Hell in Himmel
A short story by Catherine Ferri
Written in the style of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief
Everyone dies at some point
It is the circle of life
That's what Lieutenant Jackson Sherman told himself
Or at least, that's what he told me.
* * * A SMALL OBSERVATION * * *
He was correct.
It's true. Everyone dies at some point. I'd be out of a job if they didn't. I do try to put on a good face about it. Humans seem to believe I'm this cruel, vengeful person with a scythe and hooded face. I do like that image, but please, believe me. I can be friendly. Merciful. Cheerful. Fair. But don't ask me to be kind. Kind is not something I believe is appropriate in my line of work.
* * * A CONSEQUENCE TO THE * * *
AFOREMENTIONED OBSERVATION
It is due to the correctness of the aforementioned statement
that I am haunted by humans
I could go into detail. Oh, I could go on and on. There is a reason I don't stay behind and linger for the broken shriek of discovery. When your time comes, I will take your soul in my arms and move onto the next task. It's better that way. I'm simply too busy to wait around, and in 1945, I was stretched very thin indeed. I had the Füherer keeping me rather busy, you see, with all this "death camp" nonsense, and be reminded, there was a war waging in seemingly all corners of this god-forsaken Earth. But that is for another time. I have a story to tell you. A short one, a quick flash of fire on a scarlet history. It is a rather simple one, about, among some other things:
A second lieutenant, barely 22
A bomb named Fortis
A rather shoddy map
A sleepy little street called Heaven
And a boiling sky
Jack Sherman saw the rain burn that night.
It was raining. Of course, it was raining. Their first real mission after weeks of being grounded or sent on search and recover flights and the visibility was shit. Jack couldn't tell what was louder. The newly repaired right wing engine that was roaring at an inexplicably loud volume or the blasted rain pounding a constant torrent of bullet-like drops against the patched up sides of The Lucille Ball, the only name that the 7-man crew of the battle-worn B-24 could agree on. It was a stupid name, really. Their plane was ugly, bullet strafed and looked like its nose slammed into the side of a mountain. Some seasoned pilots called the B-24 a Flying Coffin, a much more appropriate sentiment, in Jack's opinion. His foot bounced up and down so rapidly that the navigator, a surly, aggressive flight officer by the name of Daniel O'Brien, whose red hair acutely reflected his spitfire temper, had resorted to flinging things at him.
* * * AN COMEDIC OBSERVATION * * *
For such a small space as was the hull of that plane,
First Lieutenant O'Brien missed his required target
at an astonishingly high frequency
As it did before any bombing run, every time the massively heavy plane jolted, which, after an unfortunate encounter with a squad of the Third Reich's Me 109's only two months ago, was beginning to happen every few minutes, Jack's body gave an involuntary twitch of nerves and a chill shot down his spin. As the bombardier, he would be directly responsible for lining up and releasing the bombs when they had approached their designated target. Tonight, they were starting the assault on Munich. I suppose I should mention that because of this, I would be spending rather a lot of time in South Germany for the next two weeks. There is, after all, a price to war. Jack closed his eyes and tried to tune out the swearing that would have made O'Brien's father proud. O'Brien was cursing the map, for some reason. A ball of paper bounced off of Jack's head. O'Brien had finally aimed right.
"It's time."
* * * A SOBERING FACT * * *
The crew of The Lucille Ball was about
to raise Hell in Heaven.
Beneath a thick layer of clouds, the little town of Molching slumbered, oblivious to the skeleton planes soaring above them. Just outside of Munich, it was not that far off their target. In the poorest part of town, a street called Himmel slept on. The members of this street included a book thief, who was a rather interesting girl and a story I like to tell, a boy with lemon hair, a woman cloaked in thunder and her husband, and a cruel Hitler Youth squad leader by the name of Franz, among many other innocent souls. Little did they know that I would soon be meeting them.
* * * A TRANSLATION * * *
Himmel=Heaven
A picture: You've done all you can do. Your bombsight measures are accurate. You've calculated your degree of accuracy, the appropriate speed, accounted for the flying conditions. You've set the bomb, scrawled its name on the side, Fortis. Your right arm is searing, trying to keep the blasted flying coffin of a plane in the air, your left arm shaking as you speed towards your target. There is nothing left to do but release the bomb. Your young face is cold, calculating. The bomb bay doors screech open; the belly of the plane is exposed. If you glanced to your right, you'd see the rigid face of the pilot, glace left and you'd see the bombardier in the Yellow Jacket, jaw clenched, eyes straight ahead. No one speaks. No one speaks of the unthinkable damage they do. They remember the mere boys of 18, too young to even shave, who will never kiss the girl they left at home, the children who will grow up without fathers, their friends among the dead, the maimed, the lost, the imprisoned, and they keep going. Then, the order comes.
"Go."
* * * A SADDENING OCCURENCE * * *
The bomb, Fortis, named Luck in Latin,
was off its mark. The squad of Flying Coffins
sent all but one unlucky child to their deaths.
Fortis plummets towards the Earth, accompanied by hundreds of its companions. A whistle, a deafening boom, the buildings explode and the flock of skeleton planes scream forward. The symphony of war plays once more. The flames are so bright that the clouds are red. Ash rains down and the drops of rain, still falling in a torrential downpour, are illuminated scarlet. The sky is bleeding.
Jack never looks back. I guess that's something we have in common. Even when he was told they had obliterated Molching, not Munich, he tried not to look back. But that day haunted Jack for the rest of his days, until I collected his soul three weeks later, along with Daniel O'Brien and the rest of the crew of wingless, obliterated The Lucille Ball from the German mountains, shot down at last by the Third Reich. I suppose that's the cost of war and Hitler took his payment. I've debated introducing him to the souls I collected from Himmel Street the night he saw the sky burn, but I suppose he'll have to wait. Maybe one day he'll meet the book thief, the girl whose family he helped to destroy. But until then, let him be haunted by the memory.
Everyone is haunted by something