Past Tense- Part two, Chapter one- second part

[skull_bearer]

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He knows what Charles is thinking. He had thought the same too, once upon a time. He’d believed the Nazi lies about ‘resettlement’, and felt a deep, desperate hope of leaving the ghetto for something better. He’d hoped, and believed in that hope. And then he’d been surprised when it led him and his family to being shot. Erik flinches away instinctively from the thought, then forces himself to examine it. It happened. It was real. He has to look at it because maybe if he looks at it long enough, it’ll stop hurting, and because it was part of Charles’ ‘real life’, however much his friend would like to deny it.

 

‘They don’t do things like that in real life’. Charles had insisted, so many times. He believed it, believed that what was happening to them was somehow separate from reality, and if it hadn’t been Charles saying this, Erik would have gotten angry. He doesn’t know if he can still get angry at Charles, only resigned. What had happened to their families was real, not some sick dream. What had- was- happening to them was all too real.

 

Erik leans over the side of the bed and places his bowl on the floor. His head spins when he sits back up, and he hugs his knees, watching Charles. He’s staring out of the window, watching the army start to move off. He believes in the army, Erik doesn’t have to see the painfully hopeful expression on his face to know that. He really believes that they’re here to help them. The good guys. Erik remembers that he used to believe that too.

 

How often had he and Charles lain in their bunk, in Auschwitz and later in Belsen, and drawn up dreams in their minds of rescue. The British and American armies riding down to free them and kill the guards and burn the whole place to the ground. Imagining the relief until they could almost feel it. Talking about how it would feel to be free, to be safe. What it would like to eat real food, to sleep in a proper bed, to be able to go out without fearing that they would be shot. Then their voices would trail off, because they couldn’t see beyond that. Erik’s whole family was dead, and the members of Charles’ who still lived wanted nothing to do with him. They had nowhere to go. Then they’d try and forget about it and go back to the rescue, how it would feel not to fear any more.

 

It hadn’t happened that way, and Erik isn’t about to pretend, as Charles is, that everything will be fine. Charles wants to believe it so much that he blinds himself to everything that suggests otherwise. When he has nightmares and wakes screaming about the gas and the flames, and the orderlies threaten to sedate him, he brushes it off as an idle remark. Charles is the student of medicine, not Erik, but even he knows that morphine in their condition is a death sentence. The orderlies might not be serious about the threat, but it’s tantamount to threatening to shoot them. He wonders if Charles would excuse their behaviour if that happened. Probably. It was only when the SS actually shot someone in front of him that he himself realised the truth.

 

He has to constantly remind himself that they’re not going to be shot here, or starved, or beaten. He’ll believe that, but believing that they’re safe is another matter. It’s an illusion he can’t allow himself to believe in, and he wishes Charles wouldn’t either. It’s only setting him in line for a disappointment when it’ll inevitably shatter. He hopes Charles won’t have too far to fall when it does, and that he’ll be there to pick him up.

 

 

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It’s very quiet at the hospital, now the army outside has left, for which Charles is very thankful. Most of the wounded have been moved to the empty tents outside and the ward is more empty than it’s been since they came here. There’s nothing to do but sleep, which, on a half-way decent bed and with Erik for company is no trial. It’s quiet now, and the sun is starting to set. The light paints the walls red, and Charles idly imagines drawing black marks on them to serve as a sundial to mark the hours.

 

The growl of an engine breaks the silence, and Charles feels Erik stir next to him. It shows how far he still has to recover that he doesn’t wake, only murmuring something in his sleep.

Charles wonders if it would be worth the effort to sit up and look out, and decides against it. He’s too tired. It’s strange that he feels so tired, when all he’s done is lie in bed all day, but since he feels like he’s spent the last three years in a permanent state of exhaustion, perhaps it’s not surprising.

 

Even in summer, it would still be dark when the bell would start screaming, he could never get used to it, and it had become almost become routine to feel a deep stab of hatred towards that instrument for waking him from his dreams. It had become routine to get up without feeling what he was doing, and pull on his clothes without feeling them either. The barrack was so dark he might as well be doing this sleepwalking, and sometimes he wished he was, anything to snatch a few more moments of peace.

 

He’s almost joined Erik in sleep when the doors open. The ward is long and narrow, and the doors behind them so Charles has to crane his head to see. It’s the same two orderlies as before, helping a third man. The light’s fading and Charles is still slightly asleep, so it’s only when the man reaches the bed across from them- and in full view of the light- that he recognises the striped uniform of a camp inmate and the red triangle denoting a political prisoner.

 

The orderlies leave, and the man looks at Charles. His face is emancipated and covered in black stubble, and he’s smiling. “You from the camps too?” he grates in bad German.

 

Charles nods warily. It’s painful to fear this man, particularly here, but it’s been ground into him for so long it’s almost second nature.

 

It wasn’t only the Kapos and the SS they had to watch for, but the other prisoners. To steal from other inmates meant leaving themselves open to retaliation from those who shared their barracks. To be caught meant risking being beaten to death by their hands. At the same time they had to guard against those who wanted to steal from them, or those who would send them to take their place in the gas chambers. People who, like them, would do anything to survive.

 

It takes all Charles’ will to force a smile back at the man, a whispering voice asking about how many people this man put to death so he could be here now. The same number as I killed, he answers silently.

 

“Dachau?” The man questions.

 

Charles blinks at the unfamiliar word, “What?”

 

“Dachau, did you come from the camp at Dachau?”

 

“Oh,” God, how many of these places were there? “No, we didn’t.” He looks down at Erik and lowered his voice, not wanting to wake his friend. “Auschwitz.” He wishes the man would just shut up or go away, it’s not something he wants to talk about. It’s not something he want to think about.

 

“Ah.” A silence, “Did the Amerikaner free you?”

 

“From the train.”

 

Not many had made it out of the train, he’d overheard the doctor talking to some of the soldiers about it, and out of the dozen or so people who had been taken in the army truck here, only two others had survived.

 

Stop it.

 

“Ah.”

 

Shut up.

 

“So they freed you, and stopped the Germans, yes?”

 

Charles nods cautiously.

 

The man turns, and Charles can see the blood staining his shirt. He’s smiling at the ceiling as if recalling something pleasant. “Did they shoot them?”

 

 

 

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I never know whether to love or hate the nightmare sequences you write. You do it so well. The worst thing here is that the real nightmare starts with the waking up. *feels sick*
Devastating, as always.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

The nightmare sequence is in my opinion one of the best things I've ever written. It was a complete head-trip to write.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

All your nightmares are brilliant somehow. Do you ever base them on real ones you've had or just think them up?

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I try to keep an element of dreamscape when I write nightmares, there are some elements I've taken from my dreams but mostly I made them up. I liked that particular one because it is scary both in dream logic and reality.