The Crushing

“Vermin!” He hissed. The man in front of him stared back in confrontation, steely eyes glaring daggers, not backing down. “Low-life. Filth. Scum!” A string of words that has since lost significance compared to the blind rage he felt that moment poured forth from his mouth while the man being spoken to took it all in silence.

But what warrants this silence? Do the words spoken possess a truth which marauds at the back of the mind, lingering perhaps out of magnetism, belongingness— like a swarm of flies attracted to spoiled meat?

The man in front of him cannot deny the fact that he is a Jew. Blood of the Chosen People runs through his veins, the same blood now being persecuted for the sole fault of existing. The Jews are a menace to the world, so says the Fuhrer, and the final solution to this is total annihilation.

He clenched his fists. In front of him was an obstacle to be overcome. An entity which to his mind is stripped off of any ounce of humanity, and therefore deserving to be stomped upon by the soles of his feet. “Vermin!” He repeated and began a raging assault with his fist. “I shall crush you!” He said over and over while delivering his blows, stopping only when the face in front of him was waxing mutilated.

He withdrew his fist. On his fingers are shards of glass. The face in front of him— his reflection, deformed and divided into several tiny pieces, stared back. “You..” No word could materialize the haunting in his soul. Defeated, he fell to his knees.

The fragments of the shattered mirror continue to show his reflection as if mocking him and calling him by name: “Reinhard Heydrich,” the pieces say, and sneering, it added: “a Jew.”