While Tomasz the tour guide speaks to the group, Isaac’s eyes are glued on the man and woman in the middle of the pack. The man wears a grey hoodie jacket and dark green cargo pants. The hoodie is pulled over his head so that only his shaded face is visible from the front. The woman wears a long black pleated wool dress, dark eye shadow and black lipstick. They both wear black leather combat boots laced up to their shins.
Isaac can only hear bits and pieces of what Tomasz is saying while his attention is fixed on the man and woman.
‘… less than a mile from the nearest village …’
‘… transport of fifty railcars arrived each morning …’
‘… two lines were formed …’
‘… undressed in those barracks to your left …’
‘… over one million executed...’
Isaac doesn’t need to listen. He already knows the history of this death factory. Two of his great-grandparents and a great-uncle were murdered just a hundred yards from where he now stands.
‘Do we have any survivors with us today? Or any family members of survivors—parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents?’ Tomasz asks in his Polish-accented English.
Isaac raises his hand with a few others while he continues to watch the man and woman in front of him. She turns her head and glances quickly around the tour group. When her eyes turn to Isaac, she holds his gaze for a brief moment before looking away. She looks up to the man and whispers to him with a smirk on her face. The back of the man’s hooded head nods in response. She glances back at Isaac, then turns her head to Tomasz in front of the group.
As the tour continues, Isaac looks over at Bogdan, not even knowing or caring if that’s his real name. A behemoth of a man, his hulking body is slightly deformed with a limp, hunched sloped shoulders and an enormous head pushed forward from his neck. His scalp is completely shaved and a triangular dyed-black goatee ends in a sharp point about six inches beneath his chin. Jacked up on crystal meth, he stares straight ahead with fierce glazed eyes while the side of his face twitches and spasms involuntarily. Whenever he has to stop and stand still while Tomasz addresses the tour group, he rocks back and forth like he’s stuck in a hypnotic trance. He hasn’t spoken or looked at Isaac since the tour began. Beneath his closed mouth, his teeth have been whittled down into razor sharp fangs plated with shiny silver chrome.
After serving fifteen years in the IDF Commando Brigade and Mossad, then another five years as a private contractor, Isaac believed that nothing could scare him. But then he saw Bogdan the Brute. Watching one of the animal’s ‘movies’ was the most terrifying and disturbing experience Isaac had ever endured. He could not believe that he was watching an actual human perform the vicious acts of bestial savagery that he saw on that screen in his client’s private theatre.
Isaac is relieved that he’ll never see Bogdan after today. The man is a pure monster.
The tour continues through the compound while Tomasz narrates with historical facts, statistics and anecdotes. In a dark red brick barracks building, they pass through a room with a netted bag full of shoes, purses, hats, eyeglasses and other personal items hanging from the ceiling. Some shoes are child size. There are also dolls.
Isaac gulps, closes his eyes and turns his head away. He hears what sounds like screams in the far distance.
Tomasz leads the group to a drab grey stone building with a brick chimney and a tall wooden door. As the group gathers in front, Tomasz looks at them sombrely. ‘This was one of the four gas chambers. What you are about to see is extremely disturbing, so please be cautious—this is not for the faint of heart.’
Isaac looks ahead in the line and sees the man and woman stop at the door to look inside. The man slides his hand down her lower back and gently squeezes her ass while she whispers something into his ear with a cupped hand. She lowers and grazes her hand against his crotch, where it lingers for a brief moment before she rests it at her side.
Unlike his other jobs, which Isaac carries out with cold methodical precision and efficiency, he knows that he’ll truly enjoy this one. But for now he tries to excise every emotion from his body as the tour nears its end and his muscles tense.
When Isaac reaches the gas chamber door with the zombielike Bogdan by his side, he pauses briefly and looks inside the building. Large spots on the walls are stained bluish grey by the gas that was released into the room daily. Fingernail scratches are strewn across the cold grey stone. Isaac closes and pinches his eyes while his breathing hitches. My God, he thinks to himself as his heart races and his stomach tightens into a pit. He hears the screams, still far away but closer now.
