Moritz walked slowly down the long hallway. Each step he took echoed loudly, filling up the room. Every few steps, the wood floor planks would squeak under his weight. He could hear each breath he took, as if he was breathing into his own ears. Other then these factors, the hallway was absolutely silent. There was no sign of any other living thing or force.
All of a sudden, he came to the end of the hall. It was a light blue wall that was empty except for an antique looking mirror that resembled the one he used to admire himself in at his grandparent's house. He frowned, remembering how long it had been since he'd last seen them.
At first, there was no reflection in the mirror, even though he stood directly in front of it. Slowly, an image began to appear. For a moment, his heart stopped and his palms began to drip with sweat. What was this mirror about to reveal to him? His body began to shake uncontrollably. Before the image could fully appear, he snapped his eyes shut. Get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here, he pleaded over and over again in his head. His slowly opened his eyes. His heart leapt from his chest and he jumped back at least two feet. He was startled by his own reflection.
He was still in the same hallway, only now he was face to face with his own reflection. He heaved an enormous sigh of relief and gave a small, nervous laugh. He reached out his hand and touched the mirror. He was startled to find that the glass of the mirror wasn't glass at all, but water. He dipped his fingers into the cool water, distorting his reflection. A small smile crept over his face as he watched his reflection swirl into fantastic colors. He retracted his hand and placed it back neatly at his side, watching his reflection return to normal.
A few minutes passed where he just stood there, steadily breathing. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out steadily through his mouth. The wind rippled the water, distorting his reflected face. However, instead of it turning back to normal, it now reflected a young man of about age 20. He wore a suit jacket, with a small pin with the crest of the House of Habsburg on the right lapel. The man stared back at Moritz, straight faced. The reflection then distorted again, revealing another young man of about the same age as the other. However, Moritz had a strange feeling this second image was an older version of himself.
His heart clenched and his lips began to tremble as he observed his older self. He had dark circles underneath both of his eyes, as if he hadn't slept in days. His hair was just as messy and unkempt as it was now, only more so it seemed. His cheeks were slightly sunken in. From what Moritz could tell, his clothes were disheveled and wrinkled. Tears began to fill the young Moritz's eyes as he realized what this man was. A failure. A man could hardly amount to anything without finishing his schooling. Something Moritz would never do, now.
Moritz let out a sob before jerking himself away from the mirror. He sprinted back towards where he came from, but the hall had turned pitch black and he could hardly see where he was going. He stopped, panting, and bent forward, resting his hands on his knees. He balled his hands into fists and began to hit his knees with them. What horrible thing had he done to deserve such a fate?
He slowly crumpled to the floor, laying his back against what he assumed was still the wooden floor. As he looked up, the blackness turned into a brilliant night sky. He had never in his life seen stars shine so brightly before. He closed his eyes. "Let me just stay here forever," he pleaded, desperately out loud. He clenched his eye lids tight, daring the night sky to be gone. "3, 2, 1." He could have sworn he heard the stars whispering to him.
He opened his eyes just a slit, but closed them almost instantly. The black, starlit sky had turned into a blinding white abyss. His heart sank deep within his chest. "Come back," he whispered. "3, 2, 1."
He opened his eyes fully, the blinding white abyss still there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes against the sun. "Damn it!" He whined. He looked around himself, taking in the vast open space he now found himself in. He was sitting on the only grassy patch, as far as he could tell, which was surrounded by nearly white sand. The blinding light gave way to a clear, blue sky. The area directly around him suddenly darkened with shade. He looked up to find he was sitting under an enormous oak tree. He stared, wide eyed, up the trunk of the tree, where it seemed to go on for eternity. The longer he stared at it, the more it seemed to grow. "How?" He wandered aloud to himself, his voice echoing in his ears.
When he finally was able to break his gaze away from the tree, he found that the white sand had gave way to a street, lined by run down buildings. He slowly stood up, not recognizing where he was. He figured he must have been somewhere close to his home, as he heard a man yelling in German off in the distance. He brushed off his school shorts, pulled up his nuisance socks that were always falling down, and slowly made his way away from the tree, which still stood there. His feet began to move in the direction in which the voice was coming from.
