1942.
It was a year where many things, most of them of note, occurred. As usual, the sun rose each morning, people got up and went to work or school. All the trees grew a little bit taller, ripples made interesting patterns in the sea, and Death went about his daily routine of collecting souls when their time on the earth had finally reached its end.
It wasn't a bad job, as jobs go. Every day, Death would not get up from his bed, as he never actually slept in it, go downstairs, and wander his libraries checking all of his millions of little sand clocks. Each of which bore a separate persons name.
Every once and awhile, his butler, Albert, could be seen skulking around in the background. Cleaning, cooking, extermination, you know, all the little things butlers do. Sometimes he would be holding a frying pan, and on it would be an egg. Cooking, somehow, as he walked it around the manor.
All in all, it was a fairly mundane lifestyle, for a given value of the word life anyway. Everyday was the same, sometimes more interesting people died, sometimes less interesting people died. And sometimes, he hoped that certain people would die, just so he could see what would happen during their moment of realization.
A cracked sand timer marked 'Adolf Hitler' was one of major interest to the anthropomorphic personification.
Death remembered everything, he remembered everything that had ever happened, and he remembered everything that was ever going to happen. And he often made note of this to his butler.
"IT'S STRANGE, ALBERT." Death would say. "HUMANS TALK OF REMEMBERING, YET MEMORY TO THEM IS SIMPLY A CONCEPT THAT REFERS TO EVENTS OF THE PAST. YET, I REMEMBER WHAT THERE IS, WHAT THERE WAS, AND WHAT THERE WILL BE."
And the small old man would always respond like this, with Death of Rats perched cloak-ishly on his shoulder.
"It certainly sounds like a headache, master. Cup of tea?"
And then the conversation would happen again after about a week and a half or so. Death tended to revisit thoughts just to see if somehow that would make him think of them differently.
But despite his memory of all that was, is, and will be, Death particularly remembered this day, in 1942. This was because it was odd. Especially interesting, one might say.
It was business as usual, at first. A timer appeared empty, Death picked up up, inspected it. And once he was sure that it was properly done away with, he vanished in a swirl of black robes, black shadows, and even more black, re appearing at the sight of the newly deceased.
He was in an office. It was expensively furnished, all four walls were wood. From the ceiling hung a small crystal chandelier, providing the only light, as outside night had rolled in and covered the land in darkness.
There were two bay doors that led to a balcony, both were wide open, and the curtains that framed them flapped inwards, casting shadows across the carpet.
Death looked around the rest of the room, there was a small circular table and two chairs next to the exiting door, which was also wide open. He stepped over, outside in the hall were two guards, both lying on the floor. Not dead, unconscious. Death didn't linger on them.
On the other end of the room, bookshelves stacked up against the wall, the only part not covered by bookshelves was covered by a map of central Europe. Pins stabbed through the paper in numerous locations. Death was mildly amused, it looked as if someone hadn't understood the rules of pin the tail on the donkey.
Finally he turned to the desk, large, oak, and expertly crafted. No nails or rough edges were shown on any part. The top was kept very orderly, papers stacked neatly in a single pile, pencils, pens, and rulers all sat in a cup, and there was a small stand for a pair of glasses.
Or at least, that's what it would have looked like, in a normal set of circumstances. The papers were scattered everywhere, the gasses stand knocked forward onto the floor, and rulers and pens were haphazardly laying all across the desk and floor.
A man lay slumped over the desk. His knees were on the floor, his chair barely supporting him, and threatening to slide backwards, if it wasn't for the carpet. He wore an officer's uniform, insignia on his shoulder noting that he was a high rank, though Death didn't recognize it. He didn't bother with insignia's, they all were going to die sooner or later.
None of this was the most important fact about him, that was his head. The top was gushing red. Or at least it was, at one point. It had since stopped. Blood coated everything, the papers, the desk, parts of the man, and the floor. It was a clean hole. Someone had shot him.