Beside him, Bogdan reaches into his pocket and removes a small glass vial filled with crushed ground-up crystal meth. He opens the vial and takes a long snort into each nostril. He pulls two yellow Stendra pills from his pocket and pops them into his mouth. He looks over at Isaac and flashes a sinister grin, revealing his shiny chrome fangs. When he stops with the tour group, he bounces slowly on his toes, gnashing his fangs together with a low guttural growl that rises from somewhere deep inside.
At the end of the tour, Tomasz addresses the group now huddled around him. ‘I hope this was a valuable educational experience for you all, and I thank you for being so patient and respectful during what I know must have been a very difficult and emotional tour. The bus back to Krakow will leave in ten minutes and my colleague Miko will drive you back. In the meantime, you’ll find the toilets back in the main building and, if you need to sit down before you get back on the bus, there are plenty of benches back there as well. But this is the last tour of the day and the compound is closing soon so please make your way outside the main gate. Once again, thank you so much, it’s been my pleasure to guide you today. If you enjoyed the tour, please feel free to leave an honest review on our website. And we do accept tips—zlotys, euros or dollars.’
Isaac watches the man and woman fall into the small line of tourists waiting to thank and tip Tomasz while the rest of the group heads off toward the main gate. When they reach Tomasz, the man says something to him while discreetly handing him a small white envelope. Tomasz smiles and says something back.
Nobody except Isaac seems to notice when the man and woman walk back into the compound instead of the main gate.
Isaac is the last one in line to reach Tomasz, with Bogdan standing a few feet behind them. ‘Excellent tour, sir, very informative,’ Isaac says with a smile as he hands Tomasz a thick envelope.
Tomasz pockets the envelope with a smile, then looks around to confirm that no one else is nearby. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m sure this experience must have been very difficult for you.’ Lowering his voice, Tomasz says, ‘You have thirty minutes from when I text you, Kapitan. Not one second more.’
Isaac nods and replies in a low voice, ‘And you shall record the entire thirty minutes. No matter what you see, continue recording. You have been very well paid for this job with much more to come.’
Tomasz nods, turns away and walks briskly back into the compound.
Isaac walks back to Bogdan. ‘We will not have much time, so be ready to work.’
Bogdan nods with a grunt, then lowers his hand to the crotch of his baggy cargo pants, where he shifts and squeezes himself. ‘A farkam keményedik,’ he grumbles in Hungarian.
Isaac looks back toward the compound and watches Tomasz follow the man and woman through the door of the gas chamber building, leaving it slightly ajar. Isaac motions for Bogdan to follow him.
Rather than walking directly to the gas chamber building, Isaac leads Bogdan in a circuitous route around a rectangular barracks building so that they can approach the gas chamber door at an angle where they cannot be seen from inside.
A few minutes later they’re at the side of the gas chamber building, walking quietly along the outside wall toward the wooden entry door. As they approach, Isaac turns around and signals for Bogdan to follow quietly. Bogdan nods back while his right hand squeezes and rubs the growing bulge in his pants. Isaac reaches the door, then bends his knees slightly to look through the glass peephole placed about five and a half feet up the door. So the guards could watch the horror, he thinks. He closes his eyes, the screams are closer.
The first thing Isaac sees through the peephole is the black Nazi Iron Cross tattoo spread across the man’s bare muscular back. A dark green swastika tattoo, which had been concealed by his hoodie during the tour, covers the back of his shaved scalp. The man stands with his back to the door while the woman grips his bare ass, kneeling in front of him. She bobs her head rhythmically while the man holds on behind her ears. The man begins to moan as her rhythm accelerates. ‘Oh, fuck yes,’ he says in a British accent.
The woman is completely nude except for her black combat boots, the heels digging in to her shapely ass while she kneels on the ground. Isaac sees the edge of a black Nazi Eagle tattoo stretched across her flat lean stomach beneath her firm round tits, which bob gently as her mouth slides up and down the man’s shaft.
Isaac feels a familiar urge and tries to suppress it.
Tomasz is circling the man and woman, holding his smartphone at chest level to record them through the phone camera. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ he says to her. ‘That’s how you get him hard with your beautiful mouth.’ He stops walking, leans down and says to the woman, ‘Now get your tight pussy nice and wet for him.’