"Children in this line, adults in the other line! How many goddamn times to I have to explain that, you insolent fools?" The voice boomed. As Moritz got closer he could hear many, many voices.
A few screams and cries broke out into the air, making him jump.
"Move faster! Move faster!" Another booming voice bellowed. "We don't have all day! And there's at least 200 more of you we have to go collect!"
Moritz rounded a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. There were many men in uniforms, which he had never seen the likes of before, herding what looked like hundreds of people into futuristic vehicles. The cabin of the vehicles were massive, with wooden planks lining the open back of it. There were already a good amount of people crowded into the open area of the truck, but they kept on pushing more and more people onto them.
Moritz watched in disbelief as young children were taken, crying, from their mothers and fathers and herded onto their own futuristic truck. What was going on, he wondered.
He closed his eyes, wanting to escape, but when he finally got the courage to open them back up, he nearly vomited right there on the spot.
He was standing in a very large dirt pen. It reminded him of the pens they used at the zoo for the elephants. There were men everywhere, some in the same bizarre uniforms he saw earlier and some in very worn and dirty striped pants and shirts. His stomach churned as he saw the skeleton like men wearing the striped outfits get whipped, one by one, by ferocious looking uniformed men. "Keep the line going!" The uniformed men's voices yelled brutally at the slow moving lines.
"Get me the hell out of here!" Moritz pleaded to himself, while closing his eyes shut again. He slowly opened his eyes and saw the most horrific scene yet.
The stench was gut wrenching. He quickly covered his nose and mouth with his hand before he noticed the heap of dead bodies lying naked in a shallow ditch before him. He recognized the skeleton looking men right away. He closed his eyes and swayed on his feet, trying to regain his composure before he fainted from the sight.
He tried to move his legs, to run far away from the sight before him, but he was rooted to the stop in absolute terror. What kind of place was this? How could a place like this even exist? He knew people could be cruel, he lived it everyday at school, but he had no idea people could be this cruel.
Suddenly, a different looking futuristic truck drove up in front of him, with another heaping pile of the dead bodies. It stopped, it the back facing the already existing pile, and slowly dumped the new ones to join with the other bodies.
His stomach churned, while his whole body began to violently shake. He closed his eyes tight, pleading desperately to be taken away again.
Finally, to his great relief, when he opened his eyes he found himself sitting on his own bed in his own house. His pajamas clung to his now sweaty body. Despite the room being warm, he shivered from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The sight of the dead bodies was now etched in his brain. He slowly got out of bed, breathing a heavy sigh of relief to be in the comfort of his bedroom.
He was stopped suddenly when his father appeared in the doorway.
"Failed…" his billowing voice echoed in the room. "Failed!"
"N-n-n-no!" Moritz stammered.
His father took a giant step toward him. "Failed! Failed!" He threw his arms up. "You'll never be anything now. A man never accomplishes anything if he fails in school. Where did I go wrong? What did I do to deserve such a stupid child? You will never make something of yourself now. How could you? Failed. You'll never be anything!"
Tears began to stream down Moritz's face. His father was echoing the same conversation he'd had with him earlier that day. Hadn't he said enough?
"You are worthless to me. You are nothing to me." His father raised his hand, but before he could strike, Moritz found himself heaving heavily in his bed. A light sheet lay over him.
He bolted upright out of bed, his heart racing, and squinted his eyes against the dark room. A dream. It had all just been an ongoing nightmare.
He buried his head in his hands, sobbing, wishing he could go back and lay amongst the stars. Those stars, that seemed to whisper his name longingly. With a start, he realized there actually was a way. He wiped the tears from his face and made the rash decision. It was the only way to save himself from, well, himself and the nightmarish future that seemed to stretch out before him. He slowly rolled himself off of his bed.
"I'll live amongst the angels. I'll tell them," he said softly as he changed out of his pajamas and headed out of his bedroom, in search of what would take him to the angels. "Yes, I'm ready."