The Old World Order (Short Story)

[aqualord123]

The Old World Order

Chapter I
Pastor Elias and his son, Karl, had long been dreaming of what they were planning to do on the night of October the Fourth. The idea had passed into the two minds as soon as the Nazification of the churches had begun in earnest in 1934. Now it was March of 1936 and Adolf Hitler had just recently violated the Treaty of Versailles again by reoccupying the German Rhineland militarily. The night before,October the Third, they had received news that they would be having certain visitors for their sermon on the Fifth and began to make preparations.
Under a Large, former Lutheran church in Dusseldorf that had recently become a part of the Reich Church, the two men gathered for their supper of Lamb chops and stew in the church's wine cellar. Like the expressions of the two men, the cellar's walls were an enigmatic pattern of masonry. A dim candlelight cast long shadows on the once bright faces of the two men.
While they ate their supper, neither had spoken. The occasional faint tap of a wooden spoon against a bowl could be heard inside. Their muddled and sporadic conversation soon picked up once the bowls had been scoured clean.
“So,the ground arsenic is already mixed into the bottle beneath the alter?”, began Pastor Elias calmly and in confirmation of what they had already both known.
“Indeed”, began Karl apathetically and almost sorrowfully. His silhouette almost seemed like a blue apparition in the weak light.
“I switched the bottles after the sermon earlier tonight.”
“Excellent,my son” said Elias as he tacitly ended the weak conversation which had hardly begun.
Tomorrow,they would serve the arsenic wine -- the arsenic which had been obtained in a long and careful process through a Jewish pharmacist --at communion to the Gauleiter and all the Nazi ministers of Dusseldorf, including the head of the Reich Church. After this had been committed, the father and son would then escape in their Volkswagen located outside of the church to some extended family members in Rotterdam where they would hide in obscurity. The plan seemed flawless!

Chapter II
The Cellar was quite damp from the earl autumn rains that had bade farewell to the Summer. Outside of the cellar, after exiting the door, stairs led up to a busy Dusseldorf street which roared with the engines of Volkswagens, The purr of Porsches, and the wistful hum of an occasional Mercedes. It was through these streets that the two men made their way home to a flat not far away on the night of October the fourth. Walking drowsily, Karl carried some possessions in a burlap sack home that the two men wanted to take with them in their escape. With the heavy burden on his back, Karl fell three separate times on his way home. Quietly and nearly half asleep already, they went to their beds and fell asleep with the scent of diesel and tobacco caressing their nostrils and the sound of automobiles lulling them in the city that never seemed to sleep.

Chapter III
Karl felt a very strange and eerie silence. He opened his eyes quickly and searched around, yet everything still seemed dark! He could smell that something had been burning, but what? He began to stir and felt that he had been gagged and strapped down into some sort of vertical position. His stirring noises seemed to echo on the floor and attract-the attention of someone whose loud footsteps. Closer and closer they came, until Karl began to scream.
And then Karl awoke. It was all just a nightmare, or perhaps a premonition.The burning was in fact just his father cooking bratwursts on the stove. The smell soon overtook Karl and he rose out of bed. Sunlight streamed in through the window and shined off the plates laid down upon the wooden table in the kitchen. Colombian coffee was served by the pastor to the both of them, and they drank the rich substance earnestly.
Karl was very happy and eager that he would soon end his persecution by his Reich Church Ministers and that we would be able to grow closer to his father and his family in Holland.
After finishing his meal of Bratwursts and Coffee, Karl was led by Pastor Elias along the busy Dusseldorf street. The asphalt was recently paved and was so freshly tarred that it excited the appetite and still possessed a certain rubbery smell. Leaves whisked and brewed in clusters around the street as Autumns first cool winds began to stir.Karl, though happy, was alarmed by the concerned look on his father's face as he continually scanned the city.
Just then, a maelstrom brewed and sent all the leaves on the street flying upwardly as if directed by the wrath of an angry beast. The Earth almost seemed to rumble uniformly. Then, out of a side street, a contingent of SS soldiers marched quickly. There were about five of them, with a Reich Church Minister whom Karl recognized following from behind. As all this was happening, Pastor Elias disappeared, as if swallowed by the rumbling earth.
“You there! STOP!!!”, Roared the captain of the squad.
“That is him alright”, confirmed the Reich Church Minister calmly as he stared at Karl with a look of contempt. Karl stared back and saw everything, or rather nothing, into those hollow eyes. He felt immediately as if all the buildings in the city were just a facade --that nothing was inside. He had realized that his father had betrayed him, that he had been led all this time until enough evidence had been procured to confirm his guilt.
His father had had no mercy for his son. All this time he had been supporting the Reich Church, had believed that it represented the teachings of Jesus, of the Apostolic Church, and of Luther.
Two SS men pushed Karl's back into a street lamp violently while they breathed heavily. The Reich Church Minister made no effort to hide his malicious smile as this was done Karl stared into the hollow eyes of the Captain and looked back into his own. He saw humanity's hollow facade of being humane and began to weep.
The Captain drew his Luger, and shots rang off in the hollow Dusseldorf streets three times.

The End


Hello everybody and thank you for reading. This piece is more literary than anything else because I did this as a school assignment and did not have the time to research everything historically. I had some trouble with the formatting on this site so I had to make the font rather large. Punctuation and spaces seems to have been translated differently when I pasted this so I apologize for those sorts of problems which I will try to resolve when I find the time I thought that maybe this would be worth sharing!

Thank you for reading!