Heartless Methods
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“Stetig. Ruhig, Fräulein.” the man says as he degrades me further than I had ever expected possible. The beatings, the starvation… I lie here, chained to a table in the back of a train as a pitiful doctor spreads open the lips.
And I certainly do not mean the ones on my face, morceau de merde.
I scream and yet it does not matter, I convulse to the sides and I only find more agony as the rusted restraints cut deeper into my wrists.
“Stoppen! Ich muss eine Wunde heilen!” he snaps at me before putting down the invasive tool and proceeding to grab me by my shoulders instead. “Halt!” he continues, though he soon remembers how to further tighten the leather straps upon my stomach instead.
To think that I am such a danger…
“Bitte, Fräulein! Bitte!” he repeats over and over again, as if he were the one in need of encouragement. I cannot understand his words… Perhaps he’ll do fine with mine.
“Enfoiré! Détachez-moi, sale dégénéré!” I shout at him, and to no avail. Instead, he looks down at me for a moment… before sighing out and taking a step back. Has he settled me in? Just the way he enjoys it? I cannot place his face, but it will do nicely on the wall with a nail through his eyelids.
“Mein Gott, mein... Vergib mir.” he mumbles to himself. Before, he had paced around for so long in this dark car… Now, it seems his resolve comes stronger as he reaches for the separator again. Soon, he moves back into place and leans forward to take a better look.
The cold prongs… They cause me great pain as he slides them in and past the blood… So very deeply.
“Es tut mir leid, Fräulein. Die Infektion verschlimmert sich... Ich muss…” he almost whispers.
“Merde! Toi merde!” I howl at the crosspoints between hateful damnation and an honest plea. But why should he be the one… to stop when all others have gone through as well? Those wounds between my legs… They tell me I earned every single one.
If only they could’ve been on my face instead.
“Es tut mir leid.” he repeats… Not much happens for some time as I simply lay here, staring up at that dangling bulb. If only I could’ve… But what else was there left to do? My sister, I… I die knowing she is in another’s arms now.
As I am in this doctor’s.
“Ich würde empfehlen... davon nicht zu viel einzuatmen. Ich weiß, du verstehst mich wahrscheinlich nicht... Ich denke, du hast leider auch keinen Grund, dich darum zu kümmern.” he says to me, with pitiful eyes. That which he now holds onto… The canister, in the corner of my sight.
I breathe heavily as I hear his words, I can barely twist and turn as it all… All cuts into me, like I am meat. Dead flesh. The subhuman they tell me I am. I consider crying… as I mawl the tears on my mouth instead.
“Toi merde.” I whisper back as I await the inevitable.
“Ich kenne diese barbarische Prozedur nicht gut genug. Ich habe einmal am menschlichen Ohr geübt. Unscheinbar, ich weiß. Aber ich hoffe, dass uns allen bald wieder langweilig wird. Ja Fräulein? Ich bedauere sehr, was ich Ihnen jetzt zufügen muss.” he says.
And then I scream… I scream, I scream before he begins to pour the gasoline down between my legs.
I scream after as well.
“Nein, halt! Halt, es tut… Es tut, Ich bin ein Artz! Als Wehrpflichtiger bin ich gezwungen-” a voice shouts out along with me. I cannot bear to think… I cannot bear to feel… my own humanity as I am stripped raw of anything else which I had foolishly expected to keep.
My voice, it fades… as I shout into the bulb, I hear it swing over my agony… The man, he collapses as I too hope to someday see… My screams. The wounds. My hope. Ma sœur, où ces animaux t'ont-ils amenée? Ça fait combien de temps que je ne t'ai pas vu? Vous devez être mature maintenant. Je ne suis pas très reconnaissant pour cela.
“Annette, Annette!” me dit la femme. Me dit la femme? La femme?
“Aurore, Aurore. Pourquoi es-tu parti? Ne vois-tu pas que tu vas me manquer pour toujours?” I mumble in my delirium.
“Annette! Annette!” she howls at me, shaking me in the process. I am not sure this is what would be best for me, and yet it’s not as if I would’ve done anything…
“Annette, for fuck’s sake! Look at me, look at me!” Pauline shouts, louder than any German ever has. Perhaps she truly does care for my safety then. I’ll thank her when we survive.
