Rebirth

I.

It was two weeks after Mike had shot his pistol at the ceiling. Two weeks that head lead to bruises and cuts and Billie's wrist being wrapped in gauze. Two weeks where not much out of the ordinary happened. Billie was in the room Mike called his, pretending to a read a book Mike had thrown at him when he heard the scream. He knew he couldn't leave his room and he didn't, but he pressed his ear to the door, hurrying back to the desk when the footsteps sounded.

The door opened and Billie turned to see Mike holding a woman by her hair, her dark hair that matched her olive skin so perfectly. "You, follow me. Now." Billie bit the inside of his cheek as he followed Mike down the stairs. He knew that whatever happened wasn't going to be good, for him or for the woman with the olive skin. It was a day that only last a few minutes when they were in the backyard.

Mike threw the woman to the ground. "She's a French Catholic," Billie was told. He barely heard, staring horrified at the sobbing woman. One hand held her stomach, the other clutched a cross around her neck. Mike pointed his gun at her.

"You can't!" Billie said, eyes widened. "You can't, Mike. She's having a baby." Billie's eyes filled with tears as he stared down the barrel of Mike's gun. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, but the white knuckles gripping the gun were.

"You don't want me to shoot her?" Mike asked. Billie gave a small shake of his head. "Fine. You shoot her." Mike shoved his pistol into Billie's hand, pulling another from his belt. He pressed it to the back of Billie's head. "You shoot her or I shoot both of you."

Billie stared at the gun in his hand. "B-But I . . . Mike?"

"Do it." It wasn't Mike's voice, but the woman's. "Do it, child. The Lord looks after me now. Save yourself and He'll forgive you. You've a whole life ahead of you."

Sobbing and shaking Billie pointed the gun, squeezing his eyes shut. "Mike, please don't—"

"Shoot her." Mike pressed his gun to Billie's temple. "Or I shoot both of you. Now do it, faggot!"

Billie screamed as he pulled the trigger, falling to the ground as the woman's body crumpled. He vomited as tears racked his body. Mike pulled the gun he wasn't aware he was still holding from his hand. "Get up." Billie was pulled forcibly from the ground. "Get up, you piece of shit. She was only a Catholic."

"She was having a baby." Billie choked out as Mike threw him against the banister of the stairs.

"That's two less then!" Mike snapped. "Two less Catholics to worry about. Two less French as well. Numbers matter. Not people and not names. I don't give a shit if she was carrying the brother of Christ. Numbers matter, not people." His eyes narrowed. "Go take a shower. You smell like her."

II.

Billie was trying to unlock the attic door an hour later when Mike returned from getting rid of the dead olive-skinned woman from the backyard. Billie had named her 'Olivia' in his mind, to spite Mike in silence. To Billie names mattered, not numbers. He couldn't count higher than twenty before he forgot anyway.

Billie didn't know why the attic door wouldn't open, all he knew was that life was easier inside of it than out. He only had to kill spiders in the attic, not crying pregnant women named Olivia. Billie screamed as his fists pounded against the door, hot tears streaming down his face.

"I thought I told you to stay out of the attic," Mike said. He was leaning against the wall, watching Billie and smoking a cigarette. "All I ever said was don't leave the house and don't go in the attic, isn't that right?"

"I hate you," Billie said quietly, closing his eyes to try and stop his tears.

"Good." Mike idly scratched at his nose. "You weren't supposed to like me in the first place. Why would I want a fucking cocksucker like you to do anything but hate me?" Mike pulled Billie away from the door by the neck of his shirt and forced him into the room he had claimed, the room that the parents Billie once know used to sleep in. "Did you like killing her?" he asked, sitting on the bed.

Billie stood in the doorway, staring at the floor.

"I asked you a question," Mike said, "now answer it."

"Why did they give you a gun?" Billie said quietly. "You're only a little older than me. Why would they give you a gun?"

Mike picked up a glass and threw it at the floor, cursing in a language Billie didn't recognize. "They gave me a gun for two reasons. One, because I'm a fucking soldier. Two, to kill people like you who aren't worth the air they breathe and who don't answer my fucking questions!"

"No," Billie said finally. "I didn't like killing her. You would have, I think. Maybe it was better that I did."

"I told you to shower," Mike said. "You didn't. Next time that happens I'm cutting your finger off. And don't think I won't."

III.

"Your name's spelled like a girl's," Mike said as he entered the kitchen. Billie was sitting at the table, staring at his hands and doing nothing. "No wonder you're a fag."

Billie looked at him, no fear in his eyes. "I'd rather be a fag than like shooting people."

