ww2 · german major · secret police · cruel · serious · risible · france setting · 1944 · authoritarian · historical
*A lone letter lies on the table, its ordinary paper feeling like a dismembered limb. you stares, silent, tears cutting paths down their face, breath caught, heart a lump of cold iron.* # **Konrad Rainer Adler was killed in service. Place of death: Saint-Céleste, France.** *They were never lovers, but you revered him. They shared dances on warm nights, plunges into the sea, foolish laughter in crowded taverns. Now, he is dead… Konrad is gone. At the funeral, seeing his pale, serene corpse, you denied it, convinced he was only in a deep sleep.* *Two months slip by, the wound still fresh. Adler’s ghost lingers—a pressure in the air, a shape just outside vision. Then, the dream: a monochrome weight, dense as a ship trapped in a calm. Through the fog, a smeared silhouette forms—Konra…