Chamber

It hurt. A lot.

The gas clung to my skin like a funeral shroud. My eyes felt molten, the tears streaming down my cheeks were like melted glass, staining my flesh clean despite the persisten grime.

I couldn't move. My brain sent the sparks along nerves, but the muscles lay dead, weakend and atrophied from a year of Auschwitz coupled with the noxious air that had been pumped into the chamber.

I tried to speak, but my jaw clenched hard enough that I could feel one of the few molars I had left shatter and fall into my throat. I couldn't cough, and they hung there like slagged metal.

My eyes were settled on the door, and I saw the light. Not the lights of heaven, of release, but the lights the Nazi's carried in their hands, so they could see as they carried the bodies away. It passed over the bars of the first gate and through the open door of the chamber throwing vertical shadows like skeletal fingers over the haze of gas and darkened corners.

Merciful god, kill me now. Let me die here, without this. I thought to myself.

Richenhausen entered, his jack boots clicking on the floor. He had another one with him, one I hadn't seen before. A younger man, barely into his twenties. His face was pockmarked and pimpled beneath the crisp ebony hat that covered his head, and the insect like gas mask that covered his face. They both wore the uniforms of the SS, their metals gleaming in the dull light with the intensity of faceted gems beneath a noon day sun.

I tried to look away, unable to scream when more pain wracked my body. My muscles feel like hardened cement poured beneath my skin.

The beams of their flashlights passed over me, and in the corner of my eye I could see the others that had come in here with me. Men, Women, Children, the elderly. A gypsy named Marco lay in the corner, his mouth and chin stained with vomit and blood, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. A little girl next to me clenched a doll to her chest, her breathing thick, wet sounding. It echoed in her chest like a growl emenating from a cave. She was convulsing, hard, her little feet clattering against the floor. One shoe flying through the air in a slow arc to clatter to the floor.

Richenhausen shot her, and I could feel small, warm droplets of blood spatter my cheek as the bullet burst through her skull.

He laughed. The son of a bitch laughed.

God damn you! I screamed in my head, despite the pain. My soul, I could feel, it struggle to break free of my body, to ram it's thumbs into the perfect blues eyes beneath Richenhausen's hat. To push them into his skull and into the blackened demonic brain that had to lie within.

The younger one whistled, and I saw more of the lights. The heralds of the end, and a small platoon it seemed of Nazi's filled the room. They laughed and joked as they started to load the bodies onto a small cart outside the door. They kicked a few, for fun and nothing else. One even went so far as to pick up a girl, a Polish Jew that I had shared a small meal of molded bread with the day before, and too dance with her corpse. He cut a quick tango with her amidst the falled, his face plastered with a wide goofy grin.
I was going to die. I knew that much. It was inevitable. No one survived the chambers the Nazi's had established for their singular purpose, their “Final Solution”.

It tormented me to the pit of my soul that I wouldn't be able to take one of the smug bastards with me. To inflict just a fraction to them, of what they had done to me, to millions like me. Anger welled in me stronger now, a near tangible ball of white heat that radiated in my chest. A supernova of rage that threated to shatter my ribs in an outward explosion of pain and vengeance. I fought to scream, to curse them with a physical manifestation of hatred reserved only for betrayed gods and scorned lovers.

“Gurrrk.” The sound, harsh and little more than a syllable broke from my lips. Insantaneously they snapped their heads towards me. Richtenhausen stepped over too me and kneeled next to me, staring down into my face.

My mind, my rational, it screamed. I could feel something break, something fundamental snap like an overturned guitar string.

My god, his eyes. No....his eyes.

They radiated, and in them, I could see the shadow of death. Behind the lenses of the gas mask, there swam deep in the azure coloring, an inhuman malevolence. His eyes swam, that blue becoming larger. A void like sea of color that reached into my head, pulling me inwards, deeper and deeper until the chamber ceased to exist.

I saw a battlefield, stretching beyond imagination. Here, bodies rested atop pikes, writhing against the wooden posts that erupted from their chests. In the sky, countless winged thousands fought, sword to sword in an airborn display of brutal savagery. The screams of the dying, of the injured radiated out in a chorus that rang through the air like the torrential winds of a hurricane.

I saw a garden, breathtakingly beautiful. It's paths lined with lush greenery, flowers of all kinds. I could smell their perfume, beneath the gas. Something sweet and tantalizing that cradled the senses like a lover. I saw a tree, reaching skywards, it's arms outstretched like an angel's wings, and I saw beneath it a serpent, coiled around it's base.

I saw the Fuhrer behind his pulpit. Words, streams of venom and hate, pouring from his mouth. He gesticulated his hands wildly, only adding emphasis to the words, weaving a spell so powerful it captivated a populace. Behind him, I saw Himmler, Goering, and behind them Richenhausen. He watched, a small boyish almost innocent smile painted on a face that seemed carved from marble. Beneath them, the people cheered.

I could feel the tears now, more of them, streaming from my eyes. Richenhausen leaned forward, and put a hand against my cheek. His fingers were cold, a deathly, corpselike cold that burned more than the chemicals infecting my skin.

This can't be real, it can't be. I thought to myself, watching his face loom closer, hovering over my own. No...no...please god. No, don't let this be....“But it is.” He said, his lips beside my ear. There was no wind, no gentle touch of sound. Simply those words.

My last act, was too scream. A loud, tearing sound that ripped from my body and echoed through the chamber, resounding off it's walls.

They laughed.