Death walked over to him, stepping around the scattered cutter. He stood just to his right, and stared at him. The limp form having nothing to stare back with. Then he raised his trademark scythe, and calmly tapped the center of the man's spine, and everything became surreal.
The room faded, though not completely. Everything looked like it was being seen through a screen of glass, tainted white. The man glowed slightly, a blue aura flickering around him, it shifted slightly.
The man, or at least what was left of him groaned. A blue, spiritually outline leaned back, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
He put a hand to his forehead, "Oh... my head is killing me!" He said, though not in English.
"THAT IS TO BE EXPECTED, MR. ADENAUER."
"I mean, I've had migraines before, but they were nothing compared to this. It feels like someone just waltzed in shot me in the head."
"WELL, I WOULDN'T SAY...'WALTZED," Death looked back at the door, the top hinge of which was hanging off. "ALSO, THE IRONY IS MOST AMUSING."
Adenauer regarded Death strangely. "You don't look like you're laughing…"
The skull of Death stared back at him from beneath the hood, two glowing blue dots shining from within. "I AM ON THE INSIDE, BELIEVE ME."
Adenauer didn't stop. "You look strange..."
"SOON IT WILL SEEM QUITE REGULAR TO YOU, MR. ADENAUER."
"And who let you in here?!"
"I DID."
"Oh." Adenauer didn't push the issue. He felt uncomfortable around this strange man, with a cloak for a uniform, and bones for a face. He was strictly an army man, he didn't know people.
"I'M NOT PEOPLE."
The German officer jumped in his chair, which fell over backwards, but didn't. That is to say, a blue spiritually equivalent of the chair tipped over with Adenauer in it, but the chair and officer themselves stayed upright. It's a scene one can't quite understand unless severely under the influence of alcohol, or army issue morphine.
Death loomed over Adenauer, he gulped. Then he leaned down and extended a set of bony fingers. "COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND?"
Adenauer only nodded, and grasped the bony appendage. "Er, you fingers are quite cold, mister."
"SORRY."
Adenauer nodded numbly, massaging his fingers. Death said nothing, such a reaction was common when meeting Death.
"JUST KNOW IT IS NOT AN ISSUE YOU WILL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT, IN THE FUTURE."
Death raised a bony finger, Adenauer followed its direction. Staring blankly at his slumped form, and post tornado office. He sighed a moment, no other reaction. His arms hung limply by his side and his posture slumped a little. He looked helplessly back at Death, who hadn't taken his eyes off him.
"So?"
"HM?"
The German man paused again. He wet his lips, which had become impossible dry. He nodded towards his own corpse. "I'm dead, then?"
"YES."
"Ah."
Then there was silence again. The officer staring glumly at himself. Then he sighed. "I guess… it was coming sooner or later…?"
Death nodded. "YES. I BELIEVE AS YOU HUMANS WOULD SAY, THAT IS THE SPIRIT."
By the expression Adenauer gave him, Death realized that, in fact, that was not what humans would say.
He cleared his throat, or at least, emitted the sound of clearing his throat. He didn't actually have a throat to clear. He gestured to the man, both parts of him "ARE YOU READY?" He didn't bother to specify what he meant, people always knew.
Adenauer shrugged. "Well, I had finished work for the night…"
"HM."
He shrugged again. "Got all my work done… sent my report off to the commandant."
"THAT IS GOOD."
"Built a new camp, reorganized the imprisonment of enemy officers."
"THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN IMPORTANT TASK."
"There had been numerous breakouts, you see. The Fuhrer ordered we do something about it." Adenauer kept talking, somehow hoping that if he said enough words, things would start to make sense.
"HOW FORWARD THINKING OF HIM."
Adenauer started sweating. "I was put in charge of the operation, and told what I had to do. I followed my orders to a letter." Now it was equal parts, attempting to understand, and attempting to at least reach a form of Purgatory.
