Last words of a telegram

Martin sent a telegram to Hirt. He marked it as confidential.

He didn't remember exactly what he'd messaged, which was weird to him. He was quite possibly blowing up the cover of the only man he knew who wasn't a die-hard fan of Hitler's twisted state—those words were almost as important as last words—at least to Reisser.

Unless, of course, it was all a test of his loyalty, in which case Hirt's response would be light-hearted.

He received the answer in four hours: "I have received your telegram and have notified the Gestapo. They will look into this."

Martin thanked the delivery boy and sent him off, then stumbled back inside and fell face-first onto the hallway floor on the way to the living room.

Marlene heard the loud thud and hurried downstairs. When she found her husband unconscious on the floor, shescreamed and ran over to help him.

Martin restarted to the splash of cold water over his head. He groaned and spluttered, clearing the water from his mouth, nose, and eyes. "Marlene, why the hell did you-." Reisser. The thought struck him like timber falling. He fell back onto his elbows and bowed his head. Water dripped from his chin onto his shirt. "I fucked up." He said, raising his head to look at his wife. She gazed at him worriedly.

"What do you mean?" She said, setting the bucket aside. "Tell me, Franz." She hurried. He groaned and sank back down completely on the floor. He didn't want to tell her. He wasn't embarrassed by himself; he was horrified and angry. "Get up before the children see you like this! Your behavior has been unacceptable in the last few weeks. You've made them scared of their father with all your drunk shenanigans."

"You remember that photographer from Berlin I told you about? The one whose wife wrote the play we're going to in a few days?" Martin said without paying any attention to her last remark.

"Yes, what's with him?"

"Well, I reported him."

"What?"

"I reported him because he told me he was against the party, and I...I thought it was a test sent from Hirt because I'm obviously not as good as Franz at dealing with these things, the camps, the experiments, the whole...thing. But it wasn't a test. And now I've sent a man to his death."

"Darling, you are Franz-."

"No, I'm not, Marlene. I'm not Franz." The look her husband gave her as he said it made Marlene's heart break. Tears welled up in her eyes but she blinked them away. First drunk and now sober...Franz was losing it. She assumed he'd seen things in the war that he hadn't told her about or seen things maybe even in Strassburg. Whatever it was, it was killing him from the inside. Making him think there was a second person in his head...

"My name's Martin." He said after a few seconds of heavy silence between them. "And I'm your great-grandson."

"I think you hit your head pretty hard when you fell, Franz. Let's get you up in bed." She ignored his last words entirely.

"It's not the dizziness, Marlene. And no, I didn't hit my head that hard. But don't you see how different I am? I'm like a whole other person altogether!"

"No, Franz, you're not. You're just..." Broken, is what she wanted to say. But she bit the word back and gently helped him up, then led him to the upstairs bedroom. "You're..." Lost? How do you tell your partner that they are a madman who lost their way?

As a child, Marlene had often gone for walks in the woods behind their house. She'd come across a fox den. The little foxes were so cute, bright orange with speckled white faces and those fluffy tails. But one fox pup had been slower than the rest. And one day, when she'd been on her way home, she witnessed a badger raid the den. All the foxes ran after their mother except for the little one. It managed to dash away from the predator, but it ran in the opposite direction.She then saw it sitting on the edge of the meadow calling, but nobody came to pick it up.

Franz reminded her of that fox pup.