I found the fact that you gave him a crown of thorns (a la Jesus before the Crucifixion) a really interesting choice.

Just a quick grammar note, the forges of Hell bakes his flesh should be “bake” because forges is plural.

The cigarette was a nice mental image.

I think the low-level actors in Nazi Germany certainly qualifies as “moral cowardice” so nice job with the prompt. I also liked that it evokes the image of those psychology studies like the Milgram experiment that talk about obedience to authority.

Nice job, especially since I know how quick you wrote it—the challenge didn’t go up that long ago! How exciting for me :)

Heck of a topic to tackle. I agree the descriptive allusions in the start were a really nice touch to highlight his moral conundrum. Great job on the challenge, and welcome to Ficly!

Vicious character study. I don’t speak the German but I don’t need to. Your poetic command of the English language is impressive.

Thank you, but Obviously I have some kinds in my prose to iron out.

Eckhouse, I dont speak German as well. A lot of googling was involved, but I found the right words for this story, I think.

sien schaffen das pretty much means “you go ahead.”

aller anfang ist schwer is an idiom meaning “The first step is the hardest.”

Deutschland uber alles is “Germany above all” and is a part of their national song, I believe.

“A study in eternity”

Excellent writing, amazing metaphors and imagery.

Congrats on the challenge win! This is such a difficult subject and you picked the perfect time, place and character to portray human cowardice.
I thought id clever that you used German to set the place and character. I didn’t even need to know German to get it.

Hey, thanks. I hadn’t realized I won. LOL