Reunion with the Angel of Death

The doctor swung on his milk white lab coat, and fixed onto his hands his useful pair of latex gloves. He beckoned his assistant to come with him to help with the new subject. They both entered the sparse room, save a table with dozens of instruments, and a surgical table, which a small boy sat on. He shivered with uneasiness in his striped clothes. “Do not worry, my child,” the doctor said, “I am only here to save you.” “Are you sure?” the boy questioned. “Yes, my child. I am your protector, and uncle.” said the doctor, bringing out a piece of candy in his hand, “And this may be yours…if you cooperate.” “I trust you,” said the boy. The doctor had the boy lay down upon the table. “Now relax,” he told the child. As the boy closed his eyes, the doctor’s assistant grabbed a mechanized bone saw and handed it to the doctor, who then turned it on, and proceeded to slice into the boys arm, midsection down. The child screamed in pain, while the doctor smiled gleefully. Josef Mengele’s torture for the boy had just begun.

It was now 35 years since his time at Auschwitz. And now he lived in the town of Bertioga, Brazil. The doctor’s health was now coming to a close. Josef felt some comfort in knowing that he’d evaded capture for 34 years, and still going. But he still felt insecure, concerned if he would be caught. Since the fall of the promised Third Reich, he was wanted now by the Allies for his “crimes against humanity.” For now, however, he enjoyed the leisure of life, relaxing and resting as if he were on retirement. But there laid a feeling that now he missed the most dearly. The suffering of others. Of the children. Their agonies brought him joy to his heart. But now, that was gone. And he sorely missed those memories. On the night of February 7th, Josef prepped his usual supper. He grabbed his steaming bowl of rice pudding, and placed on his table. Feeling tired, he decided to head right to sleep after this. He sighed for a moment, and spoke, “To the life of the savior,” and dipped his spoon into his supper.

Before he could bring the food into his mouth, he heard a floor board creek and moan in the empty house.

Josef put the spoon down and called out, “Ich sage jetzt. Who’s there?” No one replied, only the silence. Josef shrugged and brought the spoon back to his mouth. Again, he heard the floor creek. “I say again,” Josef called, but more serious, “who’s there?” No one but the silence. Weary, Josef went back to his food. He stopped for a moment, to here for any other noises. None came. He resumed back to his supper.

“Uncle, is that you?” a cold, lonely voice asked. With a shiver shooting up his spine, Josef stood right up, just in time to see a small dark shadowy figure disappear from his hallway and into the blackness beyond it. “Was zum Teufel?” exclaimed Josef, leaping back from his table. Anxious, he went to his room and pulled a pistol from his drawer. “I demand to know who’s there!” he yelled out into his house. He slowly walked into the hallway where he last saw the figure. He flipped on the light, but there was nothing. He put his arm to his side. “Nothing,” he assured himself, “it was nothing.”

An icy cold, stiff object rested itself on Josef’s shoulder. Looking at it, he saw it was a rotting hand, with grey peeling skin and larvae twisting around in its holes. Yelling in pure fright, he turned around, and shot at the body that the hand belonged to. He saw the shape of a boy in the darkness. It started to whimper. “Why did you do that?” the figure said in a weeping tone, “Was my arm not enough torture for you!” it raised its arm in the moonlight from a window. To his horror, Mengele saw the boy’s arm was split in two length-wise, rotting and decaying, with bits of flesh hanging off of it. Screaming in horror, Mengele darted off to his room, slamming the door behind him. He heard the boy’s footsteps slumping toward his door. He shivered with fright, so much to the point of drawing tears.

“What do you want with me?!” the doctor yelled back at the child, biting his fingernails repeatedly. “I want to visit you again,” the boy moaned, “I can’t visit you, uncle?” he tapped on the door. “I can’t?!” he said again, tapping over and over, slowly and slowly. “Go away!” the doctor said, scared out of his wits, “Go away, I beg of you!”

“But we wanted to pay you a visit, too?” a young, disturbed voice said coming from a dark corner in the room. Josef haltingly turned around to find a girl hunched over in the corner, with her arms curled up. She had what appeared to be a large hump on her back. “I wanted to see you,” the girl stated, rearing her head up to show two dull hazy eyes. “I love you uncle,” she said, “You’re my protector still, aren’t you?”

“No!” a voice said with hate behind the girl. She turned around and revealed, which made Mengele gag, another girl, sewn to the back of the other child. But this girl’s face was contorted and twisted in a hateful gaze, with one eye closed and the other completely open, but twitching in different and odd directions. “You did this to me and my sister!” it said, shuffling slowly toward the doctor, with one leg dragging behind, “I want you dead, you hear? Dead!” it now started to shuffle faster toward Josef, reaching its green, pale skin out to him, while its limp leg dragged behind it. It cackled with a smoker’s cough, while the normal girl turned its head back and replied, with a devilish grin, “Dead, yes. Yes, dead, ahhaha! Dead!”

“GET AWAY!!” Mengele screamed, as he barged through his door and into the living room, tripping over a stool. He had hit his leg badly on the metal furniture, and struggled to get up. But he felt a pair of hands help him up. As soon as Josef stood on his knees, he stared face to face with another small boy, whose head was split open to show the remains of what was left; half of the brain stayed inside while bits and pieces of skull fragments were in it, and the rest resembled that of a disemboweled watermelon…with that and maggots wriggling inside. “Aren’t you glad to see us again?” he said. Mengele fell on his back, and scurried away to his back door, where he was stopped by another child with cut out, gaping holes for eyes, and a mouth with no teeth and the gums ripped out. “I want to feel you again,” it muttered, grabbing for Josef’s face with its rotting colored arms. “Please, just let me feel you!” Josef rushed past it, and tried to open his door, but it wouldn’t budge.

Regrettably, he looked back, and found numbers of more children, all horribly maimed or dismembered. They stared at him with their eyes, some open, others sewn close, and others with gaping holes. But they all shared one thing in common; the ghastly, hideous smiles they shared with the doctor, as they all unanimously said: “Aren’t you glad to see us again, dear uncle, Angel of Death?”

The doctor, screaming both in real life and in his head, smashed through the door, and headed for the lake. Even there, he could hear their voices calling to him. His sanity broken, the doctor swam out to the lake as far as he could, as long as he was away from the damned children. But due to his panic, he lost control, started choking on water, and finally could not stay afloat, and started to drown. The last sound he heard before his last beat of life was the children, calling his name.