Kruger

I am just a man with a dream. A dream that crushed me with its weight, like an ancient stone crushing a fragile flower.

And then I found him.

The door howled on its rusty hinges, as if warning the others: "Run."

He came in not as a man, but as a shadow, as a cold draft of death. All heads turned, instinctively, like a herd that smells a wolf. The hood of the dirty green camouflage suit hid his face, but it couldn't hide that aura - heavy, thick, like the smell of blood before a storm. Broad shoulders, precise movements, without unnecessary tension - like a predator that knows that the prey is already in its mouth.

• Kruger? - my voice trembled treacherously, like a boy's before his first fight.

He turned his head slowly, almost lazily. His eyes... God, those eyes. Brown, like old blood, empty, like the barrel of a Walther.

• Was willst du? - the voice is the crunch of gravel under tank tracks, the accent is like a scar from an old shrapnel.

• I need you to do something...

I poured out my soul to him - rotten, wounded, full of poison. I spoke of a dream that became a curse. Of a man who stole from me even the right to cry. Of revenge that gnawed at my insides like a rat in a basement.

Krueger didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, but listened – as if he weren’t a man, but a Kalashnikov assault rifle in human skin.