"AN ADMIRABLE QUALITY."
"I set orders for construction of a new camp, and had all of officers with records of escape attempts transferred there."
"HM."
"That way we can keep an eye on all of them at once. None of them can escape. Less men to guard more men, and to guard more men at one time."
"AH."
"That way, no one will escape. Everyone will be kept under the same lock and key. There will be no flaws in the security if they all follow the same plan. THey lock everyone together, so that no one can escape."
Death was silent for a moment, Adenauer stared at him with a crazed look. Not as common in the recently dead but not unheard of. He was stiff as a board and perspiration rolled off his forehead. In other words, if no one could tell he was crazy before hand, they would be able to now.
Finally Death spoke again. "IT TAKES A MAN OF CERTAIN INTELLIGENCE TO THINK OF A PLAN LIKE THAT."
Adenauer visibly sagged with relief. As Death continued to stare at him he began to feel strange. DIfferent. He looked down and his body was flickering.
"NOW, MR. ADENAUER, I SUGGEST YOU STOP THINKING OF CAMPS, AND START THINKING ABOUT THE BRIGHT SIDE."
The man felt sick, everything began spinning around him, his form was barely solid now, mostly just wisps of vapour. "What brightside?" He wailed.
"HM? OH, IT'S JUST A FIGURE OF SPEECH. YOU'LL HAVE TO FIND OUT 'WHAT' ON YOUR OWN."
There was a final squeak of protest, and the man was gone.
The room blurred back into focus, Death stood alone. Him and the slumped corpse of the former German officer. And a rat, which already began sniffing at the man's feet. Wondering if they tasted any good.
Death glanced at the tiny little creature. Usually it was a day or two before they showed up. Perhaps the man just was never very good with cleanliness.
But it didn't especially matter. People were born and people died, and then the rats got to them. And that was near the extend of Death's understanding of humans. Aside from his fascination at the way that they worked and worked at things knowing full well that in eighty years nothing they ever did would matter again and after another eighty years no one would care who they were.
But such thoughts, to humans, were deemed as depressing.
Death gave the room one last look over, and held up the sand timer in his hand. He watched as it slowly faded away into nothing, transferring itself off somewhere else. Where? Death never knew. That was Afterlife's domain. And the two never really got along. Afterlife always had his radio on too loud, plus he refused to ever return the lawnmower.
The room faded around him as he whisked himself back to his home. He thought back briefly to the funny little man, with the small spectacles, that pinched his nose to stay on his face.
He was quite amusing. Crazy, and not very intelligent. What moron would ever dream up such a plan. If Death could either laugh, or find things funny, he would have chuckled.
Putting all the notorious escape artists into one prison, surrounded only by fences and men with guns. It was foolhardy. Everyone should have known that the rats would have gotten to them soon enough.
AN:
Now before you all complain about the fact that it was I put a missleading summary, not to mention the fact that I pulled a prologue on you, this is not the whole concept of the story. This is simply a little opening I did, using Terry Pratchett's Death character to introduce you to the moron who created the situation in which the story will happen.
I will go ahead and apologize right now, there will be no romance in this story. OR women, for that matter. At least, not as major plot points or characters. Why? No, I'm not a misogynist, this is just an officers prison camp in WWII. There are no women there. I didn't create history. This is simply an homage and reworking of The Great Escape. Which I personally recommend you all go watch. Yes, it's old, nut it's one of the best pieces of cinima ever released.
Review, Follow, and Favorite if you enjoyed it. If you don't, go rub sand... in your... dead little eyes. Or don't I don't require you enjoy my work, I'm not that egocentric. I'm not Kanye West.
I'll try to update this soon, but it will be slower than Hellhound on my Trail and Son of the King. As those two have more certain plot lines, while I have to work with an existing plot line here. And though it sounds easier, I have to do alot of reworking.
Until next time, this is Hemlock Stones signing off.
