***FIRST PLACE WINNER IN @ANTIHEROESGALORE 'GREAT ESCAPE' CONTEST***
Amid a world war ignited by her home country, Lieselotte Kühn is asked a favor that later proves to be of benefit to her in more ways than one.
A WW2 SHORT STORY & A CONTEST ENTR...
Title: The Mutual Favor Contest: The Great Escape Host: The Ambassadors of Antiheroes Galore Word Count: 2000
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LIESELOTTE KÜHN HELD MUCH distaste for the elements that fed fuel to the reputation of Berlin's train station as the most busiest. These elements, naturally, were in the form of fleeting bodies that nonchalantly cut through the line she currently stood in, sending the line's occupants scattering momentarily before they reestablished linear form. With the men donned in long waistcoats and the women in furs that hid their multi-colored dirndls, the hasty travelers that hoped to catch time before it escaped them made Lieselotte mourn the ghost of decency and order that once tangled with their spirits.
What was to become of them, she wondered as a woman bumped into her in an attempt to keep pace with her male companion. A glare of disapproval stirred in Lieselotte's bluish gray eyes but the woman said nothing and instead, followed her husband submissively onto the passenger train.
Her eyes no longer able to fixate on a singular person, Lieselotte looked down at the red saddle shoes that held her manly feet. A black scuff mark on its right toe almost made her bend down and wipe at it; however, the suitcase in her dominant hand prohibited her to do such a thing. Besides, the scuff was small, much too small for any notice.
The line began to move just then, the ticket clerk becoming less of a blurry figure of wispy hair and fair skin and more of an older man at least forty-years of age. Spectacles of wire sat on the brink of his nose yet he seemed to look over them—not through them—as he surveyed the line in front of him.
The entire body of the young woman next to Lieselotte tensed as his eyes rested a second longer on her, something Lieselotte quickly condemned with a nudge of her shoulder once the clerk's eyes returned to the traveler opposite him. The young woman willed her extremities to relax at Lieselotte's hint, and the two waited patiently until it was their turn to face the clerk.
A sufficient greeting came from the man's dry lips once the two women stepped up to the counter overrun with orphaned tickets. From this proximity, Lieselotte caught a whiff of the man's breath that fanned her face and smelled of burnt ammonia as words of no use to her spilled from his mouth. His dialogue, though, proved fruitful to Lieselotte's companion, whose nods and responses followed his words with a veteran's quickness.
Until he asked for her identification papers. Lieselotte, who had turned her head to avoid inhaling any more of the scent of cheap cigars, veered her nose in the clerk's direction in response to her companion's abrupt beat of silence.
Unfazed by Lieselotte's sudden intrigue in the conversation, he tapped his fingertips against the counter and watched as Lieselotte's companion noiselessly shuffled through the papers in her arms. She eventually produced a passport along with a few other necessary documents.
