She stood, waiting along with the other children, a jagged, uneven line occasionally broken by a fallen toddler or a filthy baby separated who simply could not go on without a parent to care for it. The younger ones still alive caked with their own vomit, eyes so wide and terrified, still unable to grasp what was going on, still expecting to wake up from this nightmare in their mother’s arms. But she understood. She knew she was going to the furnaces, to the ovens, to die. She knew how she smelled, that her blonde locks had been taken from her head, and that her beautiful heart shaped face had been reduced to nothing but baggy skin over pointed bones. But despite her failing body she held her head high as children perished around her, not allowing herself to be snapped by these evil men.
The trains were here to take her and the rest away, away to see their parents they said, home. She knew it was a lie, that everything anyone had ever told her was a lie, but she got on, she had come to terms with death already and she was not going to allow herself to cry, not even for the bodies of her friends that she would be leaving behind her. Sitting in the dark, the pitch black abyss smelling of rotting bodies, pressed against bawling toddlers was her funeral procession. She herself was silent and wanted to hear silence, wanted to be silence. She looked forward to her death, ready to join her mother and father and brother and friends. She was ready to get out of these prisons of suffering and just sleep in peace.
She wanted to jump, to end it as soon as possible and to be done. She looked for an opening but there were no walls or holes for her to fall through. So she just waited, something she’d been doing her whole life. Waiting to grow up, waiting to get married, and waiting to be in on the late night conversations between her parents and to be trusted with her parent’s secrets. Now she knew what they said in the night while she was in bed, but wished she was still guessed at what it could be, wished she did not know that she would not grow old. She thought about hell, and all that came to her was her current situation, no she did not dread what was to come.
The train stopped with a loud screech and the children tumbled and rolled onto each other, some cracking their skulls or snapping their bones. Those few who could still stand after all of the pain were kicked out again and pushed into mobs of other people where they lost each other and everything familiar once again. The girl moved along in a haze, just following the flow of the people in front while letting herself be pushed by those behind. She knew where she was going and soon found herself in the very chamber where she knew she’d end up. Many screamed, cried, and prayed, but not her. She simply sat on the bottom of the box and wished it to be over. As the door closed on her and she looked out for the last time, she smiled. She could almost see her papa running to comfort her and her mom running her fingers through her regrown long hair, and then she was gone.