The woman takes one hand off the man’s ass and moves it down between her legs, rubbing her clit while her head bobs up and down.
Realising that he will not be seen from inside the building, Isaac ducks his head and darts quickly across the doorway while Bogdan moves up to where Isaac had been standing. Isaac hears the man’s moans intensify inside. He checks his phone for Tomasz’s text message. Nothing yet. He pulls the small Staccato CS handgun from inside his jacket and looks over at Bogdan.
Bogdan has taken off his jacket and sweatshirt so he is bare above the waist. He leans over to look through the door peephole while his hand squeezes and rubs faster against his crotch. Both of Bogdan’s arms, as well as his torso and half his bull-thick neck, are covered in a complex labyrinth of dark tattoos intertwined with sharp indecipherable images, letters and words. He uses his left hand to pull a small bottle of lubricant out of his cargo pants pocket and squeezes the lube onto his right hand. After rubbing the lube over his entire right hand, he slides his hand down the front of his pants while his eye never leaves the peephole.
Isaac hears Tomasz’s voice on the other side of the door. ‘Are you ready to get fucked by that hard cock?’ he asks. After a silent moment, he says, ‘Good, now lie back and let him fuck your wet pussy.’ Seconds later, Isaac feels the vibrating ping of the text message alert on his phone and looks down at it. He sees a new text from Tomasz consisting of one word—‘now’—and raises the gun to his side.
Isaac looks over at Bogdan, still staring through the peephole with his hand now working furiously down the front of his pants while his breathing picks up into low grunts. Isaac waves his hand so Bogdan can see him. When Bogdan turns his head, Isaac motions for him to follow, then takes a black wool facemask from his jacket pocket and pulls it over his head.
Bogdan reaches into his pocket, then pulls his hand out with sharp-spiked brass knuckles slid down across his fingers. From his other pocket, he removes a folded black latex rear-zip hood which he pulls over his head and zips closed.
Isaac turns to his side and slips quietly through the door opening with his gun raised to his chest. Bogdan follows.
Inside the building, Tomasz stands over the man and woman with his phone angled down at them. ‘Oh yes, very nice, you like that hard cock slamming into you.’
The woman lies flat on her back, biting down on her bottom lip with her eyes closed and face strained in pleasure. Her legs are in the air with her firm toned thighs wrapped tightly around the man’s hips as he pounds into her with his thrusting muscular ass.
Bogdan moves up to Isaac’s side and unbuckles his belt while he stares down at the man with wild bestial eyes and a half-open mouth as his breathing accelerates.
Seeing Isaac and Bogdan through his peripheral vision, Tomasz moves directly in front of the man and woman, facing the two men while continuing to train his phone camera down. He glances up quickly and nods at Isaac.
Isaac and Bogdan creep up to just a few feet behind the man and woman.
The woman groans loudly, her hands clench and squeeze the man’s ass as his thrusts accelerate and his deep moans turn into loud animal grunts. His Iron Cross tattoo ripples across his back as his muscles flex and contract.
The woman’s head is arched back on the floor with her eyes closed while the man’s head is buried in the crook of her neck.
They’re both oblivious to Isaac and Bogdan now standing close enough to kick them.
From just a foot behind the man, Bogdan stealthily pulls his pants down, then off, over his black boots. He straightens up with his thick hard lube-slathered cock sticking out thirteen inches from its base. He begins to stroke himself, standing over and gazing down at the man’s thrusting ass through pinched eyes while his mouth hangs open, revealing his sharp shiny chrome fangs with spittle dripping off them as he breathes heavily through his mouth.
Bogdan is so close now that his spittle hits the thick rubber sole of the man’s boot when it drips from his mouth.
Tomasz continues to aim his phone camera down at the man and woman but now is looking up, his wide eyes fixed on the grotesque naked beast that hovers over them. He angles the camera to include a full view of Bogdan, just inches behind them now.
Isaac opens his mouth and breaks the silence.
