16 comments

Fiction Sad Horror

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

TW: Violence and swearing.


Looking at my colleagues from the stage as I receive employee of the year it is hard to describe how much I want all of them to die. Every one of them has a glass of wine in their hand.

            “Raise a toast,” I say. “We all drink together. Today is a celebration. To the death of rats.” My voice echoes in the dance hall.

            Uniformed guards raise their glasses and say it with me. “To the death of rats.”

            I sip my wine. The rest of them drink. Lowering my hand beneath the lectern I pour the rest of my wine into a bin hidden beneath. Raising the empty glass as if I downed my drink with the rest of them, I smile.

            “Another drink for the workers!” I shout. I look at empty glasses around the room. I watch the children with the wine bottles fill every glass again.

            I wait as our slaves do their work. They keep their eyes down. They want to live.

            “I want to thank you all for being here today. I am heartened to see all your faces as I look down from the stage. For three years I’ve worked here among you.” I look at the clock. The paralytic can’t have set in yet. “We have done everything we were told to do.”                        The men in their leather boots cheer.

            “Do you all have your drink?” I ask.

            They raise their glasses.

            “This one is on me, men. For everything you’ve done. DRINK.”

            I’m sweating. My heart can’t make up its mind whether it should beat faster than our machine guns or stop entirely.

            “Does it taste good?” I yell.

            “Yes,” they reply. Some of them stand. Others try but can’t, the smaller ones have already been taken by the drug. Their glasses fall from their hands.

            Two men fall as their legs fail.

            “Rats. We call our prisoners rats. We give them numbers. We took their clothes. We cut their hair. We robbed them.” More men fall between the chairs.

            The last of the unaffected look at me as my tone hardens. “We were happy to play with them. We used them for sport. We used them as raw materials. They weren’t like us. That’s what we told ourselves isn’t it. They’re different.”

            None of them are standing anymore. Some have already hit their heads off chairs and are dying. I talk because the words have been spinning in my mind for months. The grey uniforms are one giant mass of genocidal bastard.

            “My wife never told me about her grandmother. Not until the day she was taken away. Taken to a camp like this. Pregnant.” I look at the wine beneath the lectern.

            A guard is still moving somehow. Fumbling hands pull the gun from the leather holster on my hip. My bullet pierces his stomach. He collapses.

            He spills out over his grey friends.

            “I wouldn’t have cared if they hadn’t taken my wife. I would have done all of this and never thought about it twice. That’s the kind of scum I am. We all are. We make them dig their own graves. We make them carry the bodies.”

            I look at the clock. It’s nine. Bells ring in the tower over the front gate. The bell only rings five times before the first crack of gunshot echoes in the night.

            My hands are starting to feel numb. I didn’t spit out the paralytic fast enough to escape all the effects. I unbutton my jacket and throw it down. The patches of colour that symbolise my service as a murderer hit the wood of the floor.

            The boys who served the wine return with a different liquid in metal cannisters. The stinging smell of petrol fills the air as it sloshes over men who can’t move. Buried in the fields beyond the outer fence are hundreds if not thousands of innocents who turn in their graves to watch. Their last revenge is at hand.

            One of the guards is watching me, whimpering.

            “Don’t worry. I’ll be in hell soon as well. I owe an old woman my life. I have an appointment with some bullets.”

            I turn back to look as the flame is lit. Flaming bodies remind me of hell. Perhaps the burning will ease them into the punishment they’re headed for.

            Prisoners in their uniforms, numbers tattooed on their arms, hold guns. I raise my hands as I walk. They know what I did. Grudging respect glitters in their eyes. Hot hatred bubbles beneath. Neither I nor they will ever forgive me for everything I did before this.

            “Where is the mother?” I ask. The escapees point me to the last dormitory. The rest are already on fire. Nothing will be left of the camp tomorrow.

            Younger prisoners are being herded out of the front gate, given back the clothes and shoes that were stolen from them and told to run for the hills. The old will ride in the cars of their enemies. They will be picked up by the resistance.

            “You did it,” says the old woman with a number branded on her arm. She wears the grey uniform as if it is a badge of honour. Her badge is a yellow star. “I never believed you would do it.”

            “One thing to atone in the slightest for my endless sins. Now I come to atone for everything I have done to you. Mother. Wife. Sister. For everything I stole from you.”

