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Poor Unfortunate Souls and the Painter

     Bright sunlight burned my eyes as I rolled over in my bed, Katze purring under my arm. The house was silent, not even the sound of the tea kettle disturbed my tomb of a home. It certainly looked like a tomb, with brittle, lifeless flowers outside the windows, its grey color, and inhabitants who's cheeks were hollowing a little each day from hunger.
     I sat up and rubbed my eyes. What day was it, even?
    Oh...
    I remembered, and buried my face in my pillow and sobbed. Katze nuzzled her face into mine, meowing feverishly for me to stop.
    "Go away! Just go away!" I wept into the pillow. But she persisted,shoving her face into mine and lapping at my tears with her rough tongue. Looking back, it wasn't Katze I wanted to leave, but the day to leave. When my tears subsided into gentle streams, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her under the blankets with me. She waited patiently as the streams dried up like creek beds in the summer before giving a hungry yowl. I rubbed my eyes, now puffy and red.
     "I don't have anything for you, you know that." Still, she yowled for something, anything, echoing the persistent growls of my stomach. Swinging my legs over the side, I saw the tattered pieces of paper collecting dust in the corner.
     The last letter.
     It echoed my thoughts and reflected my shredded heart.
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     "Faster, Otto, faster!" I shrieked as he sprinted across the stone bridge.
     "I'm going as fast as I can!" he called back to where I was clinging to his back, flaxen braids flying behind me. We went soaring through the dirt roads until we reached the school and plopped down into the grass, panting with excitement. I glanced up at the big brick building, towering menacingly over me.
"I don't want to go there," I said, making a daisy chain. Otto shrugged from where he was stretched out on the grass, propped on his left elbow and plucking petals from a flower.
"You'll be alright, you'll see. You'll be with all the other children, you'll learn new things, and you'll be with Jacob." I placed the daisy chain around his neck, to which he thanked me for his new jewelry.
"I don't want to leave Mama," I defended.
"We'll see her everyday at 2 o'clock after school."
"What about Papa?"
"Papa is gone most of the day at work whether you're home or not."
"What about you?" I asked, big blue eyes looking into his. Otto rolled onto his back and closed his eyes against the warm August sun.
"I'll be with the other children in the Gymnasium. You don't need to worry about me." I knew he would be with the other Gymnasium students, he was brilliant. "And I'll be home at the end of the day."
     "But-"
     "Alina, you will be fine I promise."
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     "Alina? Alina, can you do me a favor?" I looked up to see my father holding two packages wrapped in paper and bound with string. The sight of them made me cringe; there were bad things in packages like those. Soldiers' uniforms, Hitlerjungen uniforms. Hateful things.
     "Ja, Papa." My voice wavered through the frigid air. The temperature had dropped over night, covering the ground with frost.
     "Take this to Herr Steinmann. Go down our Strausse, then turn left. It's a large, two story building; there's a sign in the front with his name on it. Take this to the back door, alright?" He placed the package on the table beside me. I stared unblinking at it, before nudging the foreboding parcel with my elbow.
     "Is it for Otto?"
     His smile faded and disappeared like color from flowers in the winter. "Ja. His clothes for..." he trailed off.
     "For burial." I muttered. There was a pause that seemed to last a lifetime, the only sound were the cries of the wind smacking the brittle tree branches against the window. I sighed, "alright. I'll take them over." He kissed the top of my head, thanked me, and left. With agonizing slowness, I put on my coat and shoved a pair of gloves in my pockets.
I let the door slam behind me, barely missing Katze's tail. She trailed along behind me as she often did when I left the house.
A gun went off.
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The sky was suddenly a beautiful blue, full of sunshine. Villagers were held off by thin ropes on the sidewalks, beginning to cheer for sons and nephews as the starting gun went off. The boys charged down the street, gasping and clenching their fists in anticipation. Otto came in first in the boy's 100m race, flying past the man with the stopwatch. The man wore the grey blue uniform I had seen on many men and boys recently.
The man stopped Otto on his way back to us, smiled and spoke with him, then shook his hand. Otto ran back to us, grinning from ear to ear. He was so scrawny his white uniform hung limply, his number torn and sagging.
"I won, Alina, I won! Did you see?" I nodded and laughed as he swung me through the air, my hair bouncing behind me. My mother embraced him, Papa clapped him on the back. "Mama, that man said I can join the Boy's League, now!" Mama's face darkened.
"Why?" she inquired stiffly.
Otto shrugged, to him it was obvious. "I'm almost eleven, and I was the fastest boy of my age. He said they value that at the Boy's League." Mama looked at Papa. Just then, the man appeared before us.
"Herr Fischer, Frau Fischer," he greeted my parents. Papa and Mama returned the stiff pleasantries. "You should be proud of your son. He is very strong, very fast, and very intelligent." Otto looked up at him.
      "How did you know that?" he asked.
      The man knelt down in front of him. "You see, Otto, those of us from the Party make it our business to know a great many things about a great many people. When you join the Boy's League, you will learn these things as well."  Otto and the man glanced at the older boys running at break-neck speeds down the street. Otto straightened and made a stern, grown up expression.
      "I look forward to learning from you, Herr." The man smiled and rumpled Otto's hair, before turning and walking away.
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I was jerked backward onto a storefront.
"Are you mad?" Jacob yelled down at me over the noise of shouting people and frantic feet running in all directions. Jacob held me close by my shoulders, my face flushed at the lack of distance between us. I had little time to dwell upon it.
"What is happening?" I shouted over the din. Jacob shook his head, unsure. We ducked instinctively as three more shots rang out. Jacob pushed me into the music store, letting the door slam behind us. People were running every which way, Nazi officers tried to command their herd of people down the street. The yellow stars were only a blur, like a golden flower through a rainy window.
     "Rennen!" they cried, "faster!" They were all running now, down the deserted street. Their footsteps muffled and eventually became silent. Mothers tentatively poked their heads out of doors, arms wrapped protectively around their children in case of sudden danger. Shop owners stepped out onto the sidewalk with the caution of a startled deer before deciding that all would be well.
      "You never answered," I said, looking up at Jacob. He shook his head, obviously shaken.
     "I do not know. They were probably taken the Jews to one of those places again. Like where they took Jan, remember?"
     "Of course I remember," I muttered gruffly as I wrapped my arms around the packages once more. Jacob was kind enough to hold the door for me. "But do you remember the film we saw? He is well." I took a step toward the window and squinted at the street where a few patrons were beginning to mill about. "Then why would they need to run, if they are going somewhere safe?" I said, almost to myself.
      Jacob didn't hear me. "Let me help you." He didn't wait for a reply, and immediately took the shoes wrapped in paper.
     "Danke, Jacob, but I can-" the words clogged in my throat. I gulped air like a fish out of water, baking in the sun. Surely I was seeing things! Surely this...this was a dream!
     "Don't look!" Jacob cried out as he shielded me with his towering form. But under his arm, I could still see them. Four lifeless bodies, cold and bloodless in the street. Their eyes were permanently opened with shock, as if watching their blood run down in diluted rivers into the gutters and drains. Their image was ingrained into my head, their dark hair and beards that stood straight up as if they had been caught running their fingers through it nervously. The green and brown eyes staring at nothing and the  yellow stars that cried in the slight snow that was beginning to fall.