an earthquake but every shake was preceded by a loud bang, the first one was at some distance but they were getting closer and closer. I was still in shackles when my bedroom door swung open, and my father burst into my room. I remember to this day how terrified he was. The blood had left his face removing every bit of expression he had, his eyes reduced to two black holes. He shouted at me to get out of bed get dressed and come downstairs, I was unable to shake myself loose from the horror and took a few precious minutes to snap out of it. Got up, wore the first clothes that I could find on the chair next to my bed, and went downstairs where my mom dad, and brother were hugging each other in a corner of the living room with their backs against the wall. My mother and father signed me to run there as I did. They started hugging me tight and protecting my head with their hands and body as much as they could. My little brother was shaking and crying. I will always remember that cry, there was no sound coming out of him, I could only see his tears running down his cheeks, and his little eyes that were filled not just with tears but with such confusion and fright. I was just a child myself but I tried my best to comfort him, he was only nine years old and I had always been protective of him. What could I do now to protect him though; I felt all the power stripped off of me as if it was never there to begin with! All I could do now to protect him was to die before him that would not help of course; even if I did sacrifice myself for him, it would just postpone his demise, not save him. But I would not be there to watch him die; yes, I was just a selfish little girl, I preferred to go before them so I would not have to deal with all the pain that losing them would bring upon me. And I would die with the illusion that I did something as great as giving my own life for the ones that I loved. Yes, we humans are like that, we like to be great but what we are is just small and selfish beyond imagination. I could not tell you how much time we spent hugging each other and hoping the house would not collapse on us or be sat on fire. The door was kicked open and five men in their black uniforms came in. they were all armed and spoke in a language we could not understand. They were shouting at us and pointing towards the door to get out. My father tried to fight them somehow; it was a short fight I have to say. They bashed his face with their guns and when he fell his eyes were apologizing to us, for not being able to protect us, what could he have done against all that. He was just a man and they were devils. I heard my mother scream so loud and run towards my father, they grabbed her, and while my father, my brother, and I were still watching they raped my mother. One after the other until her body was not able to move anymore, no longer was the soul inhabiting it, and the light was spent from her eyes. I took a look when they were dragging us outside at my parents that is the last image, I have of them in my memory that has replaced all the others that I had gathered during my fifteen years with them. That image stayed with me till now that I left this earth. My father was lying on his back, a big black and red hole were right between his eyes that were still open. It seemed like his gaze was following me and my brother while the soldiers were taking us. My mother was lying in a pool of blood; most of it was coming out of her abdomen and genitalia. After they raped her and had a laugh about it, about how she was trying to get herself free from them, how she was trying to fight them, they stabbed her repeatedly. Over and over again until there was no more fight left in her. I was holding my brother by the hand and I was squeezing it so hard that I had lost feeling in my fingers, and his little ones were taking a bluish color. I did not want to let go, because I felt the minute, I would release his hand they would take him from me and I would never see him again. They gathered all of us in the small city center. Everyone was crying and screaming, all of those people in so much agony. I knew everyone there, and I saw that more than half of the inhabitants were missing. I knew they had had the same fate as my parents. The heroic ones that tried to fight the soldiers were put down in a matter of seconds. We were like little ants to them; we did not matter and they had no time to explain to anyone that fighting was futile. There was so much blood all around us, in the streets, on people, on the building’s walls. I could not comprehend how things could change that fast, how just less than an hour ago I was still in my bed daydreaming about a boy from school that I liked, and now to this. I could not comprehend why all that life was taken and what for? What did those men want from us, what did we ever do to them? Silly questions, silly me trying to find some logical explanation to the actions of headless chicken following the orders of a madman. Or maybe there were not headless chicken, they liked what they were doing and enjoying it, how can men be so evil and do such horrible things was beyond my grasp. But the world was like that and if I could not deal with it was only my problem and no one else’s. I came to my senses and started looking for a familiar face in the crowd. The soldiers were still screaming commands left and right and signaling us to stay there. I did not dare to move, even if I wanted to my body would not respond to my wishes, terror had frozen the blood in my veins. All I could do was to look around and make sure that my brother’s hand was still holding mine.