‘Is she a better fuck here than she was in Dachau? Or Treblinka? How about Belzec and Majdanek? I’ve seen all your movies—’
Isaac is cut off by the woman’s startled gasp, followed by a shrill scream as she looks up and sees him. Her scream grows louder when her eyes shift to Bogdan. She pushes herself back on her elbows while the man rolls off her, his hard-on glistening with her juices. A black SS Bolts tattoo covers his right pec and a dark green Zyklon B tattoo covers his left pec. A black Nazi Death’s Head stares out from the centre of his abdomen.
Backing up with her hands, the woman looks around wildly then scurries toward her clothes lying on the stone floor a few feet away.
When the man sees Isaac and Bogdan, his eyes bulge out and mouth gapes open while he stammers, ‘Wha wha wha wha the …,’ then screams out, ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’ He continues to scream while crawling toward his pants.
‘Screaming won’t help you, my friends. Anyone who may be able to hear you has been paid very well to hear nothing,’ Isaac says. ‘And don’t bother putting your clothes back on. You won’t need them for the next scene.’
‘Please leave her alone!’ the man pleads, when he’s finally able to speak. ‘It was not her idea!’
‘No need to worry about your leading lady, my good man,’ Isaac says with a chuckle. ‘She’s not Bogdan’s type. You, on the other hand …’
The woman has covered herself in her dress and cringes against the wall hugging her knees, staring at Bogdan in pure terror. The man is frozen in the middle of the floor, looking desperately between Isaac, Bogdan and Tomasz—who he glares at while yelling, ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE, MAN!’
Isaac looks down at the man with a small smile, pointing the gun at his head. ‘I’ve seen your movies—expensive but worth every shekel. I also admire your entrepreneurial zest, although, as you may now realise, the dark web isn’t as dark as you think it is. Bogdan is also a big fan. He’s a fine actor in his own right, very well-known and respected in his … genre.’ Isaac pauses then continues, ‘Many others are familiar with your work, including the man who’s paying us to film with you today. Our client is very wealthy and a devoted patron of the arts. Quite an old man now, he and his family visited this place many years ago when he was just three years old. His mother and older sister never left.’ Isaac glances over at the scratch marks on the wall. ‘So I’m sure you can understand that our client has a very deep personal connection to this new project and a strong desire to see it through.’
Isaac nods his head toward the woman, still cowering against the wall. ‘I know that you prefer to work with your talented ladyfriend over there, but in our film Bogdan will be your co-star. Our benefactor insists upon it and has paid us handsomely. He’s a man who’s used to getting what he wants. He personally hand-picked Bogdan for this role from a group of many willing and qualified candidates.’
Still pointing his gun at the man, Isaac uses his free hand to pull a set of nylon zip-tie handcuffs from his jacket pocket and toss it to Bogdan. With a quick nod, Isaac signals Bogdan to move forward.
Bogdan approaches the man with a growl. ‘Over!’ he commands.
When the man begins to protest, Isaac steps forward and kicks him hard in the ribs.
‘TURN OVER!’ Bogdan shouts at the man.
The man turns over on his stomach and, in one fluid well-practiced motion, Bogdan yanks the man’s arms behind his back and cuffs them together. When the man kicks out to fend him off, Bogdan stomps his boot down on the man’s kidney. The man howls out in pain as Bogdan mounts him from behind while stroking his own throbbing cock.
‘NO NO NO NO PLEASE NOOOOO!’ the man screams as Bogdan shoves two and then three lubed fingers into the man’s ass.
‘Te kussolsz! Kuss!’ Bogdan screams at the man in Hungarian. Bogdan grabs the man’s ears and lifts his head a foot off the ground, then slams his face into the stone floor with his full force and body weight. The impact crushes the man’s nose, shatters his jaw and knocks out his front teeth. The man’s blood gushes onto the floor. While the man wriggles in pain, Bogdan grabs his own hard lubed cock and slides it between the man’s ass cheeks. The man screams out in agony as Bogdan places both hands to the ground and pushes his torso up from the man’s back while violently thrusting his hips forward, driving his enormous cock deep into the man with a loud bestial grunt, ripping open the man’s anus while rupturing his rectum and lower colon.
‘BASZIK!’ Bogdan screams out.
The man strikes his broken bloodied face against the stone floor and lets out a loud blood-curdling scream.
