When I moved out of home I was gifted a wine cabinet. It was an old thing, two doors at the front, but can also have the top lifted open with some hinges that were on it. It had simple ornate carvings, it looks fancy nowadays, but nothing particularly ornate. It wasn’t particularly valuable or anything, but it had been in my family for about 200 years. As far as I know, it’s the only piece of furniture that survived my family escaping the Nazis. The person who last owned it in the old country I don’t know his name. No one does. That died with my grandfather. All we know is that he was one of the few in my family who didn’t make it out. I never thought much about it. I never thought that was particularly important. After my grandma died it was placed into storage, and it was suggested that I take it to help furnish out my apartment. I took it for spare storage of nick nacks and random crap that I had acquired over the years.
He first made himself known shortly after I moved in. At first it was just the sound. A rattling, wheezing breathing that I would hear at night when I tried to sleep. Not particularly loud, and always at the moment just before sleep where I could chalk it up to being tired. Then in the corners of my bedroom there was a shadowy figure, just for an instant, then vanished. Only when I was alone though. If my girlfriend stayed over or if I had friends around, it wouldn’t appear. He then tried to speak to me, at least that’s what I think. He showed me a vision in my dreams. I think he wanted me to understand. Know who he was. How he became what he is now.
The needle buzzed as it stabbed into his forearm. 834922. This was who he is now. They had taken his clothes, they had shaved his head, stripped him, pried out his gold fillings, and only left him with this number. The number the only reminder that he exists in this world. His brother finished next, 834923. Both of them shivered as they stood naked in the queue waiting to enter. In a tiled room, white powder was thrown on them. Delousing they called it. They were just thankful that they weren’t in one of the shower rooms they had heard about in the ghetto. It stung their nostrils as they breathed. At least they were breathing though, as they shuffled along to the next room. Simple leather shoes, no socks, and the blue and white uniform were the only comforts that were given to them.
Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!
They were marched out to their hut. Unending rows of bunkbeds, and the smell of sickness, rot and damp filled the air. Sporadic coughs and groans are the only signs of life in the wooden stable. The wind whistled through, bringing a bitter cold that even the collective body heat of hundreds could not fight off. A dull thud. Another had expired. 797658. He was a candlemaker once. Now he was just occupying space in the coffin for the living. Another had pushed out his corpse out of the bed the second he stopped breathing. Two others dragged him by his feet, and threw him out of the barrack. Haggard from the effort they made their way back to their beds. There were no tears, Many were silently glad that his raspy wheezing would no longer rob them of precious sleep. Sleep. Dreams. Their one escape from this place. 834922 was beckoned over to take 797658’s place. It was the first time he had seen someone up close in this place. They looked like a poorly upholstered skeleton, the frame easily visible under the dry, stretched, ashen leather. Muscle fibres visible, as they twitched, and cramped as their body slowly consumed them. Cracked lips, the dried blood providing any semblance of colour to their sunken features. They stank of death. Every night, they prayed for their sleep to carry them to eternity.
834922 quickly learned the ways of the camp. Rabbinical laws were replaced by the morally absent requirements of survival. Stealing was not a crime, it was a necessity to survive. To take another’s bread could be justified by their inevitable expiry a week later. They weren’t going to make it, so why rob yourself of the tools of your survival? He had to learn to shut off the voice in the back of his head that told him it was wrong. That niggled and made his brain itch with hypotheticals. Maybe they’d live an extra minute or hour, or day, that was not mercy, merely the torture of hope. He realised that although he was taking from his fellow number, he viewed his survival as necessary to resist those who had incarcerated him. He would rebel against those who had condemned him to die by continuing to live. Every little scrap of food he could find, every extra pair of socks he could layer on, every gulp of water, every stray hair, every gram of fat, every morning he woke up. Every single one of those excesses is an act of defiance. At the same time, he knew he was a hypocrite. He knew he was forcing others to die in his place. He wished there was another way. There wasn’t. He knew it. Those he took from knew it. There was no anger, silent acceptance and apathy ruled the numbers. To have a grudge, or resentment would require them to be human. 834922 understood that they were only numbers now. Numbers do not think. Numbers do not feel. Numbers deal in pure logic.
