The Little One

Forgotten, she lay there. Dead eyes wandered over her lifeless body. As if it were completely normal. As if it were nothing special on a warm evening in July to pull the corpse of an 11-year-old from a bathing lake. The police officers worked with iron-set expressions. As if it were everyday. In this tiny small town that didn't even deserve the name "town". The little girl lay there. As if she had simply forgotten to go to bed. As if someone would come any moment and wake her or even carry her home. "She can't have been lying there for long," I heard a rather younger policewoman murmur. Her colleague merely nodded wordlessly. This scene couldn't leave him so unmoved. His son must by now be a similar age to the 11-year-old, dead girl.

Two expressionless figures pulled a body bag over the delicate body. "Stop!", I wanted to scream: "She's far too small. It won't fit yet. Just wake her up again…" But from my throat came nothing but hot, dry air. Suddenly I became aware of a feeling completely foreign to me. It took several breaths before I recognised what it was: panic. Desperate panic rose within me and spread exponentially through me until it permeated every fibre of my body. Like countless tiny electric shocks, it made my body tremble. That was my girl, whom these strange figures were loading into their dead, dark vehicle. As if she were no longer a living being, but rather a thing. A lifeless, dead thing. A thing that people would talk about tomorrow and in the weeks to come. After that, a thick, black fog of oblivion would settle over the "case". Because that was all she was to anyone here. A thing, a case. Only for me was she ever more. The little one. My little sister. I too would be forgotten. Unlike her. Unlike the 11-year-old dead girl on that warm July evening. She had been a good soul. I was only a silent and lonely one. After her death, no one would care how I was doing anymore. They would all carry on as before: ignoring, dismissive and disdainful looks and the tiresome, daily chores. The little one had always listened to me. Now no one would listen to me anymore. The little one had always seen me. Now no one would see me anymore. She had always regarded me as a whole person. Now I was nothing but a disabled wreck to everyone.

Without her, I would soon run out of breath. And whilst I was thinking about that, I felt it actually running out. My lungs wouldn't work anymore. My heart broke beneath it and my lungs now wanted to give up too. Slowly the world around me disappeared and I fell into an endless, dark nothingness. Far away I heard a few frantic shouts and became aware of my body being moved. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. They should let me die too. Like the little one. Like my sister. Then they could send us both into oblivion together. I let everything go and sank into nothingness.

I was resuscitated. Of course. I wasn't even allowed to die. They had taken everything from me and now I wanted to give them the last bit, but they didn't even want that anymore. So I lived. Only so as not to be dead. Only so as not to be with the little 11-year-old. The only being that had ever meant well by me in my life. Everyone had abandoned me. In the end, I had abandoned myself too.