House of Shudders by Jason K. Foster

Author:Jason K. Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

FALSE HOPE

January 1942

Franz had taken from me any remaining spark. I retreated inside myself, doing my daily chores as required and speaking only when spoken to. Mia and Johan tried to talk to me, but I ignored them and they eventually gave up. Spring approached and I decided I just wasn’t going to work anymore. What was the point? My life had lost all meaning. I just wanted to die.

One morning, I just didn’t get out of bed. When I failed to appear for my breakfast duties, Chief Nurse Huber came hunting for me.

‘Ingrid, get your worthless behind out of that bed, now!’

‘Nein.’

‘Ingrid, if you do not get up right now, I will have one of the orderlies come in here and drag your black hide from this ward.’

‘Okay.’

She grunted in exasperation.

‘It’s okay, Chief Nurse Huber,’ Mia interjected. ‘I can cover for Ingrid.’

Chief Nurse Huber ignored Mia, stepped towards my bed, leant down and growled, ‘Ingrid! If you do not get up and do your chores, I will have someone come and inject you here and now!’

I sat up in my bed, looked her squarely in her eyes, and said, ‘Do it.’

‘Oh!’ she huffed, stamping her right foot on the ground like a two-year-old. ‘You can be sure Herr Schmidt will hear about this!’

Gut, I thought as I waited for Herr Schmidt to march down the ward and give me a patriotic speech before he put a bullet in me.

He never came.

Mia looked at me strangely before she ran off to do our chores. I had not seen Dr Oppenheimer recently, but I still had occasional access to newspapers through some of the newly-arrived soldiers who brought papers with them. When they left the newspapers behind in the dining rooms or tossed them in the rubbish bin, I collected them and added them to my stash. I read through the most recently-dated papers, hoping to find something – anything – to suggest the war might be coming to an end. There was nothing. Not only had our armies advanced well into Russia, but they were also entrenched in North Africa and it looked like they would soon take Cairo. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor in early December of the previous year, and they were now in control of most of Asia. The world would soon be divided between the Axis powers.

When this happened, the killings of undesirables like me would resume. The evil forces would prevail; my life was forfeit anyway. Why couldn’t they just take it now?

On several occasions after I’d stopped speaking to him, Johan appeared at the ward entrance, but he never ventured inside. He would just pause, look at me, drop his head and leave. I wanted to tell him I still cared for him, that I wanted to be with him. But how could I explain that my black skin felt like a coat of dirt that would forever stain me, both inside and out? He deserved better than that. He deserved better than me.

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