It is just another bleak day in Eastern Europe. A grim day where unemployment is at twenty-five percent. Another cloudy day where suicide rates have gone up three hundred percent. It’s just cold another day in the Great Depression. Great should not be the right word for our time though. Luckily, I have people to live for. I live for my wife, Amalia Freud, and my son, Sigmund Freud . We live in Vienna, Austria in a medially sized apartment building. We live with seven other families: the Daniels (our nearest and closest neighbors), the Phillips, and five other families we do not know very well. While our jobs are not high-end jobs we can usually get what we need. This is not the story of how I escaped, of how I won, but how I died.

September 17th, 1938
Vienna, Austria
135 Spitalgasse Road

The musty smell pervaded my senses, jerking me to wakefulness. I could just tell it was going to be a bad day. I put on my new suit and tie, brushed up, and stumbled down the stairs. I sat down at the table for a burnt toast, but also for some delicious eggs and fresh orange juice. I thanked my wife, kissed her on the cheek, took my suitcase, and left.

The walk to work was pretty quick. Well, it would be 25 minutes by walking but today I availed a very secretive shortcut through the woods that saved me about five minutes and didn’t get too dirty. This was because it made me hidden under a few trees until the end of the woods where I skipped a whole 3 blocks. Like most people in this economy, our family only had one car for emergencies, and if we could save enough money, we figured we could eventually get another. I reached the 20-story building right when another leapt from a window. It happens a few times a day at most buildings here. Yet I rarely am a first hand witness. I strutted inside without much hesitation or concern for the man who had fallen.

Even being a 20-story building it wasn’t too difficult to reach the 15th floor by stairs. Once I reached my floor I opened the heavy metal door into a room of people all typing on a typewriter or calling up someone on a switchboard else for business. I walked a little further to my desk. It was like every other desk there; wood shaded, boring, and piled with papers. I sat down, loosened my tie, and prepared for work.

It was about four in the afternoon when the boss beckoned me to his office. I was pretty sure that I had not erred recently, nor had I been on his bad side. I actually favored my boss more then most of my coworkers. He was a large man with a stubbly chin and had a heat like a bullet. We walked into his office and we sat down. He began the conversation:

“Do you know why you are here Freud?”
I was unsure, but jokingly responded back, “I’m getting a promotion?”

“Well, sort of.”

“ Really? But, but wouldn’t that be your job sir? Are you retiring?”

“Again, sort of. You see boy I have no reason to be here. My wife cheated on me with another man and my kids hate me because I drink so much and barely acknowledge me as their father. I am just a pawn in this game of life, and fate, the queen will not take me out. I am knocking over my king, and it was a good game. I will hope to see you soon Jacob.”

And just like that he opened his window and started out of it. I felt compelled to say something to the man, “B-b-but sir! Please do not do this, you still have your friends here and no one would want you to die!”

“Friends? I pay you. You are not my friend, no one here is my friend.”

He started sobbing. I knew there was no use. I took my arms off of him and let him just sit at the window to think.

“At least I know I will make one person happy.”

“Why do you say that?” and like that he was gone. I looked out of the window immediately after he jumped to see him plummeting down to the ground. I did get that promotion, but I was not smiling. It was a bad omen of what was to come.

November 21st, 1939
Vienna, Austria
135 Spitalgasse Road

It was later the next year when everything went wrong. I went into work the same as I had the day before, tired, but still intrigued and motivated by my work. Everyone else hated me at work because of the upgrade. I got this job for a reason I felt. It was like fate wanted me to get this job.

It was the end of the day at the office where I was doing some end-of-the day paperwork and everyone (I thought) had left when my affable second hand man at the office, Jorg Pirktl, ran into my room without consent:

“Don’t you knock first, Jorg?”

“You might want to see this boss. Hurry!”

