The Linen String

I dreamt.

There were Nazis. The time and place are unclear, but it was wartime. The entire Jewish community was herded into a church building to be executed. I knew they were going to execute us, but many were in denial. We were instructed to sit in the pews to wait, which everyone did.

While we were waiting, one of the Jewish businesswomen got up with a smile to greet a colleague who had just been herded into the room, as if we were all waiting for a business meeting! They shook hands as if they were at a business meeting. I couldn't believe it! Total denial. I thought, "can't you see that they are going to murder us!?" But I said nothing, lest the whole room erupt in total terror.

The Nazis readied the guns at the back of the room behind the pews. It was time. We all had to stay seated now.

They shot each of us once in the head from behind. I could feel a buzzing tingle in the place inside my brain were the bullet had lodged, though I felt no pain. Just numb and fuzzy. I knew I was dying, as were all of us, yet very few actually died and passed over from this shot. The Nazis were shouting at their assistants, asking "who is still alive?" as the assistant Nazis went about checking for life among us.

We were dying, but not dead. Those among us still alive, which was most of us, joined our hands like a human chain and raised them up high together. We all got shot in the head with another bullet. Most died or were incapacitated from this second bullet to the brain. Not me.

Something was happening - the liberators had moved closer and the Nazis had to flee, leaving us dying there in the church pews. The Nazis abandoned the room.

I got up, dying and fuzzy headed. I was dying, I knew it, but I wasn't going to die sitting in a church pew. I left the building and went outside.

It was dusk, dark and pouring down rain. Pouring rain. I moved away from the buildings into a large grassy area with some trees scattered about in it and raised my arms to the sky - singing! I would die singing in the rain with my hands raised to heaven, I told myself.

The fleeing Nazis who passed by me couldn't countenance this and shot at me as they fled by. One stopped and kept shooting me, but I didn't fall down or stop what I was doing. I stumbled and lurched a little as each bullet penetrated my body, but I didn't stop, and I didn't fall down.

As the liberators got closer, he stopped shooting and ran away. Soon, I was very close to death and collapsed in the rain onto the ground. One Nazi as he was fleeing saw me laying there very very close to death, motionless and unable to move any longer, but still alive. He shot me once and then dragged my body to a place between two buildings, as if to hide my near-dead body from the liberators. Such hate was unbelievable!

After moving my near-dead body between the buildings, he fled. A few moments later a servant girl approached my body as I lay so very very close to passing over. On the ground, her left foot was in front on my face which was turned to my right side. She knelt down and tied a pale string seven times around her foot and ankle. The string was a natural pale color, like linen. It wasn't bleached white. It was a natural unbleached pale color like linen.

After binding up her left foot and ankle with the pale string, she took the remainder of the same string and layed it across my eyes, eye to eye, as she closed them both together with her right hand.

I died.

I woke up.