Beauty and the Beast

The Last Wishes Of the Dead

Pain...
I was no stranger to pain.
I had felt many, many different kinds of pain in my life. I had slammed my fingers in doors as a child. I had fallen out of trees, fallen down stairs. I had skinned my knees and elbows beyond count. I still had a nasty scar on my hip from the time I fell off my bike when I was seventeen.
But this pain was different.
This pain was more than just physical pain, it was emotional and mental agony that clawed incessantly at my heart and mind like a starved rat in a cage. And my body, worn down by torture and hours and hours of resisting the Gestapo to no avail, couldn't take it anymore.

Every fiber in my being screamed at me to give up, and do something to prompt the men who inflicted all this pain on me in the first place to put me out of my misery.
They got the information they wanted out of me. Why, then, was I still alive?
I didn't want to be alive—what was there to live for, anyway? Karel Curda had raped the only girl I ever truly loved while I was tied to a chair, powerless to stop him. And my mother...
No. No. I can't think about it. I won't think about it.
Because I knew that once I allowed myself to relive that horrifying moment, I would snap the silken cord barely keeping my sanity intact.

But how? How could I forget? How could I forget the moment that SS man's voice sliced through the haze of pain and fear fogging my mind, asking me if I wanted to see my mother?
I screwed my eyes shut and began to swing my head from side to side, trying to block out the memory of the sound of that slimy, hateful voice in my ears. But how do you force a mind that's been pushed past its breaking point to resist anything anymore?

Memories began to flood my subconscious, one after another, memories of my brother, my father, my mother. They ranged from painfully nostalgic to so horrifying I had to bite the inside of my cheeks so I wouldn't cry out in agony and attract unwanted attention to myself.
I wished things could go back to the way they had been. I wished I could turn back the hands of time and undo all that had happened, all the events that had led up to this.
But most importantly, I just wanted to go wherever my mother went. I wanted to see her again.
Deep down, I knew I never would, because she was dead. The only way I would ever get to see her is if I also died. And if I died—
I will not die. Suicide is for the weak. I will not die.

I didn't see this situation getting better in any way. They would either arrest and torture Josef and his comrades if they were unfortunate enough to catch them alive, or kill them in the process of trying to capture them. They would have no more use for us then, so they would either shoot us all, send us to a death camp, or keep us in prison as leverage against our family members in England.

I thought of my brother Miroslav, who was in England flying for the RAF. Did he know what was happening to us? Did he know that his mother was dead, and that we too would follow? I prayed he didn't, and that he remained oblivious to that fact until after the war was over. I didn't want to think of what he might to in reaction to the news that his entire immediate family had been eradicated by the Nazis.
The fact that I thought so nonchalantly about my own death frightened and confused me simultaneously. I didn't know why I was so surprised—I had come to terms with the truth of the matter so many times before this. We would die at some point. I couldn't see them ever letting us go. It was  just so unlike these Germans to show such mercy to the ones who helped execute one of their leaders. It didn't  help matters that my mother and I were directly involved in the assassination of Heydrich and other dissenting activities of the resistance. They would have no qualms about executing us.

I cut my gaze sideways, to where Sophie was huddled by a lamppost a few feet away from me, her blue eyes empty and vacant. Her spindly arms were wrapped around her knees, which were drawn tightly to her chest, making her look small and vulnerable. Her eyes, although emotionless, continuously flickered this way and that, as if she was waiting for something to happen, something bad. I desperately wanted to go over and comfort her, but the soldiers assigned to watch over us had clearly been given strict orders to keep us apart. I didn't see the logic in that order at all—as if we even had the strength to run away or escape anymore.
What Curda did to her destroyed her, inside and out. Even from where I sat, I could see the pain and anguish radiating off of her in waves.
I wanted to take it all away from her.
And I would—truly, I would, if only I wasn't so broken myself.
If only I still had somewhere to store all the pain.