Of The Dark

Chapter 2

I was sitting in the basement of the house on a stool, a hot water bottle pressed to my lower abdomen, too exhausted to cry.

"You knew he was going to do that to me." My voice was shaking. "Look perfect. You were setting me up."

"Look, it's not my job to question the morals of this house." Matron continued with her work, directing other maids and prisoners in maid uniforms as if I wasn't sitting here at all. Hearing me weep quietly to myself, she sighed. "I just do what I'm told, just like you."

I thought about all the things he made me do. The things he said. The way the song my father and I once danced to was playing softly in the background. The way I laid there next to him for at least an hour, staring blankly at the ceiling before I passed out.

"You could have at least told me he was going to do that."

I thought about the way he looked at me after he finished doing what he did with apathy for eyes, and whispered, "You did well," as if I had accomplished anything.

"Would you have really wanted me to?" I stayed silent.

I thought about the way I limped down the stairs to the basement. The way the pain felt stained on my body. The way I almost tripped several times because my vision was blurred by anger and sadness and agony.

I didn't even know his name.

"Will you at least tell me who he is?" Matron whizzed around with a shocked expression plastered over her face.

"You don't know who he is?" She scowled, disbelievingly. "Oskar Diedrich."

For a short time, she stared at me expecting for something to click in my mind, but nothing came. The name jogged no memory but her tone was sufficient enough to tell me that whatever his name was, he was powerful and I should be scared of him. Witnessing the blank expression on my face, Matron sighed deeply.

"You do know his father, yes? Reichsführer Damien Diedrich?" I shook my head. Matron sighed once more. "Other than the Führer, Goebbels and Göring themselves, there are very few people who outrank him, making him a very dangerous man. He is also the commandant of this camp."

"Reichsführer? Then why is he here and not in Berlin or on the front line?" It was strange to hear a man of such power would offer his time and skills to a largely inert women's camp hidden in the country just out of Berlin. I had been here a month yet I had not heard the supposedly notorious name.

"No one is entirely sure, but there are rumours that they've developed a bomb five times as destructive as any nuclear weapon we know of yet, two miles north of the camp. For the USSR. They say he's here to oversee the manufacturing, which is plausible since the Führer would need someone he trusts. Completely secretive project."

Flooded with knowledge, my head started pounding alongside the ache in the lower half of my body. The number of innocent people it would kill.

"Mind you, I've heard some saying that they're experimenting with some of the women here which explains why some girls go missing every so often. I, myself, have overheard some generals talk of a bomb so powerful, it can shatter bones to dust even if you're miles away from the point of impact, literally!" She swivelled back round and continued with her usual work from where she left off before nonchalantly. "Anyways, I'm just the Matron of the house. It's not my place to pry and you shouldn't either."

"And the son? What is he like?" Though I had already depicted him as a self-important, narcissistic hellion, I was eager to know what Matron would say, seeing as she seemed to know more about him than me. "Oskar, right?"