Last Request

From the point of view of being in a firing squad...at the wrong end of the rifles.

Emmet’s hand shook uncontrollably as he raised the last request to his lips. It was to be the final drag before he was blindfolded and shot for his crimes. He inhaled the toxins deeply and looked to the clear blue Polish skies in a meditation of acceptance, before allowing the butt to fall to the ground.

Emmet extinguished the ember’s beneath the heel of his jackboot; the crunching sound between boot and gravel resounding at an impossibly raised frequency to Emmet’s heightened perception. Each bird call and every creaking bough within the surrounding forest drifted loudly about him on the summer breeze. It was as if every iota of Emmet’s essence reached out to all that was external to cling to every possible aspect of life and the living.

The air tasted fresher than at anytime in his memory- the fabrics that touched his skin more real than any other recollection he could summon. The aroma of tobacco mingled with the flora of the woodland and imbued his nasal passage with their scent. Only his blurred and twisting vision of mind seemed to be in denial of the fact of his fate and the firing squad were virtually invisible to him. His eyes would not rest on their presence, but in every other sense Emmet felt as if he were some connoisseur of all that was earthly.

On seeing the cigarette expunged, a British Private approached the German Major. Their eyes met and Emmet noted an almost apologetic expression as he gestured that he raise his hands forward to be bound. The German fought an instinctive urge to hope for reprieve from the sympathy of the Briton.

He asserted to himself that he was a soldier of the Third Reich and he was determined to die with his honour intact. The war was lost- the order had fallen, and he was glad of that, but for his families sake, he must perish with dignity.

Still, he felt his bottom lip tremble involuntarily and had to resist breaking down to tears and begging for their mercy as his wrists were bound tightly. Emmet felt light headed and the world seemed to swirl about him. Such was his fear that his bladder wanted to empty itself and his bowels threatened to disgrace him.

Thankfully the British soldier waylaid his thought processes from the mortal terror by smiling at the fear he witnessed. The apologetic look Emmet had noted was a falsehood. There was pleasure in this act for him and this fact greatly aided the German’s resolve.

The Private held up the blindfold and asked,

‘Yes? No?’

Though Emmet did not speak English, he understood this well enough.

He nodded silently to the affirmative. He had no wish to see death coming, nor did he want his killers to see the fear in his eyes.

Emmet bit hard on his lip as darkness enveloped his vision. Part of him wished he had ran and taken a bullet in the back- or perhaps ran at them and taken it in the chest. No matter. Death did not discriminate and had no preference of how it claimed its inevitable victims. Awaiting execution had, at least, given him the chance to enjoy the good Lord’s earth for a while longer, even if he had misspent his time upon it.

A commanding voice cried out for the firing squad to prepare for the deed of killing Major Emmet Schmidt. He knew that he would soon die near to the unmarked burial ground of the Jews, Gypsy’s and other ‘undesirables’ whose deaths he had contributed to.

‘Ready!’

The sound of Emmet’s erratically thudding  heartbeat flooded his ears, making his head spin to nausea. His back ached intolerably from the release of adrenalin and his body shook as a consequence of being unable to utilise the fight or flight extremes it made it capable of.

‘Aim!’

Emmet grimaced and felt a tear fall into the cloth that covered his eyes and nose. He had perhaps two seconds to live and thought of his mother and father.

 His wife and son.

 His dog, his goats and his chickens.

They would all go on living on his smallholding after his demise. He felt happy at that knowledge.

He remembered the forged documents he had paid for so that he and his family could escape persecution. ‘Goldstein’ had become ‘Schmidt’ and their genealogy was falsified appropriately to support this. He recalled his voluntary enlistment to the Nationalist Socialist army to further protect his loved ones from the suspicion of the Nazi’s.

Although, most of all, he ruefully reminisced about those that had fallen to the whims of a madman and his unfortunate part in it.

Finally, he considered that he could have perhaps revealed his motivation for wearing this uniform of hatred and maybe have been spared for his complicity in the evils that had been committed. But Emmet Goldstein decided that he deserved to die rather than live with his conscience. Besides which- there were no guarantee’s that his life would be spared and to admit that he was of Jewish descent may put his family in further danger. It was best that it ended this way.

He hoped his family would have long happy lives and prayed that God would forgive him.

‘Fire!’

Reviews

[BelowABridge]

wow. that was intense. the way you developed emmet was amazing. I agree with the comment below on the uncertainty of if he deserves to be killed. As the reader you just cannot tell if he is good or bad.

Oh wow, this is a very powerful piece. My emotions have certainly been rattled.
This is really well constructed and plays on the readers perceptions of Emmet. Good guy or bad guy? Too hard to decide I think.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece~
-Satan's Toaster