Cold.

Cold.

Tobias Spannagel--1946

 

If there was one thing that went thought his mind at the time of his dying, it was the fact that it was too cold.  Too cold for anything other than huddling close to his comrades, trying to equally divide what warmth the weather did not steal between them.  No coal, no gas, nothing that could be used to start a fire.  They were starving and cold, begging for some salvation to be given to them.  Some cried at night, he had been one of them.  His commanding officer was supposed to be hanged, but that come how went awry and the once jovial, larger than life personality was taken away to a different camp.  This put another in charge.  This new appointee slowly succumbed to sickness leaving the head officer position to his friend.  However, his friend was in no condition to take over having lost someone so close to him.

 

Spannagel wept silently at night so as not to disturb the others.

He was lonely.

 

The night was bitter cold as it always was when the new officer quickly left the cabin, the tear stains glistening down his cheek.  Spannagel had been unable to sleep that night and he huddled in his bottom bunk, alone and scared and waiting.  Waiting for the Russian guard to bust through the door, barking at them to wake up and get into formation.  There was no concept of time out here, so all he could do was wait.  His tired eyes watched the officer leave quickly.  There was no hiding the glistening tears that streamed from the officers eyes and that was what struck Spannagel.  He did not like seeing people unhappy, officer, enemy or friend.  He slid out of bed and put on his ragged coat, his flimsy scarf and another, very heavy over coat.  Combined the weight almost sent him to the ground in his weakened state but he held on tightly to the post of the bed to regain his balance.  He slipped on his socks that had holes in the toes and slid them quickly into another pair before he put on his shoes and tiptoed out of the makeshift barracks.

 

The night air was frigid and almost instantly his face went numb.

The gentle sinews of his face freezing and begging for warm blood that could not get to them fast enough; he closed his eyes and put his fingers over his face to try and protect himself from the ravenous weather that snarled and swirled around him like a pack of wolves.

 

Where had the officer gone?

 

Slowly he turned his watering eyes to the left to find nothing and then to the right to still find nothing.  The cold got to him every where: stung like a honey bee protecting its hive, but unlike a honey bee it kept on inflicting more stings, more pain.  Tears fell from his eyes in pain and froze almost instantly on his cheeks, the snow getting caught in his exposed hair from under his hood and his eye lashes.

 

He wanted to go home.

He had been away from home for almost three years prior and no one had told him now that he was behind bars when he could go back. 

Spannagel wept quietly at night, but only was greeted with painful chill.

 

“B*****d…” A voice chortled to his left, “What are you crying for?” the German was horrible, but it was still discernable as his native language.  Spannagel turned to the left again to see, by the fence that kept them in, the officer and a Russian guard.  The officer shook his head, not denying that he had been crying nor complying with the guard with a straight answer.  He merely stood there in front of the guard, looking slightly over his shoulder, trying to remain distant.  Spannagel wiped the tears from his blood shot eyes, his red knuckles difficult to move.  He stayed frozen in his spot in front of the barracks door, huddled tightly in his coat.

 

“I said why are you crying you Schweuler?”  The officer’s eyes dropped, the word burning into Spannagel’s ears.  “I said why are you crying?” with that the Guard struck the officer across the face sending him to the ground.  Spannagel gasped, drawing a stinging sharp breath of the winter air, it burned all the way down to his lungs.  But that frosty feeling quickly changed, suddenly feeling a burning ember drop down into his stomach, a new wave of heat flared up within his middle.  Anger, he felt nothing but anger as he watched the guard put down his Officer and friend.

 

He was not one for anger, but this guard made him angry.

He frowned, lately he had been frowning a lot more.  The cold made him frown.

 

The guard kicked the officer once more, “You didn’t answer me, Pansy, I asked why are you crying?”

 

He strode over to the officer and the guard, his entire body shaking from the cold and anger, the mixture of ice and fire in his stomach and the numbing of his limbs made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and goose bumps break out all over his body.  He said not a word until he reached the guard.  Putting a hand out from the confines of his coat sleeve, he took hold of the man’s shoulder and spun him around.  “Hey mister.”  He spoke, “That is my friend you just hit and called names…”

 

That was all the gunman in the tower needed to see.  That simple touch had been his apple, had been his box, had been his figurative Brutus and Judas.   He never had time to react nor did he hear the c**k of the rifle up in the watch tower.  The only thing that he heard was the blast of the gun over the winter storm.  Nothing much more registered beyond that, nothing until the quick and brief pain of the bullet drilling its way into the back of his skull.  There was fire and then ice in an instant and then complete and utter blackness as he fell forward into the snow, feeling nothing, thinking no more, the jaws of death quickly snapping up at his soul and pulling him into oblivion.

 

And at the end of all things, all he felt was freezing cold.

 

He had wept quietly at night, but tonight there would be silence in the barracks

Reviews

[TheFifthSimile]

I enjoy that you have taken what could have been an overused plot element and made it interesting to read. My favorite section is the last large paragraph, especially the line "That simple touch had been his apple, had been his box, had been his figurative Brutus and Judas." To me, that feels like the strongest point because your language is going beyond the physical elements that the character experiences. I think if you could incorporate more of this type of thing--not necessarily allegory everywhere, but just some one- or two-line dimensions of mind (not to get all Twilight Zone on you) sporadically, it might make the story a little more unique.