Good luck homing pigeon

Chapter twenty one: Surprise, surprise (25th July, 1944)

Here is yet another update. Take a look at the date, because it is an important one, and guess which important event is on, or near the time in which the chapter takes place. Song is 'drummer boy' from the musical, Strike up the band.

More months dragged on, and somehow I was still here. Though the way things were changing, I could hardly imagine how. The soldiers seemed far tenser nowadays; they yelled louder than usual, hit harder than usual, and if you wanted your misery to end here, it wasn't that hard to do. Just weep, let a single tear show, even look a guard in the eye. Do that, and one would gladly drag you outside and have you shot in the head. Afterwards, your body would be thrown onto the top of a thick pile of bony, grey-skinned bodies. Originally meant to be a deep pit to hold bodies in until they could go to the crematorium. But over the months, it just turned into a deathly dumping-ground. Once in a while when you walked past it, you could spot a chunk of flesh, sliced clean off from a person's leg. You see, when I said this place was utterly merciless, I meant it in every sense. Those people didn't kill for their food, but eating flesh that once belonged to a living person...it was a resort none of us wanted to turn to. Sick, was it not?

As Sandrine grew stronger under my care, I slowly began to grow weaker. I was giving her some of my food-the extra food the block leader gave me when nobody else was looking. And people were beginning to notice. Whenever I walked past them I'd notice the stares, cutting through me like a blade. And the words they whispered when they didn't think, or care if I could hear them. Saying I was too skinny for my own good, a replica skeleton, starving myself for what? The sake of another? I knew it was stupid of me. Everyone else already made that clear. However I'd shut them up pretty quickly last month when I stole a fresh rag, torn out from another coat, and split it into two. One each for two, newer inmates-teenage girls, younger than me. They had their periods badly that time, and felt too scared to ask the block leader for sanitary rags. If I was willing to do those favours for two, perfect strangers, it was clear to the rest of the barrack that I chose no favourites.

I never told anyone this, but...I hated this. More and more each day. I hated being one of those people, forever walking the fine tight-rope between life and death. One push, one shake could have me tumbling down, into one of those body-pits. And I didn't know when, or how to expect those unpredictable pushes, thrown at me. Sometimes it was a soldier-a guard. Sometimes it was the new gashes on my hands I got from work. Sometimes it was my stomach, groaning and crying out to be filled with food. And sometimes...sometimes it was myself. That little voice in my head, a voice that sounded like death, telling me how foolish I'd become. That if I'd just followed the path of my sister, I'd be safe and healthy by now. That he would no longer be looming below, waiting to catch me and carry my soul to the beyond.

And The Flock? I think The Flock, Angelo and Sandrine were the only ones, keeping me from looking death in the eye and asking him to take me. Every week I still got to become the homing pigeon; soaring, flying about everybody else. In those small moments I would fly, high above the Birkenau gates, high above Auschwitz, and just relish in the feeling of the fresh air on my face and the smell of sweet, warm freedom that called to me. Of course I wouldn't leave this place without the Robin beside me. He wait for me in that tin shed, and for ten, short minutes, we'd both take to the sky like the free birds we were. It was fantastic, being a bird for just a little while. Because while you had wings, you could fly wherever and whenever you wanted to.

It was this weeks meeting when the block leader finally decided to confront me on my behaviour. She'd know me well by now; seen me, talked to me almost every day. She knew that something inside of me had changed, and she wanted to know how. What was it that robbed me of the hope that shocked so many others?

"Alright kid, what's gotten into you?" She questioned, the moment the Birkenau gates were behind us. "Don't think I haven't noticed the way you've been going on these past few months. Something's bothering you, isn't it? Something's making you doubt yourself."