Their work was simple on paper. Break rocks, and carry them up the stairs that had been carved into the side of the quarry. The only way in or out of the pit. It never got easier. Time illusionary. Some days it passed quickly, others the hunger pangs gnawed at him and made sure he felt every agonising moment. As they pulverised the stone, they would sweat, which would freeze and thaw out in an endless cycle. There were always deaths every day. Maybe someone slipped and took three others with them down the stairs, maybe a guard pushed them. Who knows? They saw a suicide once. A number tried to drive a pick through their own neck. They failed miserably. They choked and spluttered for an hour, as a guard laughed at them, and would kick them to make sure they never lost consciousness, and that they would feel every agonising moment. 834922 eventually noticed the hole in their right boot, they hadn’t felt the cold get into it. When they took it off in the hut, their little toe had gone completely black. They wrapped it in whatever rag they could. 834922 hoped that the guards would end their suffering tomorrow. Unfortunately 834923 was afforded the quick mercy. As they climbed up the stairs at the end of the day, a guard threw 834923 off the side. They didn’t let out a cry. They merely painted the quarry crimson. Their eyes had no tears, no look of horror. They merely smiled.
He smiled.
He smiled and laughed. The laugh permeated through the entire quarry, ricocheting off the sides, growing louder with each echo. The guards looked perplexed. He should’ve died instantly. Instead, as the red pools grew around him, the laugh grew with them. The numbers of course understood. They began to laugh as well. The guards screamed at them to explain what was so funny. Their lack of understanding made it even funnier to the numbers of the stairs. Seeing their brother laugh so hysterically 834922 remembered when Eli hid their father’s yamacha before temple and how red they went searching the house, making 834922 and Eli cry with laughter. Eli even in his final moments was still making people hot headed and furious. Eli was making them remember what it meant to be alive. Eli was making them realise that they can still undermine these armed men.
Bang.
A fed up guard eventually shot Eli in the head, instantly silencing the laughter. They all resumed looking at their shoes and trudged back to the hut. As they walked they heard more gunshots as the guards continued to shoot 834923’s lifeless body.
In the freezing cold 834922 would rub his chest trying to find some warmth. As they did so a silent xylophone would play as their fingers wandered over their ribs. Their skin was taught and transparent now. Their veins were visible, they could see the tendons push and pull as they shook in the cold hut. The rags they called a uniform were now just a reminder of all that they had lost. Fat. Muscle. Size. They had withered away. A wet cough that grew worse with each passing day jerked him so hard that he had a sharp pain in his chest. Maybe a broken rib, he wasn’t sure.
The guards marched into the hut. They gathered a random assortment of numbers and marched them out to an open field. Gave them shovels and merely pointed to the ground. The ground was frozen solid, and the first strike with the shovel nearly knocked 834922 off their feet as it bounced off the solid earth. The first two feet they dug were brutal. Not only was the ground hard, but there were roots and rocks everywhere. Progress was slow. Partially because of the conditions, but also the numbers were aware of what they were doing. Even in this suffering, the fear of the unknown was creeping up on them like a betrayer. Whatever they believed before they entered this hell, it had made them all uncertain that there was a God, and with it they questioned the very idea of an afterlife. This digging might be worse than it is after dying, but even the small doubt of utter oblivion was enough to make them take small moments to enjoy the suffering.
As the sun began to set the guards ordered them to throw their shovels out of the pit. They all took a moment to rest. The guards looked at each other, and seemed to acknowledge the need for respite. 834922 noticed the steam the others were producing. They couldn’t tell if it was because the pit was warmer than the hut, or if their souls knew what was coming and were taking an early exit, leaving the bodies to their fate and saving themselves the pain and indignity. They are just husks waiting to be blown away by the wind. Soulless golems merely waiting for the scroll of annihilation to be placed in their mouths. No god to part the Red Sea or strike down the walls of Jericho. They had been abandoned by all in this pit. A guard approached 834922, and knelt down at the side of the pit.
