Blue as a Fedora

Chapter 14: Dying Breaths

The emotion that was playing over Malvina's body was one she simply could not describe. She had never felt so shocked in her life. The absolute last thing she expected was to hear her father's voice, right now, in this moment. She felt sadness, disbelief, horror, confusion and dread all at once, all mingled in one, unbearable emotion.

"Papa?" she screeched into the night.

"No," Malia said breathlessly, in complete disbelief. "That couldn't – that can't –"

"Papa," Ella whispered.

For a moment, the four of them stood there, Zavier clearly sensing that something quite extraordinary had just happened.

"We have to go back," said Ella.

"Of course we do!" cried Malia. "Come on!"

Malvina and Malia had to carry Zavier while they ran, but Ella was sprinting flat out; with no weight to press her down, nothing was going to stop her from seeing her Papa.

Although not much had changed inside the camp itself, there was one prisoner inside who had heard the voice, who instantly connected. Who else's voice could it possibly be? Surely, it was the voice of her only love, the one who went to all lengths to save their daughters? It was Elise's husband, Zamir, who had just shouted into that loudspeaker.

Throughout the entire chaos outside, which many were certain started with an unexpected fire, Elise had stayed curled in her bunk, too afraid to go outside. Very few had stayed, and many of the bodies in the room with her were dead ones. Though now, she couldn't possibly just stay in her bunk. She had just heard the voice of a man she thought she'd never hear again.

"Zamir," she murmured, getting out of her bunk and sprinting towards the open door. "No, no, you have to get out of here..."

It was far too late, he wasn't ever going to see his daughters again. They were dead, and it was as simple as that. If only Zamir knew how horrible this place was, then he may have never entered. She had to warn him, somehow, to leave the camp. And do it without being caught.

She was outside in the fierce battle, prisoner after panicked prisoner running in all directions around her, bullets whizzing by like a battleground. Nothing but confusion and panic radiated from the grounds and air.

"Zamir?" she yelled hoarsely, "Zamir? Zamir? Where are you?" tears were falling down her eyes and cheeks, and before she knew it she was sobbing, "ZAMIR! WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT'S GOING ON?"

Outside the wired fence, beyond the bushes, Malvina, Malia, Ella and Zavier were running as fast as they could towards the camp, the three girls desperate to see their father.

"Quickly!" Ella shouted to her counterparts behind her. She hurdled over the bushes and fell against the demeaning, wired fence, peering inside the camp for any sight of Papa. Soon enough, the others had caught up with her, all searching desperately for their father.
Then Malvina received another horrific shock, one possibly even bigger than the last, for standing out in the open, cold and alone, in horrible prison rags, was yet another person she never thought she'd see again.

"Mama!" Malvina cried.

Elise turned at the sound of her daughter's voice and instantly broke into tears. Malia and Ella were now shouting for their Mama as well, and she came running as fast as she could to the fence. She crashed into it and immediately started sobbing hysterically, trying to touch her daughters, but failing each time with the fence in between them. She looked as though she simply couldn't believe her eyes.

"My babies! My babies!" she shrieked, tears running down her face.

"Mama! It's okay!" Malvina sobbed, crying just as hysterically as her mother. The noise of the chaos behind them, the fact that she had heard her father, and now seeing her mother, torn and broken in front of her, was becoming far too much for Malvina, who's heart was racing like never before, her mind cramped with so much emotion it was bound to explode.

"Mama!" Ella was sobbing, pointing towards the hole they had clipped in the fence, a couple feet away from them, "Mama, crawl through that hole! Quick!"

"Quickly Mama!" Malia shrieked. "Quickly before they get you!"

Elise turned to where they were pointing and immediately caught sight of the hole. Still crying, her chest heaving, she nodded and turned to crawl towards it. But before she could take another step, before she could take another breath, there was a sound from behind her, and there stood the chief, holding a gun to Elise's head.

They all fell silent at the sight of the gun, the chief looking as furious as ever. He eyed the girls and Zavier with immense dislike and fury, a fury that belonged to someone who was insane. The sounds of the screaming prisoners, of the ever-growing fire, of the gunshots, became louder than ever before.

"Come here now, or she dies," the chief said in a low, deadly voice, pushing his gun ever harder into Elise's skull.