I couldn’t see what was so important at such late hours to demand to my attention like this, but I sprang up and followed Jorg quickly. He pointed to the window where I looked outside. It was manifest to see what was going on outside, but the reason was still unclear. There were people marching in unison down the street lit up with torches and Molotov Cocktails in their hands. One man out front of them was chanting rude sayings in German to all who could hear. I saw some woman, flabbergasted, walk out of one of the buildings to tell the men to stop swearing and disrespecting this country. She was immediately shot multiple times and one soldier threw the flaming cocktail at the building, spontaneously bursting into flames and started disseminating the surrounding buildings. The man in the front of the building then pointed for the men to enter some of the surrounding buildings, burn it to flames, and plunder the riches inside. Our building was one of those ones.

We start searching around the room for equipment, anything that could help our privation. So far, all I had found was a broom, and Jorg had glass shards from a broken coffee kettle, but we really were in a tight situation here. We keep searching for more items, like hidden weapon tchotchkes people might have in or under their desks. Then Jorg, after going into the bosses (my) office and comes out with a gun. The old boss must’ve had that there to kill himself.

Jorg passed me the gun, “I don’t know how good of a shot you are, but you aren’t you better learn now.” Luckily I had shot a gun a few times before, but I was no McCoy at it, and this was our only piece of artillery besides for the broom. I went into the public bathroom and tried to aim directly at one tile. I shot and it hit two tiles to the left. I tried again and it hit the one below. Jorg came into the bathroom and yelled, “What are you doing in here? Save this for the men who probably just heard you downstairs! We only have the ammunition from under the desk; here’s the last of the bullets,” he handed me a tenuous amount of bullets “so make them count.” I stuffed the bullets in my suit pocket and walked out of the bathroom.

We looked down the shaft of the stairs. There were a myriad of men slowly going up the stairs in harmony with about ten going into every floor. They got to the next floor in 30 seconds and they were at the 5th floor, so the men knew they had to act soon. I then remembered that there was a dumbwaiter next to the refrigerator going from the lowest floor’s kitchen to the twentieth floor. Unfortunately, only one person could go down at a time, and even if one person went down and would send the dumbwaiter back up, the other person would be long gone. The hardest part now was to decide who would be going down and who would be staying.

I started first, “So, who’s going down first?”

“Well, that’s the person that’s going down last too.”

“We don’t have much time. One of us has to go.”

“Why can’t we both go?”

“You really think we can both fit in there?”

“Oh, no. No chance. I meant once I start to go down you hop on top of the dumbwaiter, hold the rope, and repel us down.”

“But the rope is attached to the wall and it would be too heav-” Jorg then deliberately cut the rope with the glass shard and held on to the rope.

“It’s made of wood and a strong guy like you can hold me up on. Here, I’ll attach it to the table for support. Come on, there’s no time!”

He was cogently right, the table and the weight were uncomfortable, but bearable. He hopped on and for a second I struggled to hold the rope. I then jumped on and down we slowly went.

