The Lucky One
A Prize Winning Short Story
by
Ray Kingfisher
Copyright © 2012 Ray Kingfisher.
The right of Ray Kingfisher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved.
No part of this may be reproduced, stored, transmitted, circulated or copied in any form or by any means without the consent of the author or an implied licence to do so.
This is a work of fiction. Any references or resemblances to real people, events or locations are used fictitiously. Other people, events or locations referred to are products of the imagination of the author and are entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
This story was first published in Writers’ Forum magazine in 2012, since when it has been reworked and hopefully improved.
The author would like to thank the staff at this publication for their excellent advice and guidance.
About the Author
Ray Kingfisher writes fiction in a variety of genres under different pen-names.
To find out more about him please see www.raykingfisher.com, where you can read more about him and the stories behind his stories.
The Lucky One
In the cold, dark cabin, the young woman shrinks her frame and turns her face away from the darkest of visions. Dirt floor. Bare walls. Living ghosts.
But she cannot ignore expressionless faces that have mislaid their owners, eyes that are past pleading, cheeks like dirty craters.
The mass of shaven heads don’t jostle – there’s no point. The SS guard barks a tune – “Clothes. Shoes. Glasses. Off!” – and they danse macabre.
Subhuman silhouettes shuffle past her, cowering, their eyes facing the blood-spattered dirt but their minds long devoid of meaningful thought.
“Time for shower!”
The butt of a rifle on her breast bone stops her joining them.
“Not for you. I’m told you’re The Lucky One.”
She stands silently, ignoring the stench of mildew, disease and human waste, as the Untermenschen drop their fetid rags, indifferent to their cadaverous nakedness, and leave the dim cabin.
“You would prefer to go with them?” the guard asks her.
She ignores the jet of spittle that hits her as he cackles. She doesn’t answer.
“Of course not,” he says. “Because you are The Lucky One, is that not what they say?” He turns to kick the legs of the last Untermensch to leave, who drops his wreck of a body to the floor then crawls out of the room. He hooks his rifle on the door edge and swings it shut, its clang echoing in the dank emptiness.
He steps towards her, places the butt of his rifle on her shoulder and nudges.
“So tell me, why are you different, so special? What is it you do?”
She keeps her head low, swings it left, right, left. Then she feels her shoulder being shaken, again and again.
“Tell me! Why are you called The Lucky One?”
She feels faint, losing consciousness in spite of the guard’s unrelenting interrogation.
“Excuse me, madam?”
Even in waking Susannah Zuckerman couldn’t escape the pain of the rifle nudging her shoulder – except that now it was being used more gently, not hurting quite so much.
“Could you put on your seatbelt please, madam,” the voice said. “We’re about to land.”
In that no-man’s land between sleeping and waking, Susannah looked up and gasped as she saw someone in a perfectly pressed field-grey uniform bearing down on her, giving her orders. After a shocked blink she looked again and sank back slightly, seeing now that she’d made a mistake; the figure standing over her was a flight attendant dressed in light blue garb. She almost cried out, “Where am I?” but her natural reserve held judgement just long enough for her to glimpse the polite smile, and she let out a long sigh, then another.
“Oh, yes,” she replied breathlessly. “I’m sorry.” Then she obeyed the order — no, she complied with the request.
It was another moment before she could answer her own unspoken question: where was she?
“Hamburg,” she muttered, taking off her reading glasses and putting on those damned bifocals. The magazine must have fallen off her lap and onto the floor as she’d drifted into a deep sleep. She left it there – it would be too much strain on her poor old back to lean down.
The loudspeaker announcement confirmed the destination, but its formal tone also drew her mind back to her children’s reactions only a week before, when she’d first told them about her plan for one final holiday.
“Hamburg?” Judy had said. “But I don’t understand. Why?”
Before she could answer, David had waded in; as usual, he was the more forceful. “Mom,” he said, “you don’t need to do this. If you need somewhere peaceful to spend your—”
“My final days?”
“Please, Mom. If you need some time someplace else, I can drive you there. Somewhere more peaceful. How ’bout that?”
“And if I say no, you ask me again and again until I agree?”
“But you shouldn’t fly, not with…”
“Not with cancer?”
David groaned and shook his head.
“You shouldn’t joke about it, Mom,” Judy said.
“Who’s joking? If I said, I’m not flying with cancer – I’m flying with United Airlines. Now that’s a joke.”
David drew rigid fingers through his thinning hair. “Mom, please don’t say things like that.”
“So tell me, if I can’t joke now, when can I?”
“And stop trying to change the subject. You’re not making sense. Why do you want to go to Hamburg?”
“And who are you going with?” Judy added.
“Nobody. And that’s out of choice. I need to go on my own.”
“No, Mom. I’ll come with you, David too. I can get time off work and I’m sure David can leave his business at arm’s length for a while.”
David hesitated before nodding. “Sure, of course. But you have to tell us why. Why do you want to go there?”
Susannah held up the palm of her hand. “I know you mean well, but your father wouldn’t have been interrogated by his own children and neither will I.” She sliced the air with the edge of her hand. “I am going, I’m going on my own, and that’s an end to it.”
Judy turned to David. “Hamburg? Isn’t that near…?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me; you’re the geography major. I know it’s in Germany but—” And then his face dropped. “Oh, no. Please God, no.”
“I don’t expect you to understand my reasons,” Susannah said. “I do expect you to respect my wishes.”
David’s knees cracked as he knelt down next to her. “Please, Mother. You should be spending time with your family. You haven’t got long, six months if you’re lucky.”
“But you forget, David. I am lucky, I always have been.”
Judy breathed heavily, stifling tears. “And don’t you remember why? You’ve been called The Lucky One ever since you escaped from that goddam place. Why do you…? I mean… there must be something wrong with you to even… to want to go within a thousand miles of that hell hole.” She shook her head and turned away. “David, tell her.”
David opened his mouth, but only air came out.
“Judy. David. Listen. A mother could not have wished for better children than you two. You‘re only trying to look after me, you’re so good to me when we all know I’m n
o longer of any use.’ A pained expression drew itself on her face. “But please. I must do this. I am going to do this, with or without your blessing.”
“But why?” Judy said, now having to wipe away a stray tear. “If you could just tell us, we might understand.”
Susannah simply held onto her stern expression, and for a few seconds an uneasy silence filled the room.
David went to speak, but stalled, then tried again. “Mom. If that’s what you really want, then I’m sure we could work something out.” He glanced at his sister. “But don’t you think Judy has a point? Why the fascination with that place? It’s morbid.”
“You expect me to explain it? The whole thing? Here? Now?” She started to shake her head in dismay, then stopped and leaned forward towards him. “No, wait. I can try. Do you remember that stupid football game you and your father used to talk so much about? The one he took you to for your sixteenth birthday?”
David gave a thoughtful smile. “The Super Bowl.”
“Yes. That stupid football game. And I used to say I never understood why it was such a big deal, didn’t I?”
“Sure.”
“And you always frowned to me, put on your grown-up-man voice, and said, ‘Mom, you just had to be there.’” Susannah’s eyebrows, faint and wispy, nudged themselves upwards for a second, and she settled back into her chair.
David looked to Judy then back to his mother. “You promise you’ll ring us every day?”
“I promise. You can have it in writing if you want.”
They both turned to Judy.
Judy examined her fingernails for a few moments, then nodded. “Okay. If you really, really have to, I guess.”
“I do,” Susannah replied. “I need to know certain things, and I… I must see what death looks like before I meet it.”
David shrugged then held his mother’s hand. “I don’t understand what that