"No!" Malvina shrieked.

"Girls, RUN!" Elise shouted, still heaving from her sobbing, tears still falling from her face, "RUN! FORGET ABOUT ME! RUN!"

"SHUT IT!" the gun got pushed harder yet into Elise's head.

"Ella..." Malvina whispered to her younger sister, her voice trembling with her tears and her fear, "what do we do?"

For the first time in living memory, Ella didn't have an answer. She simply stared from Malvina to Mama, the tear streaks staining her cheeks.

"NOW!" the chief yelled.

Still, the girls didn't move. They could only watch as their mother pleaded with her wet eyes for them to run away and never look back.

What happened next happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that it was barely an event. It just couldn't have happened. It was non-existent. The chief pulled the trigger. There was a bang, and the bullet rushed through Elise's head. Her lifeless body fell uselessly to the ground, as dead as a puppet.

"NO!" Malvina cried. Her scream was so loud that it seared through her throat, made her physical pain ten times worse, and her mental pain double until it was completely unbearable. "MAMA! NO! PLEASE! MAMA, PLEASE DON'T GO!"

Malia and Ella were also shouting and crying, but the chief was completely deaf to their pain. He raised his gun in the air and aimed it at Ella, ready to shoot, ready to kill...

"Chef!" shouted a voice over the sound of the havoc. The chief turned around to see a hideous sight: four guards were wrestling with a very violent man indeed, who was somehow overpowering all the guards with what seemed like fury. The man turned to look directly at where Malvina, Malia and Ella stood, and Malvina recognised the face in the quickest of seconds. It was Papa.

"Hilf uns!" cried the guard who was trying to control Zamir. "Hilf uns!"

Completely forgetting about the girls, the chief stormed away from the fence and instead moved towards Zamir, getting out his gun.

"W-we have to g-go in," Malvina sobbed to the others. "We have t-to save Papa."

"Let's go," Malia said, who was leaning lifelessly upon Zavier's shoulder. The three of them crawled back through the hole and helped Zavier through. Then, leaving their mother's lifeless body behind, they ran back through the chaos to their Papa. They weren't going to lose him too.

'PAPA!" Malvina shouted, running to her father so quickly that she was a blur, "PAPA! WE'RE COMING!"

The four of them reached the guards and Zamir, and immediately Malvina and Ella started attacking all the guards closest to them. The guards, taken by surprise, were getting surprisingly overpowered. Zamir spotted his three daughters and his eyes widened, his face changed. He had never looked so frightened in his life.

"It's – you –" he stuttered.

But before any of them could reply, the guards began overcoming their shock, and started fighting back against the girls. Ella only just dodged a very powerful punch from the guard she had been attacking before, and Malvina was kicked so forcibly in the stomach that she fell to the ground in pain. The guard who attacked her was inching closer to her, though she made a surprise attack and kicked his legs so that he fell over.

"GENUG!"

Everybody turned to the sound of the loud, German shout, and immediately Malvina's heart plummeted; two guards each were holding tightly upon Malia and Zavier, and the guard whom had shouted had his rifle pointed upon Malia.

"NO! STOP!" Malvina shrieked, but the guard ignored her. He simply raised his gun higher, aiming at Malia's face, the sounds of the chaos around him non-existent.

Then, out of almost no-where, both guards holding Malia and Zavier fell to the floor in pain. Behind them stood Ella, carrying the very large stick which Malvina had forgotten about, Ella looking in shock at what she had done.

Malvina knew what was about to happen before it did, because that's how war worked. That's how sacrifice worked. The guard raised his gun at Ella, and this time he didn't hesitate; the bullet left his rifle, and it flew straight towards Ella's chest. It hit her squarely in the heart. Her little body seemed to freeze, and for a moment she looked up, staring at those she loved, an expression of surprise and shock on her face, giving her final breath.

Ella fell to her knees, then her little, blood-stained body collapsed onto the bone-filled ground lifelessly. Malvina screamed. It was a scream of torture. A scream of absolute loss. Of sadness. Of endless grief. Of everything negative in the world, of every wrong, disgusting emotion that existed. 

The night was filled with screaming. Malvina could hear Malia's yelling and sobbing, and could hear her father's yelling... his yelling of fury...

