Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) by Jay Wilson Page B
Book: Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) by Jay Wilson
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jay Wilson
Tags: Horror
Ads: Link
Consequences.
Summer of ‘46
There's nothing I can imagine that’s more worthy of note in my life than this moment. Born to a small family that added up to three, my father was a metalworker who died in 1943 at a battle in Sicily and my mother, once my father died, volunteered her services to the war effort. The Nazis executed her in the summer of '45 when Germany attacked the plant she worked at just north of our hometown. As for me, I was an eighteen-year-old man who couldn't fight because I was the only remaining member of my family to carry forward the Walsh name.
After the war ended, the Nazis murdered the weakest of us and put the rest to work. In the summer of '46, I was lucky enough to be young with a strong back, so my captors had me working at one of the labor camps in West Virginia. Sometimes I wished I were feeble or broken somehow so that they might show me the mercy of a bullet, but I wasn’t so fortunate.
More than once, I considered damaging my leg or something important to make me cripple enough to be useless, but I quickly learned that the people who harmed themselves to get out of work paid a much steeper price than death. The Nazis took them to the North Star building where they were presumably tortured. We don’t really know for sure, but the terrible screams that kept many of us awake at night was enough of a deterrent.
I worked the fields, which the Nazis monitored as much as all the other areas of der Bauernhof , or The Farm. However, it was negligibly better because I worked with my good friend Willy, a Negro who saved my life four times in that camp. Between the Nazis and the other prisoners slowly losing their minds, the camp was a dangerous place. Despite being a strong fighter, he also had a kind and gentler side. He was, after all, a father and husband to, from what I heard, the most amazing family.
On July 10, 1946, just as the sun cracked over the edge of the horizon, I pushed the manual mower along a field I would need to plow later that afternoon. I wiped my already sun-scorched skin clear, licked my salty lips, and took a break. I wasn't allowed to, but there weren't any guards around to stop me.
As a young Christian, I recalled the boyish things I would pray for: a wooden train, a pellet gun, and so many other things. That day I prayed for the Heavens to care for Willy. Just the day before, a guard abused one of our bunkmates, and Willy lost control. He killed the guard, and they quickly arrested him. They immediately put him to death by driving a spike through his skull, and they made all of us watch to ensure we understood the consequences of our actions if we chose to go against their directives.
As I now stood alone in that field of misery, I prayed for a better world. I prayed and thanked the Lord that my father, mother, and Willy didn't have to live in a world controlled by the Nazis. I prayed for forgiveness because I'd stolen a shard of stained glass from the rectory and planned to kill myself that morning.
While I contemplated the end of my existence and hoped for my eventual acceptance into divinity, an earthquake interrupted me. As the ground shook violently, the earth fell away leaving a sinkhole where part of the farmland had been.
I tightened my grip upon the glass, and stepped closer to the pit. Fear swelled in my veins as I looked into it. I expected to see the fires of hell for I had assumed I had already killed myself and that hell had come to collect my tainted soul. What I saw, however, was something else. It was a bunker with a man hiding feverishly scared as bombs blasted overhead. When he looked my direction, he didn't seem to see me. I saw him, though, and I recognized him, too. It was Hitler, the man solely responsible for the world's plight, for the death of my family and dearest friends, and he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
For a moment, I thought that I was dreaming. Perhaps I’d fallen ill to sun sickness, but I felt
Summer of ‘46
There's nothing I can imagine that’s more worthy of note in my life than this moment. Born to a small family that added up to three, my father was a metalworker who died in 1943 at a battle in Sicily and my mother, once my father died, volunteered her services to the war effort. The Nazis executed her in the summer of '45 when Germany attacked the plant she worked at just north of our hometown. As for me, I was an eighteen-year-old man who couldn't fight because I was the only remaining member of my family to carry forward the Walsh name.
After the war ended, the Nazis murdered the weakest of us and put the rest to work. In the summer of '46, I was lucky enough to be young with a strong back, so my captors had me working at one of the labor camps in West Virginia. Sometimes I wished I were feeble or broken somehow so that they might show me the mercy of a bullet, but I wasn’t so fortunate.
More than once, I considered damaging my leg or something important to make me cripple enough to be useless, but I quickly learned that the people who harmed themselves to get out of work paid a much steeper price than death. The Nazis took them to the North Star building where they were presumably tortured. We don’t really know for sure, but the terrible screams that kept many of us awake at night was enough of a deterrent.
I worked the fields, which the Nazis monitored as much as all the other areas of der Bauernhof , or The Farm. However, it was negligibly better because I worked with my good friend Willy, a Negro who saved my life four times in that camp. Between the Nazis and the other prisoners slowly losing their minds, the camp was a dangerous place. Despite being a strong fighter, he also had a kind and gentler side. He was, after all, a father and husband to, from what I heard, the most amazing family.
On July 10, 1946, just as the sun cracked over the edge of the horizon, I pushed the manual mower along a field I would need to plow later that afternoon. I wiped my already sun-scorched skin clear, licked my salty lips, and took a break. I wasn't allowed to, but there weren't any guards around to stop me.
As a young Christian, I recalled the boyish things I would pray for: a wooden train, a pellet gun, and so many other things. That day I prayed for the Heavens to care for Willy. Just the day before, a guard abused one of our bunkmates, and Willy lost control. He killed the guard, and they quickly arrested him. They immediately put him to death by driving a spike through his skull, and they made all of us watch to ensure we understood the consequences of our actions if we chose to go against their directives.
As I now stood alone in that field of misery, I prayed for a better world. I prayed and thanked the Lord that my father, mother, and Willy didn't have to live in a world controlled by the Nazis. I prayed for forgiveness because I'd stolen a shard of stained glass from the rectory and planned to kill myself that morning.
While I contemplated the end of my existence and hoped for my eventual acceptance into divinity, an earthquake interrupted me. As the ground shook violently, the earth fell away leaving a sinkhole where part of the farmland had been.
I tightened my grip upon the glass, and stepped closer to the pit. Fear swelled in my veins as I looked into it. I expected to see the fires of hell for I had assumed I had already killed myself and that hell had come to collect my tainted soul. What I saw, however, was something else. It was a bunker with a man hiding feverishly scared as bombs blasted overhead. When he looked my direction, he didn't seem to see me. I saw him, though, and I recognized him, too. It was Hitler, the man solely responsible for the world's plight, for the death of my family and dearest friends, and he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
For a moment, I thought that I was dreaming. Perhaps I’d fallen ill to sun sickness, but I felt
Similar Books
