"I can't stop," said the girl with green eyes.
"Guards!" screamed Eva.
The room was plushly furnished, with stacks of priceless paintings piled in the corners, and lit with a roaring fire to fend off the winter night. The girl and the woman faced off, both terrified. The girl cradled a machine gun in one hand and a grenade in the other with the pin pulled; her thumb held down the lever.
"They can't hear you," said the girl, shaking.
"Who are you?" asked Eva, clutching the back of an overstuffed leather chair.
"I am the eyes of millions," said the girl.
"Wha..."
The girl took another step forward.
"I keep dying," said the girl. "Over and over and over and then there is black and then I start over and live again...the same life, played out a little differently each time, and each time I remember the lives before...and my deaths."
"I don't understand!" Eva cried.
"I remember. I remember!" screamed the girl. She calmed herself. "There were times that I survived the gas chamber, times that I lived in America and saw things you will never get the chance to see...marvellous things, times where I lived to a hundred or more, but I always died again no matter what. And mostly I died here in this war, naked behind barbed wire, in the mud, in the cold, in this winter. And there were always the memories of the people who died here with me at the hands of people like you. At the hands of your..." The girl couldn't speak the words caught in her throat.
Eva launched herself at the girl but the girl was quick and swung the gun around, squeezing out a single round that hit Eva in the stomach. Eva slumped, groaning, and sank to her knees. The girl stood over her.
"It took me several tries to figure out how to escape from the ghetto. The first problem was that I had to wait until my body was old enough to move around on my own. And then I had to find you, to get to you. I tried killing him, but it wasn't satisfying. It didn't matter in the end, because he was merely removed, freed from feeling anything, and it all just started over again. But if I kill you, it will hurt him in a way that his own death couldn't. If I torture you, he might feel it."
"He doesn't feel anything...ever," sobbed Eva. "Not what you want him to feel."
"Everyone feels sadness," said the girl, "when something close to them is ripped away."
"Not him," said Eva, falling to the carpet. Her sweater was beginning to soak through with blood.
"Well, we'll see."
"What about you? This won't relieve your own sadness. This will do nothing."
"I haven't been sad for a long time. For many lives. There is only anger left. Maybe when that goes, and there is nothing left, maybe then I'll finally die. But probably not. As I said, I'm the eyes of millions...but I'm incapable of just watching."
The girl kneeled down next to Eva, put down the gun and stroked the hair on her head. Then she lifted her thumb from the lever.
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