Auschwitz Dancer: Auschwitz Dancer Serial, #1

By James Musgrave

In this apocalyptic setting, time is frozen in 1943, as Frankie and her group fight the evil powers of totalitarian monsters in Auschwitz, controlled by Herr Soul Master.

 

Read James Musgrave's continuing adventure in this apocalyptic setting, time frozen in 1943, as Frankie and her group fight the evil powers of totalitarian monsters in Auschwitz, controlled by Herr Soul Master.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EMRE Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Oct 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215347171

James Musgrave

James Musgrave has been in a Bram Stoker Finalist anthology, and he’s won the First Place Blue Ribbon for Best Historical Mystery, Forevermore, at the Chanticleer International Book Awards. His most recent publication, “Bug Motel,” is the first story in the Toilet Zone 3 Horror Anthology, Hellbound Books. "Jasmine," is in the anthology Draw Down the Moon published by Propertius Press. His adult short fiction anthology Valley of the Dogs, Dark Stories, won the Silver Medal at the 2021 Reader's Favorite international contest. Two of his historical mystery series are published through and curated by the American Library Association's Biblioboard.com.

Book preview

Chapter One: In the Beginning

Sunday, early evening, 1943, inside Konzentrationslager Auschwitz II-Birkenau

I can hear him crying in his corner of the living quarters on Block 7. The agonizing strains of his violin tear at my heart, even when I’m inside this helmeted Nazi ogre. I have spirit-walked into the SS guard, who’s in charge of the barracks, and I detest the stench of his body. His fat, bloated stomach, and his bad breath, which stinks of cigars and beer, disgust me. But I must enter him, so I can take my quarry, Rubin Abel, age twenty-two, to meet the woman he married but was never able to make love to.

I am the Auschwitz Dancer, Francheska Mann, former ballerina, who was shot and killed by machine gun fire on October 23, in the women’s locker room outside the Zyklon B gas showers. I was twenty-six when I died. In this game, they all call me Frankie. The competition in this quantum dimension, which is frozen in the month of October, 1943, is to redeem myself by joining lovers who were separated by fate.  With every couple I can re-unite, I can come closer to my own love, my husband, Marek Rosenberg, who is being held by my nemesis of life and death, the Nazi’s supernatural ubermensch, Herr Soul Master. 

I know the routine now like the back of my hand. Prisoners return to the camp under SS escort before nightfall. They often carry the corpses of those who die or were killed while laboring. The evening roll call begins at seven o’clock and, as in the morning, can be prolonged by discrepancies in the number of counted prisoners. After roll call, the prisoners receive their evening bread with its accompaniment of watery barley soup, with a blob of fat, if they’re fortunate. They have free time after the evening meal.

Rubin, who is in the camp orchestra, practices his violin, as he was a once a concert virtuoso before being taken prisoner in Warsaw, in the middle of his wedding. Just before he was about to bring his foot down, to smash the napkin-wrapped wine glass at the Polski Hotel, the guards took him and his lovely bride, Sarah, prisoner, along with forty other Jews at the wedding. 

Until the first gong, the signal for everyone to return to their quarters, prisoners wait their turn for the washrooms and toilets. They may also receive mail and parcels or visit acquaintances in other blocks. The second gong, at nine o’clock, announces the nighttime silence.

Prisoners do not have to labor at all on Sundays and holidays, which they spend tidying up their quarters, mending or washing their clothes, or shaving and having their hair cut. They can also attend concerts by the camp orchestra and, every other week, send official letters to their families. My human compatriot, Helena Datoń, is now bringing Rubin’s wife from the women’s section of the camp to meet up with Rubin inside the orchestra’s Green Room, in the back of the auditorium. We have outfitted it with a small bed and pillow, and two of Abel’s orchestra mates, Willy Siegel, and Martin Fogel, will serenade the lovers from the side room. We also have fresh flowers and chocolates.

"Ach tung!" I shout at Rubin, and he stands up, riveted at attention, never once looking me in the eyes, which means instant death. I grab him by his muscular forearm and point him toward the exit, my rifle trained on him as he slowly walks down the middle of the aisle. The other prisoners inside the barracks look on with some interest.

Outside, the air is cool, and the clouds are thick and billowy as the sun goes down, an orange ball in the west. I wish I could tell this poor young man who he will meet, but this might cause him to shout, or to dance wildly with passionate joy. At any moment, my adversary can send his evil henchmen to fight us to the death and end this game. I take a deep breath inside this SS guard’s body and push Rubin along with the point of my rifle barrel. There is a squad of four guards and one officer marching to take down the Nazi flag in the camp assembly area. I salute them with my sieg heil arm raised. Up ahead, just outside the auditorium door, we can see his wife, Sarah, being escorted by Helena. They aren’t meant to be