Five minutes later we reached the 3rd floor and we had a steady pace; he’d tell me if he saw someone out of the dumbwaiter window and I would move us up, or down, as quickly as I could. But it was at the third floor where things went wrong. The soldiers must of reached the our floor and cut the rope to the top of the dumbwaiter. We then fell down four floors to the 2nd and lowest kitchen floor. Then the table started to crash and demolish the dumbbell shaft. down at the top, or I could at least hear it and needed to react soon. I was tall enough to reach the 1st kitchen floor by jumping and didn’t need the rope anymore (considering the object it was attached to was crashing down and pulling it would just make it worst) and I jumped up to the next layer.
There was no one in the wing of the kitchen that I was at (which was eerie considering the amount of people who entered the building), but there were people at the floor: Piefkes . I could now see the table and meekly whispered to Jorg to get out of there before he’d become a pancake. I had to hide quickly for the sound of the table would be almost irresistible to not draw near to. There was a food rack to the left and I ducked under that for the time being.
Fifteen seconds later the crash sounded. I hoped that Jorg was all right now that we were officially sundered. I looked around with the little eyesight I could use. I saw a pair of feet of feet running to my direction started girding. I could shoot him, but it might attract more attention to this direction and I did not want to debase my bullets anyways. I crawled out and the man grabbed me and yelled, “WAS MACHST DU DENN HIER? SIE WERDEN TOT, WENN SIE SICH NICHT AN MEINE BESTELLUNGEN! ” All I could tell from that was: WHAT . . . DOING . . . HERE . . . DEAD IF YOU DO NOT . . . and that was all I could tell. I smacked him in the face with the butt of my gun and ran down the flight of stairs to see if Jorg was there. He was, but he was being tortured by 3 men their with cat-o’nine-tails . I shot all three of them. I could care less about those men and the ones would come after or the bullets I wasted, but Jorg was down here now safe.
I tried to calm him down, kept sniveling and acted as if life could not go on after what just happened. I told him to push on. We could make it. We are this close to getting outside, we are so close to escaping, and I had another plan. There was a window a floor up on the upper kitchen; we could climb up the dumbwaiter shaft without the pulley system and go out through the window and will be on the ground level. It was our only option, so we started up the shaft. It was a little grimy, but hoisting ourselves foot by foot was our only option.
We reached the upper level and looked around for the men, but they were not here. I saw the window that we needed to climb through; it was small and high up, but it will get the job done. We found a stepladder and tried to open the window. It wouldn’t budge though. There even was a spare crowbar next to the refrigerator and it still wasn’t cooperating. We went to our last resort and broke the glass window with the fire extinguisher. The destroying of the window didn’t make much noise, but the glass falling on the floor just intensified the little it made. We had to scramble out quickly and the pieces of glass still stuck in the window wouldn’t budge, so we would have to live with the wounds. It wasn’t fun having to crawl through that blood hole. I helped Jorg through and that was it. There were men all to the left and to the right of us. They yelled, “SIE SIND VERHAFTET !”
I nonchalantly advised, “We need to run now.”
And like that we were off and were followed like a pack of wolves would attack a piece of meat strapped to an aeroplane. We were fast, but they were predominately faster and trained for this. What our advantage was that we knew this place, this town. We took down into the woods; it would be easier to hide and I knew a secret way back to our house from there.
We were now far enough ahead so that they wouldn’t find my path. We rushed to a willow tree and the whole line of them lay in a way that basically covered us from all sight. There was a distinct path that I made through the trees to not get myself dirty to go to work anymore, but I think I will have to adjourn the use of this path for now. We ran through the trees without brandishing many of the braches to show movement. We rest for a while at the end of them and waited for about fifteen minutes before we figured that the men had lost us.
We could now breathe. The air smelt like smoke and I had bloody hands from the branches.
Jorg wondered where we were going. I answered that we were going to my house, our family’s house. We were only minutes away and I needed to see their faces at least one more time today. We soon reached the house with the front door unlocked. Those men pillaged the whole house. Everything in the house was destroyed, torn apart, or was out of place. There was a note on the bed upstairs though, it was poorly written:
Dear Jacob,
We are in a hurry. We have to leave immediately. If you ever see this, keep it forever. If we ever see this, keep us forever. Never lose us again. We will, maybe, see you soon, whether in Heaven or back here.
Love, Amalia and Sigmund Freud
I fell there on the floor and odiously tried not to gouge out my tears. I wanted to rip the letter up into millions of little tiny shreds, but the letter told me not to. I see why they call it the Great Depression now. Jorg stood there in silence, he couldn’t feel what I was feeling, but knew that I was in terrible pain. He came over and pats me on the back, but it did not help much.
That night was the greyest, cloudiest, coldest day I have ever experienced. I couldn’t bear the fact that I had lost them, my loves, my one job. That night, my king had fell, and I do not know if I can pick it back up. I said this is the story of how I died, but this wasn’t how I expected it to play out.