After they gathered everyone that was still standing, big trucks stopped nearby and they took us there. Carrying only the clothes we were wearing we hopped one after another on the trucks. A lot of people were still in their pajamas shivering from cold and mostly fear we started hugging each other to find some warmth and a glimpse of hope in all that nonsense. After every last poor soul was on the trucks they started moving. We had gone a long way from home when they stopped. Took us all down and put us into a camp surrounded by high metal fences topped with barbed wire. Someone that spoke our language was saying that we would be there only for a few days until our new home was ready. They lined us up one after another and gave us a set of clothes; it was a gray uniform that had a number sewed on the left side of the chest. That was all we would be from that moment, just a lifeless, heartless number that was easy to substitute with the next one. Nothing special nothing different, from one another just a number, our dreams, and humanity was gone. They separated me from my brother, men and women would have to stay in different buildings. An old woman was in front of me at the lineup and tried her best to calm me down when they took my brother from me. I think she saved my life because I was trying to fight them off and if it weren’t for her, I think they would have done the same thing they did to my father if I was lucky enough and if I weren’t, the same thing they did to my mother. She kept talking to me, saying that everything would be alright and all of this would end soon enough and that we would be able to get back home. I knew there was not a home to get back to anymore. I saw the village go up in flames when the trucks started moving, I saw the world I grew up burning to the ground and I knew it was gone forever. After we got our uniforms, they took us to a big hall, there were some women there and they were shouting at us, they did not hesitate to use violence when one of us was being a bit braver than just a sheep. I kept staring at everything around me still numb and unable to understand why they would do such a thing, we were human just like them, well apparently not from their perspective. They stripped us naked and told us to put the uniform on, shaved our heads, and thus took the last thing that made us a bit different from one another. They took everything of little to no value at all, now we were one with the gray uniform they provided. We were taken to a bigger building, where someone explained to us that those were our working stations. We were to produce clothing, not any kind of clothing, but the black uniforms the soldiers were wearing. It might sound stupid but at that moment I realized that fighting it was useless. They wanted to produce more uniforms and that meant that they were producing a lot more soldiers like them that needed those uniforms. We were so small in front of all that chaos that rising would make no difference to them, we would be just one more number that would go down and another one would take our place in seconds, to produce more uniforms for the solder that was holding the gun to our head. He needed to be warm while doing that. That was the day that I was born in a certain way because that was the day that my actual life began. All the days that followed were the same as the day before. Nothing impressed me or pained me. We would get up in the morning while the sun was still sleeping behind the hills; have some kind of soup for breakfast that was the leftover of the night before. Since it was winter, that soup was frozen most of the mornings. It did not matter much, when you are as hungry as we were it tasted like Christmas dinner. After a few minutes that we had to eat, we would go to the factories to work all day long. My fingertips were bleeding some of the days; all the working and cold together would not allow them to heal. It sounds painful but it wasn’t, not after a few months let alone after a few years. At the dormitories we would try to lift our spirits up, the women would start whispering and telling tales of our past lives. That I will tell you, was painful, it reminded me of a distant time, a time I was genuinely happy. A time I had dreams and high hopes and all that was taken from me in one winter morning and now it seemed as it was never there. It reminded me that no matter what would happen next, I could never go back there; I could never be the same person I was once when there was light in my eyes. I had accepted the new reality that until one night, when I thought that it could not get any worse than this, a woman came looking for me. She told me to get up and follow her. Took me to their showers and told me to get well washed and clean. I did as she said without understanding her reasons. After I was all showered up and smelling nice after so many months in that horrible dirty place, she gave me a dress to put on. Then she told me to follow her again and after we walked through the camp in the cold we got to the building at the entrance of the camp. I had never been there, not even close to it, she knocked on the door and a man told her that it was open. She turned the handle, cracked the door open, and pushed me inside. I was shivering, from fear, cold hunger, all you can imagine. The room was lit by a dim light, it was a comfortable room that reminded me of the home I once had. A man was standing by the window, holding a glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. He did not even turn to take a look at me, kept staring out the window, and told me to take off my dress and get to the bed, after locking the door. There was no other option for me than to comply. What was there for me to do? Try and overtake him? What would happen to my brother after that? So I did what he told me to do. He took the last bit of my childhood when I was only sixteen years old. I deluded myself that was a way to keep my little brother safe, that if he had me he would not harm him. But there were so many soldiers there, so many commanders just like him and I was making no damn difference. The realization came when one morning going to the factories, I saw a small skinny silhouette lying on the ground, breaking the whiteness of the snow covering it softly. I broke the line and left the women's screams behind and ran towards the body. I fell on my knees beside him and touched his little face. They had beaten him up until there was no more breath in him and left him there for dead. I could not even cry, there was nothing left in me, just an empty vessel from which was taken everything. I took his head on my hands and cradled him, I was not there when he needed me, I was not there when life was leaving him when his little hands