Layla

Prologue: Poland, 1944

Somewhere in Poland...

April 22, 1944

(Noon)

"We have a new friend," Dr. Schmit announced to the young girl sitting in the corner reading over her propaganda textbook as prescribed by the doctor.

The girl looked at the doctor's feet to avoid catching a glimpse of those horrible eyes. His eyes, so blue, such icy blue, they just seemed to contain the power of the sun within them. Her heart would seize each time she was forced to look the doctor in the eye. His harsh eyes just appeared as the windows to a corrupt soul that held within it the tortures of thousands.

He seemed to absorb the pain of those he tortured. Those soulless eyes... Her father had often told her even the most hardened criminal had a soul, he had lied. This man, this doctor, had no soul. If he had, he would not have done the heinous things to her, or to her people. Though she was not born Roma, she was Roma in all the ways that counted.

Her father had saved her from a neglectful mother and an abusive grandmother at the age of 2. And he had taken her into his home with joy and love and called her his daughter. His sisters treated her as their own niece, his mother raised her as if she were her own grandchild. She was loved by the Roma, they were her family, not the Germans who had birthed her.

And that was how she had been taken here. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and porcelain skin amongst a sea of brunette and brown-eyed Romas taken from their homes in Munich to a ghetto in Czechoslovakia to here, somewhere in Poland. She had been fished out of the crowd of children heading towards the execution ring by the German soldiers. Her grandmother had been taken out of line and taken to the German SS officers and questioned about how she and her people had so shamelessly stolen a German child from her rightful Aryan parents.

Her grandmother was shot point-blank in the chest for her crime. Her grandmother had been shot before her own eyes. Her voice had seemingly been taken from her then, her pain was what triggered it. Suddenly she had this fire in her blood that boiled. Her anger, her grief, her loss, had all lead to the display of her "gifts".

The soldiers that had tortured her grandmother, the officer who shot her, and her fellow prisoners that had dragged her body away had been caught in her gift. She made them do what she couldn't. She had them each kill each other in the most heinous ways a girl of 12 could imagine. All six of those men, even her fellow innocent prisoners, were dead by each other's hands.

All the while Dr. Schmit one of the camp doctors had been watching from a distance as he always did. Seeing this young girl suddenly scream and release some sort of power or influence over the men that had witnessed her grandmother's death.

The man who had fired the gun had been shot thrice in the leg, groin, and head by one of the officers that had questioned her grandmother. That officer that shot the executioner had been beaten to death with a baton. The man who had beaten the executioner to death was strangled with his own belt by one of the prisoners. The man who had strangled the officer was shot in the head by the one remaining officer. And the last two men, she had them fight to the death, both of them dying before Dr. Schmit placed his hand on her shoulder.

She had collapsed in a heap of tears. He had played the friendly father figure for a few hours after her gift had been exposed. He had held her as she cried, listened to her, and even gave her a chocolate bar. She had seen him for those few first hours as her savior. A man who she thought was actually willing to help a poor girl like her, perhaps even send her off to live with the relatives she knew had escaped to the Soviet Union.

The fool that she had been was quickly killed as Dr. Schmit had begun questioning her of her supposed gifts. At first, they had been simple questions like, "Was this the first time you have used your gift?" or "Do you know of any others like you in your family?" But then as the minutes ticked by with her answers of no, the doctor seemed to grow frustrated.