"Gaga"

 You awake to the sound of water dripping.

 “Where am I?” “What happened?” “MOM-WHERE’S MOM?”

 You roll over, your side hurting from laying on some time of tiled surface. There is barely any visible light, your eyes start to focus and you stare up at a circular stone ceiling. Your head throbs and vision blurs as you try to recall the events before you passed out.

 You were at the coffee shop with your girlfriend. The smell of fresh coffee grounds and cigarettes filled the air. Nothing that week was out of the ordinary, except for the recent news report that police officers took down another terrorist who was trying to set fire to a Jewish elementary school.

 Two of them lit themselves on fire and ran into the building, splashing lighter fluid on whatever they could find and lighting it too--on fire. No one was hurt, save for the charred school building. Mama had told dad about it over dinner, but he dismissed it and said it had nothing to do with us.

 It was tough for mama, she had barely escaped the holocaust. The only reason she did was because while being transported by Nazi officials, her mother caused a distraction by scratching at a guard’s face. When he started beating her she told mama to jump, not caring how fast the car was moving. “Just jump!” she said.

 Mama had told me the story when I was younger, dad had forbid her to tell me so because he converted, and believes being Jewish would just lead to trouble during these times. Mama wouldn’t have it, she said to embrace my heritage. And I did.

 After converting, father found a city that holocaust survivors said was well hidden away from the Nazis and moved here. That’s when I was born. We lived here peacefully for 17 years until the recent attacks. Now no one feels safe.

 “Isn’t it awful Gaga?” You break out from your daydream and look at your girlfriend.

 “What?” you reply. You had dubbed the nickname Gaga meaning “bird” in Hebrew, playing on your high school’s basketball team. According to everyone, when you jump, it looks like you’re flapping your wings. Like a bird. It was embarrassing at first, but the name stuck and you got used to it.

 “Who would do such an awful thing? Attacking children like that?”

 Nazis. That’s who. When firefighters had finally put out the fire, they found the body of the two Nazis. One of them was dead, while the other was barely alive. He had suffered horrible burns to his body.

 He lived for about an hour after that. It was hard to tell who he was due to his burns but the children identified him as one of the teachers at the school he attacked.

 You sat there, silently drinking your coffee as your girlfriend continued her lament about the terrorists. That’s when you heard a loud noise outside.

 It sounded like a bomb.

 Everyone in the café ran to the windows to look outside.

<p class="MsoNormal"> They’re here.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The Nazi’s were marching down the street they were throwing what seemed to be gas bombs. Each and every explosion left a large cloud of white smog, filling up the streets. There were sounds of people choking and crying.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You grab your girlfriend and ran. “Gaga, what’s going on?!”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “The Nazi’s, they’re here.” “We need to get as far away as possible.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> You run out the back door and scramble to your car. You and your girlfriend drive back to your house.

<p class="MsoNormal"> As you run in, you lock the doors and close the blinds. You scream out for mama, but hear no reply.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Your girlfriend sits on the couch, quietly sobbing.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Her car was out front. She has to be home.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Stay here, I’ll go check around the house. Everything will be fine” You assured her.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You run into the kitchen to find an arm sticking out behind the counter, covered in blood.

<p class="MsoNormal"> As you turn the corner you see mama, laying there in a pool of blood. Before you can react you feel a heavy piece of metal hit the back of your head.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You taste iron and your ears start ringing.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You open your eyes to see a blurry image of a man grabbing your girlfriend’s wrists, pushing her to the ground.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You hear three gunshots and then everything goes black.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Drip.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> …….

<p class="MsoNormal"> ….”drip”.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You look around the room to try to discern where you are.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The walls and ceiling seem to be made of some type of stone. Concrete.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You look to your left and see a green pipe letting down steady drips of water onto a puddle.

<p class="MsoNormal"> There is something wrong.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You can’t feel your legs. Or hands. Actually it’s hard for you to feel anything at all.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You look down and scream, your legs and lower torso had been cut off. It had been stitched closed so that you wouldn’t bleed. Looking at your hands you find you don’t have any, those too, have been surgically removed.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You roll over, tears in your eyes, and try to squirm towards the puddle you had spotted in the dim light.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Tears push harder against your eyes as you see your reflection. Your nose had been cut off, and some sort of skin was stitched on in its place to cover the hole. Your lips were swollen. So swollen you couldn’t open your mouth. They were blistered, bright red, and as the tears streamed down your face and came in contact with them, they stung.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal"> That’s when you heard the sound of footsteps. You look back the best you can and can see a figure. You roll over on your back and close your eyes, keeping them slightly open to see what is going on. The man stands over you and laughs.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Scum”. He says, grabbing your body and placing it on a wagon.

<p class="MsoNormal"> He wheels you down the dark tunnel filled with the same stone ceiling, tiled floor, and random leaky pipes. That’s when you realize you’re in a sewer. Your eyes react harshly to sudden light as you’re wheeled out into an opening onto a hill. The man curses under his breath and heads back into the tunnel. It seems he forgot something. You open your eyes and stretch your neck over the side of the wagon to look over the hill.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You are far on the outskirts of the city. You can see the buildings that surrounded your school and your home. The white gas you saw is now spread throughout the city, thick clouds of it at the foot of the buildings. You hear bombs going off and people screaming in the distance.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You look ahead of you and see green grass and a series of pipes.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “How can the grass be so green over here with all of this gas in the city?”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “You’re probably wondering how this hill can look so beautiful”.

<p class="MsoNormal"> You’re frozen in place as the man who wheeled you out stands in front of you.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “It’s because the earth here is using your Jewish bodies as fertilizer.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “The only time you scum can be a positive thing for the earth is when you’re dead.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> You look closer at the pipes, tears in your eyes.

<p class="MsoNormal"> There are dead bodies that shared the same fate as yours piled up inside each of the pipes.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “You see, I’m a very kind man. I’m going to give you the same chance to live as I gave all of your friends and family.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “I’m going to release you. If you can make it past all of these pipes, I’ll let you go. Hell, I might even have the surgeons re-attach your limps”.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “What do you say?” He laughs and kicks the wagon, making it fall to its side, and you roll out with it onto the grass.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “You know, I taught at your school. I was a history teacher. I never had you in class, but I’d see you at the basketball games.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “I know how high you can jump Gaga. You’ll have a better chance than the others. Go ahead, jump.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> He raises his hand to point a gun at you, cocking it.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Just jump”.

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