ENCOUNTER IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP

He looks up at me with searching, angry eyes.

He does not speak. Does not have to. The absent words are clear enough. He moves jaggedly from side to side, as he lies in his own chaotic rags, staring at the well-fed stranger, who stands in front of him.

He has suffered for far too long, all the while within a hair’s’ breadth of ending it in an instant. It is too late now. I have come. He is filled with rage. Now he will be brought back to health by kind doctors and nurses, and told to forget the past, even though it appears in his daily nightmares, waking and sleeping. He doesn’t want their help.

He leans out towards me, and asks an unspoken question. WHY?

I know it, but cannot give him the answer he wants and needs. I am speechless, for lack of understanding of that to which I am a reluctant witness, though a soldier, who has veered off course to be among the dying and dead. I fought against a visible enemy, and now find I cannot fight my emotions.

My senses are numbed by his vehement stare. Thoughts vanish in the tumult of an unbridled whirlwind. He lashes me with his pitiless rain, as he inhabits a familiarly grim wasteland, drawing my unwilling self into the only home he has known for too much time.

Suddenly he points a skeletal finger to a dehumanized pile of bodies, and screams:

“My brother is there. Among that s**t. He was for the flames, but the swine left.”

I know I have not been trained for this. I bend down to take his hand, but he pushes me away. He snarls like a cornered animal, fearful of capture. He spits in my face, and utters an expletive in some foreign language. His face contorts into that questioning grimace.

He grins like a clown, condemned to laugh at everything. He knows I want to escape from this devastation like the coward I am. He shakes his head, and cackles at the dark joke. He is found, but didn’t want to be found. I am lost, and yearn to be taken away out of hell.

Reviews

[Bill Grimke-Drayton]

Zen, I have followed your advice. Thank you very much for your thoughts. This story is as a result of seeing a British soldier, holding out his hand to a survivor who is clasping it in his own, obviously thankful to have been rescued from the horrors he had experienced. The survivor is lying down on the ground and reached up. I can sense that he wants to weep, but tears just won't come.

[Zen]

Nice story, well not nice. Kind of chilling. It was very poetic. I would try not to use the description of the story to explain it though, that should be within story or nowhere at all.