"Well, at least I don't have to worry about you killing me in my sleep then. If you could unlock your room. And if you could unlock mine."

"Why would I want to?" Billie asked. His voice faded and his head lowered as Mike moved toward the drawer holding the silver. "Why'd you lock the attic?" he asked, hoping to keep his fingers.

"Why I do things is none of your business," Mike snapped. "I don't have to explain myself to a faggot kike like you." Even though the boy knew Billie wasn't Jewish he favored the slur nearly as much as faggot. It was one of the worse insults one could brandish and a word the militia members generally had on their tongues.

To Billie it didn't matter. To him all the words meant were that Mike hated him and that his existence was acknowledged, favorably or not.

"Who doesn't die?" Billie asked, once again staring at his hands.

"White people, Protestant. Lutherans and Baptists can convert. If they don't, camps. People with no disabilities. No hearing problems, no sight problems. Straight people."

"Straight?" Billie looked at Mike. He knew he wouldn't be hurt. If Mike had the light in his eyes, the light that came from talking about death, questions about death and victims weren't rewarded with pain.

"People who aren't fags." Two fingers lit a cigarette and pressed it to a smile. "There will be more dead than alive, but a perfect race is better than a large one."

"How did you find her? Olivia?" The name slipped from Billie's lips before he could stop it. It seemed to echo through the entire house.

"Olivia." Mike took a drag off his cigarette. "Olivia. Last I knew, Olivia wasn't a number." Mike look disgusted at the lowering of the younger boy's green eyes. Billie's head was raised when a gun slipped under his chin. "Olivia."

"She had a name," Billie whispered. "All people have names."

"Not all people are worth knowing or remembering," Mike said. "Those people are numbers. Numbers don't deserve names."

"What about my name?"

"Your name means shit to me," Mike said, putting his cigarette out on Billie's hand. He smiled when the green eyes filled with tears and Billie ran to the sink, washing another burn. "And you mean as much to me as your name."

"I know your name," Billie said. He didn't know why he said it or what it meant, but he said it anyway.

IV.

Mike was staring at the television screen. Billie was staring at his first glimpse of the war. The people were speaking in the same unknown language Mike spoke when he cursed. "Kanzler Kristof," Mike said, knowing Billie wouldn't understand what it meant. The older boy's voice was cold as he pointed to a man on the television that had his eyes and hair. "My father."

"What are they talking about?" Billie asked. It had been a week since he shot the woman in the backyard. Mike had been leaving the house for hours, coming back with no strength to yell or pull the trigger of a gun. Billie knew it had something to do with the words he couldn't understand on the television.

"The war," Mike said. "The militia has started invading the Eastern countries. White Catholics are being allowed to stay out of the camps if they'll fight with our soldiers. They'll die, of course. Human shields, if you can call them human." The boy with the gun lit a cigarette, his hands shaking for the first time in Billie's memory. "Kristoph is giving my father more power today. He can raid anyone's house, tap anyone's phone, kill anyone. Even people on our side."

"I thought you could already do that," Billie said quietly.

"Not legally," Mike muttered. His voice returned to normal. "You have to have a reason. Your parents were Jews, that was a reason. Killing a white Protestant who hasn't committed a crime is illegal. Was illegal."

Billie bit his bottom lip, then slowly asked the question. "D-Do you think it's okay to do that?"

"I think what my father thinks," Mike said in a resigned tone. "My father thinks it's right, so it is. The Kanzler, too. Kristof is always right." Billie didn't say anything, but moved to leave. "Stay!" Mike snapped. "You need to hear this."

"I don't even know what they're saying," Billie said, immediately sitting back down when he saw the look on Mike's face, the look usually followed by a cigarette burn or a gunshot.

"They're speaking German," Mike said. He spared Billie a glance. "You live in a part of Germany that only speaks English. Kanzler is German. His father worked at one of the camps during the Holocaust, the fuck up."

"Halacust?" Billie pulled his knees to his chest. He didn't understand the word, had never heard it before, but it made him feel cold inside.

"We're doing what they tried," Mike said. "But they fucked it up. We won't. It happened here, in Germany." He looked around the house as he said it, as if suddenly the pictures on the walls would turn to movies showing clips of what had happened during that time.

"You're not German," Billie said. "You don't sound like me."

"I'm English," Mike said. "Germany started it all again. They killed the Pope, the president of the United States, and the royal family. My father made all three possible; that's why he's second in command."

