Gretel sat in the quiet room perusing Cissy Van Marxveldt's latest installment of the Joop ter Heul series when all of a sudden a loud crash echoed throughout the house. Forgetting about the book that now lay discarded on the couch Gretel darted toward the source of the commotion, knowing the culprit long before assessing the damage. "Oh good heavens Bruno, why are you always such a klutz? Mother and father will be livid if they see all this mess." All about her lay shattered plates and cracked teacups in a meadow of debris and all her brother could do was fix her with a blank stare.

"Well go and get Maria then." She ordered. The boy raced upstairs in search of the maid leaving a trail of dust as he bounced up the steps. She left the scattered shards on the floor, seeing as it was Bruno's mess and nothing to do with her and entered the kitchen. A cake of red velvet sat teasingly on the table and a deep grumble rippled through her stomach she knew she was being goaded into eating a slice.

"Gretel, what are you doing?" Her mother enetered the kitchen scarcely making a sound, how does she do that? Gretel often found herself wondering, the answer so far evading her. "That cake is for later, when Leiutenant Kotler and Dr. Goebbels come around to meet with your father. We're all sitting down for a rather important dinner tonight and I expect you and your brother to be on your best behaviour." Elsa warned sternly. The thought of having to sit down at some tedious dinner made Gretel's hunger diminish and felt boredom stirring in its place at the mere thought of it. Quite frankly I'd rather be in the work camp, Gretel thought but quickly banished it, thinking about Elise and that other girl and the horrors they and their fellow inamtes would have to endure. She'd not seen much of the girl with the pink star, and she found herself wishing that would change, more than a perfectly normal Aryan girl like her ought to.

"Of course mother." Gretel chirped obediently, "Although it's Bruno you should really be having this conversation with, after all, he has just shortened your china set be at least three cups and two plates. " She imparted the last part with a sickly sweet smile as her mother stormed over to the scene of the calamity. All the while dreading the forthcoming dinner and how she'd much rather spending her time elsewhere, with someone else entirely.

There was no room to toss and turn on the top bunk in her dreary, bleak barracks. She was huddled between Veronika and another woman, Mildred, whose blood had seeped from a deep gash in her head where the barber had hacked at her hair a little too briskly and onto Elise's shirt. Auschwitz really is hell on earth, Elise found herself thinking. From the gaps in the broken slats in the roof she could see that dawn was near breaking as an amber huw had diluted the starless black sea above them. But Elise knew that with a new dawn came a new torrent of dread for each and every inmate.

"Wstańcie, wstańcie, ohydni Żydzi, jest praca do zrobienia!" It was the woman who hit her and Veronika with clubs on their first day. She screamed at the top of her lungs, "You!" She pointed, striding over to Elise as she dragged her from the top of the bunk, her body hitting the floor with a bone cracking thud, through squinted eyes and the pain of her throbbing arm she looked up, only to be met with the wrong end of a loaded pistol, "You can forget about seeing that girl again." The woman grinned wickedly, cocked her gun and shot.

"No!" Elise jerked awake, staring into the dark of the cavernous basement, panting and shaking and trying to catch her breath as her eyes adjusted to pitch black.

She heard shuffling behind her, faint at first then louder and more urgent, she felt cracked calloused hands on the back of her shoulders. Veronika.

"Is everything okay?" Veronika whispered

"I'm sorry." Elise murmered as she wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her striped shirt. The dream had come to her again, always the same dream, always the same ending, each time getting more and more vivid, more and more iminent.

A sharp creak coming from the staircase above them made the girls gasp and scurry back to the the potato sacks they were permitted to use as beds and no sooner did Elise's head touch the few feeble strands of straw she had attempted to fashion into a pillow did Leiutenant Kotler march into view, eyes cold and hard as the medals on his uniform. He was carrying a flickering lantern that softly swung as he descended into the dank, mouldy basement. "Get here you filthy little whores!" The lantern cast a glow over the right side of his face setting his sneer alight. The girls stumbled over to him careful to dodge the array of dropped nails and splintered bits of wood until finally they were at his feet like dogs on their haunches.

"Up!" He shouted again, his breath now a cloud of mist in the air, "You're to serve in the kitchen, you'll scrub the dishes until they're clean, you'll polish the cutlery until they're gleaming. If not, this dinner won't be the only thing we'll put in the oven."

The girls were stone still. Terrified to even blink.

Elise put her cracked fingers into the sink and winced when they began to sting. The girl could seldom remember when last she'd skimmed her hands along clean water or reveled in the lather of warm soap along her dry, dirtied skin. "I'm fond of you Elise, but I'd literally murder you for a slice of that cake." Veronkia was tasked with drying the crockery however the Red Velvet cake, now quarantined in an intricately decorated glass dome sat on the kitchen table had, for the merest of seconds, diverted her attentions.

"Right back back at you." Elise winked, flinging a scoopful of bubbles at Veronika. In truth neither girl could remember the last decent meal they had eaten. Memories of her mother's famed beef stew entered Elise's mind and it was all she could do not to salivate as she remembered how the aroma would fill the whole house and set she and her little sister to racing to the table when she would make it every Thursday.

Without warning a tear plopped into the water.

"Elise, what's wrong?" Veronika was at her side in an instant, the fork and towel quickly forgotten.

"I'm never going to see them again." She choked, "They held me down and made me watch as they sent my mother to the gas chambers, and Mila..." Elise thought for a certainty that her docile, timid sister would never have survived for more than a week without her or their mother, the girl was a shy, jittery little girl at the best of times, but this...place would shatter the soul of even the most hardened of men. Her little sister stood no chance.

"She might have survived." Veronika said, having no right, Elise thought, to sound as hopeful as she did, "Anything's possible, you know."

"Except the impossible." Elise Grumbled miserably.