From the Cradle

Fevered, I dreamt I crawled a burning maze, my limbs withering and sloughing off in my wake; dead men chattered nonsense, mouths filled with ash, eyes filled with pain; then a drenching rain swept up from some distant gulf, washing the ash and limbs and fire into an endless black chasm.

When I woke, dew dripped from the palms, dropping heavy in the leaves. A faint light glowed over the dunes to the east, pink like lilies in the spring. The oasis, our green cradle, seemed to sigh. We were safe.

I let my brother sleep and set to work digging a shallow grave. My leg pained me, except below the knee where I’d lost all sensation, but the work kept me distracted. I laid Meher in the fertile loam, covered his body with earth and rock, and said a silent prayer as the flies began to swarm.

Paul was awake when I had finished. He watched silently from the bed of the Mahindra, his eyes bulging in his pale face.

“This wasn’t my fault,” I said feebly. “Meher could have stayed behind. He didn’t have to come.”

Paul only stared. I hobbled back to the truck and climbed behind the wheel, where I sobbed softly for a time. At last I turned the key.

“Paul,” I said, speaking to my brother but speaking to no one, “do you remember the stories father used to tell? Poland after the invasion?”

Paul said nothing, but it didn’t matter. I needed to talk. A strange thought had suddenly gripped me.

“He used to say the worst part about the occupation wasn’t the soldiers at his club or the disappearances, but the way the language changed. Infected with German. They even changed the names of the cities. Lodz became Litzmannstadt.”

We rode east over the dunes, toward Luxor, and my conviction grew even as the light woke slowly in the sky.

“The men who killed Meher…” I said at last. “I think they were speaking German.”

This continues my series, The Treatment, and also serves as my response to this week’s Trifecta challenge: Club. Let me know what you think, especially if you’ve been following this one from the beginning! (If you haven’t been following from the beginning, it’s never too late to start 🙂 ) Check it out here:

The Treatment // A Prison of the Mind // Echoes // Out for Blood // Lonely Travelers // From the Cradle