Would you like a cigarette?
834922 nodded. His arm was too weak to grab it, so the guard slid it into his mouth, and lit it for him. He took a drag and remembered back to the cafes of his town, where he would sit, read and drink coffee. Argue with his dad over a meal and a cigarette. Where he and Eli would get drunk with friends, sing and dance. As the hot smoke enters his lungs he remembers the warmth back home, his mother’s cooking. The smell of the burning paper, making fireplaces flash within his mind. Warmth. Comfort. Safety. The flame reaches the filter. He opens his eyes. The guard still kneeling, eye level with him, smiling. He takes one last inhale, then drops the butt in the pit.
Thank you.
The guard nods, still smiling, stands up and racks his gun. Those in the hole know exactly what to do. They line up next to each other and face their would be executioners. No protest, the time for that passed a decade ago. No time for rebellion, that died with Eli. This is how they would die, with the same silent conformity that had built this camp. They may as well have loaded the bullets themselves. Before 834922 could finish his thought, the bullets had already rung out.
He couldn’t move. He was paralyzed, the adrenaline in his body was masking the pain. He lay on his back looking up at the grey December sky. The lead clot in his left lung made his chest feel heavy. With every breath he took he would wheeze. He felt the air rush in through his mouth and the bullet hole. A strange sensation as blood from the weeping wound and the cold air mixed to congeal inside his diaphragm. He felt like he was drowning. He’d try to inhale air, but every time he did, blood just pooled at the back of his throat and made it harder to breathe. He spat out a mouthful of it, hoping that it would be enough so that he could sip some of the air. He didn’t care that it was cold anymore, he just hated this sensation. He tried coughing to get the guards attention, hoping and praying that when they saw him they would shoot him out of obligation. But it would never come. Instead the guards shovelled a white powder on them. As soon as it made contact with his sweat damp skin it began to burn. He tried to take another breath, but it burned his esophagus. It stung his eyes and his mouth. It caused him to cough, he aspirated more blood, then a deep inhale bringing in more of the caustic dust into his throat. He pleaded to god to make it stop. The laughs of the guards just grew more as he thrashed about in his grave. Suddenly he felt a weight thrown on his chest. It knocked the wind out of him. Then another. More and more. Then the dirt was thrown into his mouth. His face was next. He wanted to just accept that he was going to die, but his body refused to. He tried to shield his face from the shovelfuls, but he started to feel faint and cold. Even the blood that he was still coughing into his mouth was cold now. The earth in his mouth would become his final meal.
It was dark now. He was cold. He was alone.
His fingers noticed something in the dirt. Something wooden. A familiar handle. It was impossible. He thought it was at his house. He scraped more dirt away with his hand. There was no mistaking. This was it. He scraped more and more away, until he could open the door. The smell of that wood filled his grave. That same smell that would gently waft as he would grab wine for Passover. How could it possibly be there? There was a beckoning warmth that he could feel. A strange persuasion came over him. If he could just climb into that box, it would all be okay. He would be safe. He didn’t have family, god, or a name, but he still had this wooden cabinet. He crawled towards it, and softly slinked in. By some miracle he was able to fit.
The wood was familiar, but there was something different. He felt he was in two places at once. In the warmth of the wooden womb, but at the same time he could feel himself freezing, soaked in wet earth, and rotting. He could feel the beetles and worms chew at the fleshy parts of his face, his eyes and fingers. Each small bite. He could smell himself rot in that hole, with the fifty others, the lime now faded and dissolved into the earth. He still felt the crushing weight of the earth on top of him, and slowly over time, his chest collapse and fill with dirt. His skull slowly pulverised. But he was still him. So long as he had this box, this one part of him, he could remain here.
Warm. Safe. Alone.
The haunting only grew worse after this vision.