Cold, shattered, broken, yet with nothing to lose. Nightgowns were colorless, stained, tattered, yet with nothing to add except the faded blue stripes. The room was crammed, infected, poorly-built, yet with more protrate people crowding in. Welcome to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a camp of nightmares and atrocity.

Dalia brought her knees to her shivering chest for the impossible warmth, feeling her own heart pulsating with the beats of subjugation. Her weary eyes perused the crowd spreading out on the floor of the barrack, silently calling her brother’s name over and over in her hollow body even though he was just laying beside her, asleep in chills and trepidation. Salomon, Salomon, Salomon. The name was pain to her weakened soul, reminding her of all the perils that was planned to take place at sunrise.

The frigid night was biting Dalia’s pale skin, devouring her painfully bit by bit, leaving her scarred and rawly exposed to treacherous fates.

Salomon, PEACE. Dalia, FLOWER. Such beautiful yet hopeless names for two lone children at a death camp, where Death himself roamed around and searched for easy preys.

They arrived by cargo trains a few months ago. The twins at the hideous, dark corner at the very far end of the train, huddling together, begging, praying, tears washed their pale dusty faces as they called for their mother. The children had not known of the feverish world in their mother’s exhausted, ill eyes, the two blurry figures sitting beside her, their cries barely audible in Mother’s buzzing ear holes. Their mom’s name, Zoe, LIFE. Such a strong yet meaningless name for someone resting in the dirt of some cruel transfer station.

Everything would be up to fate once the night sky hinted the slightest signal to break, just like the pieces in Dalia’s heart, the small already-broken pieces would be torn apart even more, forming sharp edges, killing, from the inside of her where none of the prisoners would watch her suffer.

One of them, either Dalia or Salomon, has to be killed for this project.

Dalia’s ethereal blond hair and her icy-blue ocean eyes, a younger version of her father, did not shield her from all of this, not with Salomon by her side. Born to a family with Jewish blood, she could not escape this cruel destiny by just her looks. NOT YET. Although they are twins connected by the same type of blood, Salomon looked nothing like her sister, and instead, a copy of their mother. Dark brown hair covered his deep, almost piercing black eyes, yellowish skin creeped across his body, leaving him assailable to any Nazis interested in a little shooting practice.

Dalia had protected her twin brother for all of her life. With her German looks, she would be a girl of all other boys’ dreams, which made shielding Salomon an easy task to tick off her checklist every single morning. However, this time, Dalia wasn’t ready for battles with her striped pajamas and bare, hardened foot soles. Her only working weapon, a cutting knife, was taken away as soon as she boarded the death train, even when she had purposely hidden it so well under her baggy pants, beside her shins. As she stared at the cumbersome rifles resting on the soldiers’ shoulders, she knew that even one blow on the head without bullets would cost her life. The painful scar on her shin formed when she tried to tackle the officer always reminded her of risks.

Of course, with her sweet tone and the gorgeous look, it would be too easy to escape. Tricking the soldiers into opening the gates for her would be within reach as soon as she changes into stolen fancy clothes.

Everything would turn periling if the mission involves Salomon.

A fly buzzed, preparing to land itself on the resting boy’s jagged cheek and to make the biggest regret of its life. With both of her hands, Dalia closed her grip on the insect, feeling its last minute panic and pulse on her skin before crushing its shell and dusting it off as if it didn’t matter at all. Of course it didn’t. After all, it was just a single grain of sand, being dropped into the hundreds and millions of those dead.

There is one single grain in that pile that Dalia would never forget. One that shouldn’t have been dropped there, the only one that mattered. That one single grain, hidden on the very bottom of this collection, one that held a woman, with power and grace. Zoe.

Dalia wiped her fluid-infected hands on her shirt, along with hundreds and millions other similar dried insect fluids, their shells crushed under the hand of this young girl, with such strengths powered by the biggest hatred of all, the hatred of being betrayed and hated.