“Look at me!”
She strikes me across the face, so driven to desperation… as I am surely.
“Pauline… Pauline, why have they set you free? What horrors have you surrendered yourself to? Could we have won the war so early?” I ask.
With tears in her eyes… Yes, with those tears I can notice now as my eyesight returns to my possession, I can understand just how unlikely I am to make it past week’s end myself. I’d cry as well, should I not already be running dry. In my agony, in my emptiness…
“No, Annette. I killed the man who was keeping me and set the others loose… And then I ran Annette, I ran. I came looking for you, they’re killing them now as punishment. We’re all dying Annette.” she sobs as I am held in her arms, so warm for the first time since I saw them over the hill.
“Monstres, ma Pauline.” I mumble, as if it needed to be said. She lifts me up soon, despite the injuries I have sustained, for they are nothing special nor noteworthy around these parts. In this train, in these camps.
“Hurry, Annette. We must help them… or escape.” she solemnly whispers. It is not easy to run when others are in your need… To be a coward is to kill more than just the souls which you might so recklessly abandon. I do not have the heart to tell her how I feel, for she is my kindest of friends.
Second only to my sister, who likely lies in the car at the front. With him.
“Help them…” I plead, though the words soon fail me as Pauline almost forces me onto my feet. I do not know when she had even untied me… or when she impaled the doctor with his own instruments. Seeing him, now on the floor… as cold as I, one would think I would be satisfied. Instead, the pain he has induced drives me into senselessness.
I pity him as I scream once more, Pauline so graciously moves me as best she can. I stand here… I hear the others, do I not? More shouting.
“Pauline… Pauline…” I stammer.
“There, Annette. Cela devra tenir.” she says to me, entirely uncertain. This will have to hold? My clothes, my rags… Whatever remained of my dignity, and yet I am pushed forward nonetheless, and over a corpse.
“Auf… weiderseschen.” I whisper to the man. He does not answer.
It all goes silent for a moment… My legs almost crumble as the floodlight sears into my mind. The train car is opened… and promptly the sounds return.
“Erschieß sie, erschieß sie! Erschieß die verdammten Huren!”
“Sie sind Gefangene! Sie sind Gefangene und sie sind Frauen, ich-”
“Du verdammter Idiot! Ich werde es selbst tun!”
A gunshot, a hail of them even.
“C'est vous les putains! Putains de salauds!”
“Allez au diable, vous les animaux! Nous ne sommes pas vos chiens!”
“Annette! Elle est là, elle-”
A scream, two women fall in my sight. I believe I may recognize them, though Pauline drags me further nonetheless. The rush, the metal. The sky is dark and a smoke shrouds the world beyond. My legs and my interior boil as I am all but dragged across the field. The equipment, the supplies. It is all here, spoiling as we await the wheels to keep turning.
But the rain… the rain and the thunder watch us all, shout at us mongrels, as our actions displease the Gods so… What have we become… This pause, this mercy… It seems my fellow women have not let it gone to waste.
The train has been stopped… and now we are that cargo which flings itself overboard. And though it may hurt us and the blades of grass will scrape our skin like knifes…
It might yet be worth it. Even for those who are dead… those others who are slain as I walk past them all… They must so dearly see the value in this effort of ours.
For it is better to die on our feet… that be raped on our backs.
My sister… My sister lies ahead.
Pauline… even in my inability to understand or reason beyond my primal hate and fear… I can hear her shouting at me. To stop, to return and to flee… Flee for all that our lives might still be worth.
But I push her… I even kick dirt in her eyes as she attempts to latch onto me, and hold me back.
I flee from her and off into that which still matters to me. The only thing which should.
“Annette! Annette!” her voice is drowned out in the corners of my mind, until it is changed into newer screams. The soldiers… I believe that they have caught her…
But now I run, on bloodied wings, as I reach out for that last remaining car, that last remaining cargo, so that I may not abandon… But rather, deliver upon the last soul that I love.
And that which I even ensnared myself into these railways for.
“Aurore!” I call out, and perhaps against my better judgment.
I see the Standartenführer’s cabin up ahead... Pray these rains of providence hold out but a little while longer.