Malvina's vision was becoming blurry, her mind seemed to be shutting down. Still she could see as her father ran towards the guard who had shot Ella and attacked him with such fury, and so mercilessly, that the guard was knocked out within seconds. She felt herself sinking to the floor.

"WE HAVE TO GO NOW!" he yelled at his daughters. Malvina had fallen to the floor, feeling too horrible and dead to even listen to her father. How was she to leave Ella behind? She couldn't possibly do that. She didn't want to leave Ella behind in this horrible place, where she would stay forever. If one of them died... they had to die together...

Papa ran towards Malvina and grabbed hold of her hand firmly, lifting her off the ground and running back towards the fence, where the hole was only just visible. Malvina tried to fight him off, but she was too weak, both emotionally and physically. Zavier and Malia were falling behind; Malia was having difficulty carrying Zavier and his leg was getting worse and worse.

The bullets flying everywhere were getting deadlier by the second, and multiple times Zamir had to force Malvina to stop running before falling in the path of a bullet. Malvina turned around to make sure her older sister and Zavier were okay. She then saw as a guard nearby raised his gun, aiming it straight at Malia. He made to shoot.

"NO!"

Zavier had seen it too. He jumped in the way of the bullet just in time, and it flew directly into Zavier's stomach. Malia screamed like never before. Papa turned and watched helplessly as Malia tried as hard as she could to carry Zavier from the ground, but he wouldn't budge.

"HELP ME!" she roared to Malvina and Papa, but they simply watched on, not knowing how to tell Malia that it was no good.

But she somehow managed it. She picked up Zavier and dragged him with her. He was barely alive; Malvina could see his chest heaving up and down, very slowly, very weakly, his prison rags stained with a disgusting red.

Feeling helpless, Malvina turned back to help Malia, and Zamir did the same. All three of them carried Zavier through the horrible chaos. Everything was becoming ever blurrier to Malvina: everything around her was playing in slow motion, so that she could see every terrified face fly past her, could see every bullet swoosh to their next victim. The sounds... the sounds were so horrible and disgusting that Malvina could tell that her mind was trying to block it all out, but it couldn't... it was forced to endure...

Somehow, after what felt like a million years of agony and pain, they finally made it to the hole in the fence. Malvina forced herself to look away from her mother's body, as they all climbed through the hole, helping Zavier's almost dead body through it.

Still carrying Zavier, the three of them made it to the bushes, where they all collapsed in exhaustion. Zavier fell to the floor, and Malia picked up his head, looking straight into his eyes.

Everything. Everything they had shared together, every laugh, every conversation, every smile and every memory, played over in Malia's head like a movie in less than an entire second. She was sobbing hysterically, holding his head and protecting it, keeping it close to her, keeping his face close to hers...

"I love you," she sobbed in a trembling voice. "I love you so much and you're the only reason I ever got out of that place alive. Don't leave me. Please."

"Malia..." Zavier murmured, managing to raise a weak arm to her face. She leaned in closer, his face millimetres from hers. Their lips met...

And the whole world was gone. The sound of everything behind them, the breath of the wind, the moon in the sky, every being that ever existed, was gone in that one moment. They were the only real things. And it was the most amazing sensation in the world.

But suddenly it disappeared. It left Malia like an abandoned child and, when she released herself from him, she looked down to see Zavier's dead body in her hands, his eyes closed, his breathing ceased.

Malia broke down harder than ever upon Zavier's body, lying upon it and shielding it from the horror that was this world. She only vaguely heard her sister's and father's voices, but to her, they were the dead ones, and Zavier was the only real thing...

But there were suddenly hands on her body, strong hands that picked her up off the ground and away from Zavier. Papa was taking her away.

"NO!" she shrieked, kicking the air and reaching out for Zavier, who lay motionless upon the ground. She screamed tortured screams as she tried to push her father away. "NO! LET GO OF ME! NO! ZAVIER! ZAVIER!"

But Zavier didn't respond, and nor did her father. He was now running away from the camp, Malvina by his side and Malia in his arms.

Malvina's mind was racing, the sound of gunshots magnified in her ears, and the thought of her little sister, trapped in that place forever...

Then suddenly they were by the train tracks. Malvina, lost in thought, didn't see the giant light chugging towards them through the darkness until it was so close that it was all she could see, blinding her.