Tomasz continues to film through it all, unfazed.
Isaac walks over to the wall where the woman sits, terrified, hugging her knees to her chest. He lowers himself and sits behind her, then locks his legs around her waist and puts her in a headlock. When she struggles against his grip, he tightens his headlock and says, ‘Don’t fight me, I’ll only squeeze harder.’ He adds, ‘And besides, don’t you like watching our little movie being filmed? For someone who enjoys making movies so much, I’m disappointed you don’t like ours.’
The woman lowers her head and begins to sob so hard that her entire back shakes against Isaac. ‘Please please please no!’ she wails.
Isaac leans his head forward and speaks quietly into her ear while closing his eyes and inhaling the soft aroma of her perfume, ‘You enjoy making movies so others can watch you? I must say you are quite lovely on camera. Many of my client’s friends and business associates are anxious to meet you in person.’
The woman shakes her head, sobbing wildly.
Isaac asks her, ‘Did you know that over one million people died here? Many in this very room, on the same ground where we sit right now, trying to claw their way out through those stone walls.’
‘They were naked too, just like you and your friend,’ Isaac continues. ‘But unlike you, they didn’t come here to fuck. They were led here like sheep … to shower … at least that’s what they were told. In fact, these walls were once lined with pipes, shower nozzles hung from the ceiling. But no water came out. And when the people were all packed in here so tightly that they couldn’t breathe, the doors were closed and latched, sealed airtight. It was so dark that they couldn’t even see their own hands just inches in front of them. After several minutes—while the poor souls didn’t know what was happening … scraping and fighting to claw themselves out—the ceiling vents opened and the gas pellets were dropped in. The vents were closed, and the gas was activated by the humidity and moisture created by the bodies pressed so tightly together. The gas made them lose all control of themselves—cough, vomit, even laugh while shitting themselves if anything was left inside. After fifteen or twenty minutes of this ungodly torture, they all died, piled up like slaughtered animals in heaps against the walls.’
The woman continues to shake her head and sob.
Isaac’s hand brushes the side of her face as he whispers softly into her ear. ‘And this is where you like to fuck, you little Nazi whore.’
In front of them, Bogdan is raised up on his hands over the man’s back while thrusting forward and dipping his head to lick the man’s swastika tattoo. ‘Szoros szoros szoros szoros, OLYAN SZOROS!’ Bogdan screams out while his thrusts accelerate and he circles his tongue around the tattoo. The man has stopped screaming or trying to resist beneath the giant mass of Bogdan. He just presses his broken face to the floor with an agonised grimace while Bogdan pounds away.
The woman’s sobs subside and she stops trying to resist Isaac’s headlock. Isaac can feel the tension drain from her body, now relaxed.
To Isaac’s surprise, she no longer tries to force her eyes closed. Instead, she looks directly at Bogdan and the man right in front of her, mesmerised by what she sees.
Shifting on the floor and moaning softly, the woman lowers her hand down between her thighs.
Isaac freezes, his wide eyes looking down at the woman’s hand as she rubs her clit, inserting a finger.
Suddenly and without warning, the woman uses her knees to raise herself off the ground against Isaac. She begins to rub her bare ass against Isaac’s crotch while stroking herself faster.
Isaac cannot believe what’s happening as he begins to stiffen beneath the woman’s slow gentle grind. No no no, he thinks.
The woman can feel Isaac harden beneath her. She turns her head around and pulls off his mask, then kisses and gently bites the side of his jaw as she looks up into his startled, confused eyes. She raises her lips while he lowers his to meet hers. Her tongue darts into his mouth while she presses her lips against his and grabs his crotch with a firm squeeze.
Wasting no time, the woman turns around and unbuckles Isaac’s belt, unzips and pulls his pants and underwear over his bulge, then down to his upper thighs. She grabs his stiffening cock and lowers her face to it. She slides her mouth up and down while looking up at Isaac with large beautiful dark eyes. Isaac arches his head back and looks up at the ceiling.