Billie was playing with his hair now, trying to ignore what Mike was saying and make sense of it at the same time. He knew what 'royal' meant, what 'family' meant. He knew the Pope and the president were people. He knew those people were dead. He didn't know he was crying until a tear slipped from his eye and down his cheek. He wiped at it without thinking. He gave a small cry when Mike grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him onto the ground.

"They were shit!" he yelled, his boot pressing on the back of Billie's skull. "They were shit, just like you. Well," he bent over, looking Billie in the face, "maybe a little better than a fag hiding the attic, but not by much." He moved his foot, only to kick Billie in the side. "Get up. Go do something, just get the fuck away from me."

Billie heard the television set turn off before he had left the room.

V.

Billie was looking at the bookshelf in the room that had once been a study. He guessed it was where Mike practiced shooting, as his fingers touched bullet holes in pictures. There was a pretty red book in the middle of the desk. It was thicker than any of the others. Billie remembered it being red to him. Stories about Egypt and Christmas and a girl cutting a man's hair off.

Billie didn't know what was wrong with the book, but Mike obviously didn't like it. He counted nine bullet holes. On the inside pages were missing and others had words scribbled on them that Billie couldn't read. He closed the book, hoping he wouldn't smell like it. Every time Billie did something Mike didn't like, the older boy said Billie smelled like it. The day before he had smelled like a Catholic, a raghead, and a cocksucker.

Billie tugged a dusty book out from between the bookshelf and the wall. His green eyes lightened and he smiled as he wiped the dust from the cover.

"What is it?" Mike asked from the doorway, a glass of something brown in his hand.

Billie looked terrified, not wanting to say anything. Mike's gun had already shot most of the things in the room.

"Christ, kid." Mike set his glass down on the table and ripped the book from Billie's hands. "'The Velveteen Rabbit.'" He looked at Billie as if he were insane and thrust it back at him. "Stupid faggot," he muttered as he left the room, forgetting his glass.

VI.

"Who was your mom?" Billie asked one night. Mike hadn't been watching TV or shooting his gun, so Billie had taken the chance at another question.

"My mother." Mike glanced at the younger boy. "My mother's dead. My father shot her, just like he shot yours."

"Why?" Billie asked, his voice laced with an almost desperate form of anger, trying to understand what the senseless killing meant.

Mike looked at him and laughed. "Why? Fuck, if I asked that question I'd be rotting somewhere, same as her." He snorted and turned back to the shoes he had been polishing. "Wait," he said as Billie turned to leave. "I have to go somewhere tomorrow. Then two militia soldiers are coming over here, then I'll be gone the rest of the night." Mike gave the younger boy a glance. "So you'll be in the attic tomorrow."

"Okay," Billie said, once again turning to leave.

Mike smacked him.

VII.

Billie was eight when his parents threw him in the attic. Michael was a year younger when he watched his father shoot his mother. The General's three children were sitting on the couch as they had been ordered to. Michael was sitting in the middle, between his twelve year old sister, Chastity, and his nine year old brother, Nicholas. The two older siblings barely moved when their father threw their mother down the stairs, except to hold tightly to their younger brother's arms.

"Don't say anything," Nicholas hissed in Michael's ear.

"B—"

"Nothing," Chastity echoed in a whisper. Her eyes closed for a moment when The General threw his wife to the floor of the living room, but open quickly. Her jaw was set, as was Nicholas's. Michael, however, was on the verge of tears.

"French whore!" the General yelled at the woman on the floor, kicking her again as she tried to sit up. "I should have know that there were no exceptions to you people. You must have been a fucking witch to convince me otherwise." His wife, during The General's screams, had sat up. She smoothed her skirt before looking up at him, no fear in her blue eyes. Her expression didn't change when her husband pulled his gun out. "Most people would be begging now, but you're above that, aren't you?"

"Above you," the woman said in a calm voice. "Only you, my dear."

"Momma!" Michael yelled, pulling away from his sister's grasp. Nicholas, however, held tight.

"Michael, stop!" Chastity pleaded, pulling her brother back.

The wife of The General gave her last smile to her youngest son.

Her three children watched the bullet, heard the gunshot, closed their eyes. Two sets of brown, one set of blue. Nicholas and Chastity said nothing, just tightened their hold on the younger child. But Michael screamed, reaching out for the woman on the floor.

The General stared at his three children, eyes lingering on the youngest who stared up at him through tears. "You look like her." Two of his fingers touched the blood on the carpet before smudging Michael's cheek with it. "And now you smell like her." He looked at his daughter and oldest son. "Get him out of here."

VIII.

Now Michael was the only child The General had left.