Gute Nacht, Kleiner Hund



So, to start off, I have a bit of a... morbid obsession with the darker side of the world. I would often find myself on the Wikipedia pages of such pleasant topics as “Necrosis”, “Waterboarding”, and one of my personal favorites, “Nazi Human Experimentation”. Now, I’m not saying I’m endorsing any of this, I find genocide and fascism disgusting beyond belief.

However, imagine my excitement when a historian friend of mine had said that some documents from a Nazi scientist had been uncovered, not seeing the light of day since 1943. He had said that he had to beg, but he finally got the authorisation to allow me to read them. I’m pretty sure that I can’t disclose where these documents are currently, but I can tell you what they said.

The pages were a scientific record of a new “miracle cure” for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. He had called this serum “Spinnennetz”, or “Spider’s Web”. I’m guessing he named it this because it could rebuild the web of brain cells that were lost with dementia. He said that he would begin testing on a German shepherd tomorrow. The first page was dated “October 5, 1942” and signed “Eine Hoffnungsvolle Menschen”, “One Hopeful Man”.

The pages for the next few months were relatively boring. “The dog’s vital signs are normal”, “The dog has a healthy appetite”, bla bla bla. However, around February of 1943, he wrote something that caught my eye.

He said that the dog spoke to him. Spoke to him? This was ridiculous. However, I kept reading. The scientist said that the dog told him the name of his father, who had been killed in the Great War. He then said that the dog had told him about is little brother being killed today, which he said had never happened.

I was about to flip to the next page, but then I noticed a blue paperclip that seemed... way too new to be 70 years old. It joined a small, black and white photograph to the paper. I examined the photo, and saw a German shepherd with jaws and lips that seemed... inflated and engorged into a forced snarl. The dogs eyes were... unholy, and devoid of life, if that makes any sense. It appeared to be in mid-bark, and in a very defensive pose.

I gave up reading the papers for a week after that.

When I finally returned to reading those godforsaken documents, I skimmed through the pages until I found something interesting. Apparently, by April of 1943, the dog’s legs, had become useless, and foul smelling (obviously gangrene, I thought to myself), and had begun following the scientist home, yelling at him in a “demon’s voice” as the scientist called it, about his dead family (his brother really had died that day two months ago) and friends, many of whom had begun to die when the experiment began, the scientist noted.

Again, for the next few months, the papers were the same thing. “The dog keeps following me”, “It yells through the night”, “Another of my friends died” bla bla bla.

However, within the last few pages, in August of 1943, the scientist wrote that he “couldn’t take that damn dog anymore” and that he would end it all after he sent the “devil’s serum to Josef Mengele for  HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION ”. The note ended with words that haunt me to this day. “Gute nacht, kleiner hund” or “Good night, little dog” in English.

I was relieved to be finally over with this horrible diary, but my happiness was cut short when I realized that there were two more pages left.

The first of the pages was nothing but scribbles on a page, ending with an oddly well written “Gute nacht, kleiner hund”. The only other well written part of the note was also the most confusing: the date, which was February 7, 1979. I had thought originally that the noted hadn’t been touched since 1943 (On further research, I now know that February 7, 1979 is the day Josef Mengele died).

The final note was a single sentence, written in English. “We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction”. However, the most chilling part of this final paper was the date. April 27, 2013. The date of the day I was reading these papers.

Ever since I read that note, a dog’s barking has been keeping me up all night. I don’t remember any of my neighbours owning a dog, but it begins to bark as soon as I get home, to as soon as I leave the house. And yesterday, it told me about how my mother just died. I can’t take it anymore, and I’m going to leave this place... forever. Gute nacht, kleiner hund.