When Isaac brings his head back down, the woman meets his gaze, rising to her knees and straddling him while pushing him down with her hands to his chest. She grabs his cock, raises her hips and slides him in, then lowers her hips back down as he plunges into her. Her eyes never leave his as she begins to ride him, raising then lowering herself in a slow steady rhythm.
Isaac turns his head to look at the stained, scratched wall. He closes his eyes and hears the screams, louder and closer now. He sees a brief flash of white light and then a vision of something in the distance—he can’t make out what it is but it looks like a set of small sticks waving in the air. He opens his eyes and turns back to the woman. She’s staring directly at him, her eyes boring straight through to his soul.
Isaac moves his hands up from the woman’s firm ass to her hips and flips her onto her back beneath him. She raises her thighs above his hips as he thrusts into her, lowering her hands beneath his back to clench his ass and feel his thrusts. She opens her mouth and gently bites his chin as his thrusts accelerate.
‘Choke me,’ she whispers into Isaac’s ear as she grabs his wrists from the ground and pulls them up to her neck.
Shaking his head but allowing the woman to move his hands to her throat, Isaac presses his thumbs down against the woman’s larynx, first softly and then firmly as he continues to thrust into her. Her eyes widen and mouth opens while her airway is cut off. As Isaac feels himself closing in, he rises up and presses his weight down hard on the woman’s throat while his thrusts become fast and violent. Her eyes bulge then begin to close while her body loses tension, losing consciousness while Isaac chokes her with more force.
Unable to hold out, Isaac raises himself up with his hands still throttling the woman’s throat and explodes deeply into her while he looks straight down at the Nazi Eagle soaring up at him off her stomach with its sharp beak and claws extended. He releases his hands from her throat, breathing heavily.
Isaac’s eardrums pound out and a white light flashes before his eyes. His skull feels like the stone walls are crushing his head like a vice.
Gasping for air with her lungs heaving, the woman reaches her hand to Isaac’s chin and raises his face to meet her gaze while she bucks her hips beneath him. Her moans turn into grunts and then a soft wail. She reaches her hands around his head and pulls him into a long hard kiss as she climaxes.
Isaac rolls off the woman, then looks up to the ceiling and puts his hands to his face while catching his breath. Through the gaps of his fingers he can see Tomasz grinning and pointing the phone camera directly at him.
Bogdan continues to pound away at the man, whose eyes are now clenched shut with his face pressed to the floor. ‘Baszik, baszik, baszik, baszik, baszik, baszik!’ Bogdan chants maniacally. His thrusts grow faster until he uses both hands to push himself straight into the air—giant arms fully extended with elbows locked—for one final violent thrust while he raises his enormous bald head to the ceiling and bellows out a deafening scream.
‘AHHHGGG!’ he shouts into the air as every last drop of fluid pent up in his balls shoots deep inside the man’s battered intestines.
Lowering his enormous girth back onto the man, Bogdan circles his tongue around the man’s swastika tattoo, then sinks his razor sharp fangs into the flesh below the base of his skull. Once his teeth are in as deep as they can go, Bogdan jerks his head quickly to rip a chunk of flesh from the man’s neck.
The man pinches his eyes while his face twists in pain, but he makes no sound. After a few seconds, he turns his head sideways, cheek to the floor, his bloodied pulp of a face cold and expressionless, staring forward with vacant eyes. Finally, the man opens his bloody, toothless mouth. In a barely audible voice, he murmurs, ‘Just kill me now.’
After catching his breath, Bogdan rolls off the man and onto the floor with his dripping cock sticking up in the air. He grunts and reaches over to his cargo pants bunched up on the floor, pulls the vial of crystal meth from the pocket and takes two more quick snorts.
Isaac turns his head and looks at the woman lying next to him. Her eyes remain fixed on him. He stands up and pulls on his pants, then lifts her dress from the floor and hands it to her while she continues to stare at him. ‘Come with me,’ Isaac says as he extends his hand to her.
After the woman stands up and pulls on her dress, Isaac takes her by the hand and leads her out the door to the front of the building. He leans back and slides down against the stone wall until he’s sitting against it on the ground. Without making a sound, the woman sits down next to him.
