...they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air.

I'm sorry. I shouldn't be asking such things...' She let the sentence die its own death

You're far from this. This story is just another few hundred pages of your mind.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.

...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.