            Guns turn to face me as I pull my pistol from the holster on my hip. I hold the cold barrel as I hand it to her. I picture her face each time I told her I had taken another one of her family to the gas chambers. I can’t make eye contact. My shame is too much. I know she wears her grief in every wrinkle. I know she has bald patches from ripping out her grey hair. I know she has cried until she had no voice to cry. I remember the faces of each family member as I led them away.

            “Of all those I have wronged here, of those who remain, I did the worst to you.” I get on my knees in the mud outside the dormitory. “I’m sorry. It’s too late but I’m sorry.”

            “It is never too late to apologise.” Her voice trembles with emotion. Her tears hit the mud beneath me. “But it is too late for my daughters.” She fires the gun. I feel hot pain in my stomach. “And my sister.” She pulls the trigger again. “And my husband.”

            I fall, unable to move. A bullet must have struck my spine.

            The last words I hear are “burn him.”

            Death begins to wrap icy fingers around me, to take me away. All I see are the faces of the dead. Those I murdered see me off to hell.

May 25, 2022 11:27

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16 comments

Dhwani Jain
16:31 Oct 05, 2022

O.K.A.Y. This was different. I have never read a story of this type, at least that's what I thought in the starting. It did seem very gore-ish, and it was. The second you mentioned 'gas chamber' at the end, I realized it was the nazy-Germany situation. Very confusing in the beginning, but well written.

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Graham Kinross
22:04 Oct 05, 2022

I didn’t want it to be obvious where it was for a while. I had the idea because I was reading about ‘Re-education’ camps the are killing people right now. I need to stay away from the news…

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Dhwani Jain
01:34 Oct 06, 2022

Okay...

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Graham Kinross
03:18 Oct 06, 2022

Yeah, it’s a beautiful world, but some terrible things happen.

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Dhwani Jain
01:35 Oct 07, 2022

😐

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John K Adams
21:35 Jun 01, 2022

Well imagined, relentless and dark. You captured that horror well. I'm sorry such things are based in truth. At least your 'hero' has the humanity to know what he has done and atoned for it.

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Graham Kinross
21:38 Jun 01, 2022

Thank you. Yeah I don’t think Hero is the right word. You could never even fully atone for that kind of horror. The worst bit is that people deny it happened and things like that are happening even now.

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John K Adams
21:48 Jun 01, 2022

I agree. Getting into the mindset that allows that behavior mystifies me. Coercion is powerful, and peer pressure, but... Yet it seems the headlines have such behavior daily. You really created that world so it could be seen clearly. Most look away so it can be denied.

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Graham Kinross
23:43 Jun 01, 2022

It’s too easy to pretend it’s not happening and there’s complicity when people have financial interests in places doing terrible things. Disney having to have a thank you in the credits at the end of Mulan to the Xinjiang province where there are mass detention camps is ridiculous and horrific. Countries in Europe being stuck buying Russian oil when they know the money will help fund the war in Ukraine is as bad.

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Michał Przywara
21:26 May 31, 2022

Great opening on this one! It's the kind of sentence you can't ignore. Then the rest goes at a good pace too, as the scale of the horror becomes apparent to us. There's a passage that really stood out to me, "hundreds if not thousands of innocents who turn in their graves to watch". What a great twist on the old "spinning in their graves", where here it's not discomfort but interest that moves them. The ending works. The narrator sees no redemption for himself so he welcomes destruction. I could have seen the old woman refuse, something ...

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Graham Kinross
22:54 May 31, 2022

Some people can refuse things like revenge but I thought in a moment when other prisoners are taking arms and the fact he welcomes it would make it easier for her to vent her anger.

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Faith H
04:39 May 29, 2022

I like how you wrote this story! I could really imagine the entire scene in my head. My favorite line was probably this one: Buried in the fields beyond the outer fence are hundreds if not thousands of innocents who turn in their graves to watch. One suggestion I have for you is in the last scene where the main character dies. I think you can add a bit about how they feel. Do they feel relieved? Sad? Bittersweet? Let the readers know

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Graham Kinross
04:43 May 29, 2022

Thanks. Sadly I can’t edit it now because the prompts have changed. Thanks for the suggestion though.

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Aoi Yamato
04:04 Feb 08, 2024

this is a very horrible story. you like to write things like this.

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Graham Kinross
11:39 Feb 08, 2024

I have grim taste at times, that’s true. Thank you for reading and commenting.

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Aoi Yamato
02:31 Feb 21, 2024

You are welcome Graham.

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