Inside the building, Bogdan climbs back on top of the man, who lies still with his eyes closed, making no sound. The only sign of life is the man’s chest rising and settling slowly as he breathes. Bogdan rests his large sweaty gut into the groove of the man’s lower back, staring down and circling his finger around the swastika tattoo that covers the man’s skull. After a few seconds, Bogdan rises slowly and raises his right hand with the spiked brass knuckles, then clenches his fist and slams it down hard into the centre of the tattoo—driving long sharp spikes through the man’s skull, piercing his brain.
The man shrieks out while his body jerks up off the ground before going completely still.
Growling like a wild beast, Bogdan rolls his spiked brass knuckles against the man’s scalp, grinding his skull and brain together into a bloody stew. Looking up at Tomasz, Bogdan grins psychotically into the camera—showing his bloody silver fangs—then opens his mouth and lowers his head to sink his fangs into the soft crushed mess that was the back of the man’s skull just a minute earlier.
Tomasz, frozen in shock and awe at what he’s witnessing, continues to record.
Outside, Isaac looks up at the sky and closes his eyes. He hears the screams again, much closer and louder now, almost on top of him. A white light flashes in his head and he sees more clearly what was waving in front of him—not sticks but human arms—some long, some short, some small and childlike, all with translucent skin stretched across tendon and bone.
Eyes pinched close, Isaac gulps hard while a tear wells up and then breaks off and trickles down his face. He opens his eyes when he feels a small warm hand on his cheek.
‘Who are you?’ the woman asks Isaac when he looks over to meet her gaze.
After a brief pause, Isaac replies in a soft quiet voice, ‘I don’t know.’
The woman nods, turns her head away and asks, ‘Did you come here to kill me?’
Isaac looks down and shakes his head slightly. ‘No, my orders are to bring you to the man who paid me.’
The woman looks back at Isaac. ‘For what?’ she asks.
Isaac glances down at her body before looking back into her eyes. ‘You know what,’ he replies quietly.
The woman nods and places her hand over his on the ground between them.
After a long silence while they both stare out into the distance, Isaac turns to the woman and asks, ‘What do you want?’
The woman stares forward without answering. After a few silent moments, she turns her head to Isaac. She squeezes his hand and looks over at the gun now held in his other hand, resting on his lap. ‘I want to go with you,’ she says, looking from the gun to his eyes.
Isaac nods and closes his eyes. The screams are deafening now, engulfing him and exploding through his head. Some are low, some are high-pitched. All are maddening. A sharp bright white light flashes and he sees the arms waving furiously just inches in front of him. He can do nothing to stop them. He smells burning flesh. His head is pounding—thump, thump, thump—trying to blow out his skull. He can’t escape it.
He doesn’t even want to.
Inside the building, Bogdan jerks his head back and forth in a crazed lunatic rage while shredded brains and bone shards fly off his sharp fangs. The bottom of his face and entire neck are covered with blood and chunks of gore. He kneels in front of the man’s head with his bare pelvis gyrating against the top of the man’s skull. He raises his head to the ceiling and shrieks at the top of his lungs.
Tomasz never moves his camera or stops filming … even when he turns his head to puke all over the ground next to him.
Outside, Isaac opens his eyes and looks at the woman. Her gaze remains fixed on him. He rises to his knees to face her, then raises the gun and places it against her forehead. Her eyes don’t move or even blink. After a few seconds, the woman closes her eyes and lowers her chin.
Isaac squeezes the trigger, and she falls backward to the ground.
Isaac looks up into the cold grey late afternoon sky and sees nothing but misery. He turns his head and sees the grim outline of the buildings in the town less than a mile away, which he knows are stores and churches and schools and houses, built for the people who live and once lived there, now and many years ago. He looks down at the woman, lying dead on her back with blood running from her face to her neck. A small swastika tattoo behind her ear slowly disappears beneath the blood that spreads down from the bullet hole in her forehead.
Isaac shakes his head and closes his eyes. Before the hellish screams and smells and images can overpower him, he raises the gun and places the barrel into his mouth.
Inside the building, Tomasz blinks and flinches reflexively when he hears the second gunshot. His phone doesn’t move an inch while he continues to record the horror that unfolds before him... just as he was instructed.
