CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 7

SALVATION IN STARVATION

            I was hungry. Twenty days in the Nest and my body was eating itself. Despite my cries for help, nobody answered or came to my call.  I had water. I don’t know how, but I had water. Every time I woke up from sleep, a small tin cup would be filled by my side. I tried to refuse it at first, like I was protesting in some sort of thirst strike, but my body gave me no choice and I eventually drank.  A man trapped under water can only control himself so long before the brain demands oxygen, betraying him to take in a deep gulp of liquid death. The same goes for the brains demand of water. I don’t remember drinking from the cup; I just know that I must have.

 It’s funny if you think about it, two elements necessary to the survival of our species, and if you get too little? Dead. Too much? Dead just the same.  It seems to me that my whole life has been nothing but a bunch of too little or too much. No just right or in-between. Everything in existence is balanced on a fertile equator of “just right”. Too far south? Too little. Too far North? Too much, and vice versa. By the way I was feeling I’m pretty sure I was south bound and moving fast.

By day 25, (at least I think it was day 25, could have been 2 months or 2 days for all I knew.), my primal brain finally overpowered the frontal lobe. There were only three things I could eat, besides myself, the rotten Nazi corpse, the Nazis leather boots, or the maggots that were eating the rotten Nazi corpse. My body was in need of protein and the maggots had it.  Essentially, by eating the maggots, I was eating the Nazi, but there was no way I would go and take a chunk of that putrid fascist flesh from the source.

Thankfully I was so out of my mind with hunger that the taste of the maggots began to seem rather pleasant.  I don’t know where they came from, but they kept coming. The Nazi corpse, infested with what seemed like infinite hordes of larva, in a sense provided a role in a vital ecosystem that offered me survival within The Nest. The maggots ate the corpse, I ate the maggots, and the way I look at, the Nazi ate away at me. The Circle of Life. The thing they don’t tell you about the Circle of Life, is that it’s just as equally a Circle of Death. It all depends on what direction you’re moving in the circle.

Eventually the maggots started to thin out. It got to the point where I had to really dig for them. What ones I couldn’t get to, turned into flies, so I figured that I’d wait for them to lay more larva and be a little more sparring the next go around. Even with the energy the maggots provided, it still wasn’t enough. My body was starting to shut down.

My head would wander into what felt like other times, other dimensions.  I found myself back in the war a lot. Terrible memories made real and revisited in this state of hallucinations.  I was 60 days in when I found myself at the side of a bath tub.  My beautiful Olivia was in the warm, soapy water humming an old love song. I knew it couldn’t be her. She died, burnt up over fever just before I shipped out. She looked at me with her big green eyes and asked if I would rub her back. I reached for her and fell into the water, into her arms.

I broke into a deep sob. No oxygen, no water, no food could replenish the energy depleted by my breaking heart. I was dying. I didn’t think of Heaven and already knew too much of Hell. My only sadness at that moment was with Olivia.  I wrapped my arms around her and cried out all the life that was left in me.

“Now, now, you’re quit alright.”

I came to, sobbing in the arms of the German. He was holding me and looked well alive.  Not a day of rot was on him.  I thought about pushing him back, but was too weak. He gently sat me down on the floor. I didn’t have the strength to sit, so I spread out on the ground and kept my eyes on him the best I could.

“I had a girl too you know? She was with child. I heard you talking to a woman in your sleep.”

I mustered enough strength to speak to the bastard. Words came in whispers.

“Let me guess, your girl was a blonde hair, blue eyed bitch with a stomach full of Nazi youth?”

“No Mr. Blake.”

“Bullshit! Wasn’t that what it was all about? Insure the reign of the superior race? Aryans fucking Aryans like rabbits until the whole fucking globe was German!”

“Yes, that was part of it Mr. Blake, but not so with Elsa. You see, she was a Jew.”

I didn’t know what to say; besides I used the last of my energy talking.

“We thought we could keep it a secret, but while I was away in Normandy, the SS put two bullets in her, one in her stomach, and a day later, one in her head.”

He lowered his head.

“They tossed her in a mass grave from what I was told. Some friends were able to reach me by letter. I failed her. I promised her that I would return and that everything would be alright, that we would have our son and a hearty pay for my service to the country. It’s true that I was SS, but in that moment, I hated all of Germany. I hated myself. Once I knew what had happened, I thought about deserting my post, or perhaps suicide. It wasn’t long before I was approached with another option.”