When they get away

 

I hate when on gets away.

All the trouble we go through just to catch a Jew.

But they’re like cockroaches.

You let one go they breed and you have to start all over again

This time we do everything right.

We kick in the front door and charge in, shooting at every nook and cranny we suspect might hide a body.

But they’re tricky little beasts.

They need so little room I wonder how they can breathe.

They aren’t breathing generally when we’re done.

Except in this case we find the back door open and I know instinctively one or more of them got away.

I shoot at the wall just to shoot and blink twice when I see a trickle of blood oozing out the floor board.

As I said, they’re tricky

Nicholas asks if we should hunt them down. But I look out at the tangle of ghetto yards and know that it could be a trap.

Fear tinkles inside me and I feel vaguely ashamed.

How can a race as superior as ours fear afraid of rats like them?

Do real men fear insects?

Can real men die?

Nicholas insists. So we step out into the dim light.

I see the flash before I hear the shot.

The pain comes next, then the warm trickles of blood from my chest.

Nicholas empties his weapon, bullets ripping up the shrubbery where the cockroaches hide.

But their dying means less to me than my own.

How can a cockroach kill a man like me.

“You’ll be all right,” Nicholas assures me over and over as I fade.

I know he is lying, bust as I know the fuhler liked.

We are not supermen after all.

Maybe we’re not even men.