were turning cold and then blue. I was somewhere thinking that I was saving him, taking a warm shower, putting on nice dresses and perfume, and drinking wine. I was all alone in this world now, there was no one I could turn to and no one I could lose, so that night I decided to do something that I thought would bring me some relief. After he fell asleep, I got out of bed and took the knife he used to cut the cheese we ate a few hours ago. My hand was not shaking, there was no emotion left in me, nothing I could feel. I put the tip of the knife on his throat and pushed as hard as I could. He opened his eyes and looked at me; there was no terror there, just surprise. He was surprised that a small sheep like me just took his life and had nothing but emptiness in her eyes. Surprised that there was some fight left in me, inside the body he would make his every night. He uttered only, why while choking in his own blood. Why? How could he even ask that, ask me why? Maybe he thought that offering me food and wine and a warm comfortable bed to sleep on was enough to repay for everything they took from me. He maybe thought that everyone is for sale and the price was cheap as that. I said nothing. I knew that death expected me after that, I killed one of the high-ranking commanders and I knew that my death would not be an easy one. But it was worth it, feeling his warm blood covering my hands and looking him in the eyes when life was abandoning him was worth every kind of torture that was waiting for me the next morning. So, I decided to enjoy my last night on earth, I drank the rest of the wine from the bottle and ate all the food I could eat. I did not want to go to sleep because for some weird reason I had this idea that if I did not sleep the hours would be longer and my life would be just a little bit longer as well. The morning arrived, but it did not bring my death, it brought liberation. The bad guys were finally defeated and we were free, free to go where though. After such a long time living in slavery, we could not imagine how it was like to be free again. That was a new beginning for us and it was scary. Yes, the life in the camp was horrible and unbearable but where we could go from there? We had no home anymore, only the grey uniform we were wearing and nothing else. Everyone was cheering the liberators, but to me, it seemed that we would never be free, it seemed that we only were under new management, but still under someone else’s boot. They thought that they broke their chains but they were so wrong. There are some chains you can never break because they are not put on your body but your soul and none of us will ever be free from those. As I mentioned before I was a very good-looking girl, even after all that time in that kind of bottomless pit of horrors I still looked good. Of course, my body was lean; there was not much food to go around. One of the liberating soldiers saw me and it was like a lightning bolt hit him. Day after day he would bring me something to eat while we were waiting to be relocated, along with some flowers he would pick up on the field nearby. Poor man, I knew there was nothing I could offer him, but I also knew I could use him, he became my scapegoat. I started smiling when I would see him, fueling even further, what he was feeling for me with some “unintentional” sweet words here and there. Of course, it worked, he asked me to marry him and leave that place to go live with him in a distant country. I accepted and tried to show as much enthusiasm I could gather. We got married and got on a ship to get to the Promised Land, towards days filled with happiness and joy and the smell of coffee in the morning. At least that was his idea of the future that expected him with me. I on the other hand had other plans. I was just an empty shell and sooner or later he would realize that! He would see that there was nothing left in me for him to take, and what follows after that is abandonment. He would just get tired of me and leave me in some corner of this world to bleed and die alone, so I decided to be the one that controlled all of it. When we arrived here, I sneaked out one night and left him sleeping on our bed, left to never return and never look back. That is how I got here, and all the following events after that night are not even worth mentioning. I did not want another man ever touching me again, I did not want another human ever to be part of my life and watch them leave it again and again as my parents did, as my brother did. Yes, you will think that may have never happened and maybe that man would have made me happy and a mother as well, but I could not risk pain and losing my sanity over a distant dream. So, I left before he could even think of leaving me. I arrived here, got a lousy job that could only afford me this small apartment, and decided to live the rest of my days alone, sitting on this rocking chair looking out the window and imagine how everyone else’s lives were. I lost everything many years ago and the fear of loss was so great that I did not even want to start building again, that is why I gave up and waited for the sweet relief of death by the window surrounded by my loneliness and all this silence. When it finally arrived, death was not alone as it seems it never is. I heard some whispers and the crackling on the door when coldness had overtaken me. Two boys were talking to each other, I could not understand the meaning of their words anymore but I heard the noise. They got inside my apartment and froze when they saw me there; soon they realized that I was not there any longer, so they decided to take whatever they could carry. I did not have much some old books that helped me fill my days, my clothes, and some food that now would rot and go to waste. Many days passed until someone else would show up, as it seeps the smell my rotting body produced alarmed my neighbors and they called someone to come and check on me. So, they did, I was carried and returned to the earth to rest forever now, they tried to be as respectful as they could but that did not matter to me anymore, they failed to be such when it did matter and when it would have made a difference to me. They all failed me the same as I failed a good man that loved me. In my defense, I think that I saved him from a lifelong misery by the side of someone that could never love him as he deserved to be loved. My heart was not just broken, it was ripped from my chest and it was no longer possible for me to have any feelings whatsoever for anyone, no matter how hard they would love me. I am grateful that after all that chaos that my life was, at least death was peaceful, at least death did not make me suffer and took from me the only thing that it was rightfully its, my life.