On a cold winter evening, in a street of no particular interest, laid a man on the street. His beard, which had grown to nearly resemble foliage in the dark light, was smothered in blood and snow. His breath, slow and heavy, was nearly run out, his life escaping with every breath. His clothes were ravaged and left to rags.
The man had lost all hope in living, he accepted the inevitable. He began to contemplate on recent events, question what he had done to end up where he was. He didn’t want to remember, but the brain naturally remembers horrible memories best. He shed a tear as he relived the events through his head.
“Run, Schmael, run!” yelled the man’s wife, fear and terror on her face, all happiness left behind. The man got up and looked around, saw the room, ravaged through as if by a beast. Then he saw the body, and he realized what had happened. There it sat, bloody in the chest, shards of glass sticking out from behind, an expression of hate on the face, as if the carcass was looking at them, as if it was still alive.
“Come on Schmael, we have to go!” she yelled again, urging at him to run. But the fact was, he couldn’t. He could only stare at the corpse, and realize what had happened. The Nazi had come to their house, and started interrogating his wife and children. Half realizing what he was doing, he sneaked up behind the man, and stabbed him with a broken bottle. And he couldn’t move. He had killed a living being.
His wife realized the man would not leave, and ran for her life with the children. The man sat there, in shock. Soon more Nazi’s came to check what the origin of the screaming was. Within a few minutes of walking into the room, Schmael was on the street, being bludgeoned by the hilts of their guns, to the brink of death. Then they left him there, in the cold, to die.
The man shed a tear. He longed for one more moment to be with his family. He longed to live out his life to its full extent. The man was infuriated with himself, for lying there, by the corpse, shocked, naïve. He wished he had just run, and he would be with his family, at this very moment.
“But I’d be cowering for the rest of my life in fear…”
The thought going through his head was more painful than all the bludgeoning he had so recently received. He would be in fear, hiding in an attic or basement his entire life. Slowly, he came to the realization that dying was the best way out. By dying, there was no hiding, no fear, just rest. He still longed for his family, but he decided to wait, to allow them the life he would never have, and when it was their time, they would be reunited.
With a tearful face and bloodied body, the last essence of living was sapped from the man’s body. The man breathed his last breath, and with no regrets, accepted Death with open arms, and let it carry him over to the next world.
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