Author's note: This is just a quick something I wrote for my ENGL 105 final project. It's not necessarily high quality, because I wrote it in two and a half hours late late at night, and haven't really proofread it fully since. Our assignment, or at least one of our options, was to write a mythically-based story. This work contains portions of the Creation Myth, Eugenics Myth, Common Good Myth, and Utopian Myth. Please feel free to criticize constructively!! Thank you!
Culpae Poenae Par Esto. Let Thy Punishment Fit Thy Crime
On a date eleven months following the inauguration of President Konig, and two days after his personal declaration as Absolute Ruler Konig, eternal savior of the nation, Mr. Lehmann arrived at 23rd Street, followed by his pregnant and chronically depressed wife, his son, and his two young daughters. The line of nervous citizens, which began in what was once Mercy Surgical Center, was drawn out all the way to the corner of 23rd and South, where a brownish-gray mist hung over the air, and a cold, unwelcoming breeze rustled the leafless trees and sent Mr. Lehmann’s frayed hat from his head. It fluttered high for a while, then swooped down over the mass of people and into the street.
“Papa,” beckoned little Hope. Her large, amber eyes were searching him beneath a mat of curls.
“Yes, dear?”
“Papa, who are those people?”
“Ah, those people over there? The ones with black cloaks and red eyes? Those, little Hope, are people we have nothing to do with.”
Little Hope pouted and squeezed her papa’s hand.
“Then why are people talking to them? Look, it’s Mary Kruger and her daddy. We have something to do with them, don’t we?”
“Come on, sweet, the line is moving.”
The Lehmanns stepped forward, but little Hope’s eyes staid on the mysterious men in black, talking closely with her friends. What little Hope didn’t understand was that they had something very valuable to her—something very valuable to her family—but that something required more than Mr. Lehmann and his pregnant, chronically depressed wife were willing to give. Whether they gave in to those hooded figures, or met their fate in old Mercy Surgical Center, they were going to lose it. Their pride. Their dignity. Either way, they were going to lose it.
With every step forward, the air seemed to thicken. The smell of disinfectants grew ever more pungent. The faint rustling of a husky, slow-moving voice escaped from the thick brass doors and carried over the line. As the Lehmanns approached the brass doors, came within feet of them, the voice was talking loudly, authoritatively, against their ears, dictating inside them, reaching inside their hearts and playing at their strings.
“Papa,” beckoned little Hope. “Papa, what are those little stacks of paper?”
“On that table, next to the door? The little stacks of paper with red text and black borders? Those are pamphlets, sweet.”
“Will you read them to me?”
“No.”
“Papa.”
“You’re father said no,” reminded Mr. Lehmann’s pregnant, chronically depressed wife.
They moved forward. No one stood before them now, but many were behind. The large, thick brass doors with newly added eagle-faced knockers, closed with a shutter as the family before the Lehmanns entered the building.
When her papa was comforting his wife, telling her, “We have three darling, and nearly four. Shouldn’t that be enough? Thank God we have them, and do not hate Him because we will not have more,” little Hope grabbed one of the black-bordered pamphlets and slid it in her coat. As she did, the oddest chill crept over her, but she shrugged her frail frame and giggled at her brother.
“Ralph,” she whispered. “Ralph, can you read this to me?”
The young scruffy-haired boy with the same bright eyes looked down at his sister. He was the best reader in his class, and, according to his teacher, had the reading ability of a high school freshman, several years older than him.
“Papa said we shouldn’t read it.”
Little Hope lifted her mat of flaxen curls and showed her brother the same eyes he bore, but these gathering water.
“Fine, fine. Just the first page.”
Little Hope and Ralph moved away from their father, toward their sister, the middle child, Adele, a curious mute, and Ralph whispered to them the words written in red.
“Regulations Set Forth by Absolute Ruler Konig on the Topic of the Common Good.
“Under the order of our eternal savior, Ruler Konig has set forth guidelines for the classification and treatment of certain persons in order to achieve safety for all in our wonderful nation of democracy and justice.
1. Subjects who suffer from mental illness shall be subjected to analysis and possible sterilization. Mental illnesses include, primarily: Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, and chronic depression.
2. Subjects who are below the national poverty line shall be analyzed and may be eligible for sterilization.
3. Subjects who suffer from disease or serious infection shall also be subjected to possible sterilization.
4. Subjects who have been named “imbecile” by an accredited authority shall be subjected to possible sterilization.
5. Subjects who are of Roma or Jewish descent shall be subjected to possible sterilization.
6. Subjects who are deaf, or have had immediate deaf relatives…”
Mr. Lehmann tore the brochure from his son’s hands.
“You kids don’t need to read this rubbish. It’s nonsense, all of it.”
“Do you believe they’ll do it, darling? Do you believe they’ll—,”
“They won’t. It’s all propaganda. Konig’s got his nose up too high, doesn’t know what he’s saying, what he’s ordering his people to do.”
The thick brass doors with eagle-faced knockers opened, and the Lehmanns entered Mercy Surgical Center. Even with pale low ceilings and tight gray walls, the hallway leading to the front desk was wide, too wide for the Lehmanns and their neighbors to take in. The smell of disinfectant was irritating. The air was heavy and empty at the same time. That same husky, slow-moving voice fed from speakers about the hall, reciting a recording that had repeated and repeated for several hours that day, only building the anxiety of the citizens waiting their turn.
Little Hope couldn’t see over all the people around her, but she knew that there was a large gray countertop at the end of the hall, where perhaps a lady with pink spectacles and even pinker lips stood, greeting her neighbors with smiles and how-do-you-dos. She could hear the voice of a woman far off, at the end of that hall, and she could see her in her mind clear as day. Jovial. Bright.
Little Hope didn’t understand what her brother had read to her. She didn’t understand the words “sterilization” or “analysis”, and she doubted her brother’s frustration at what he had read, because she knew those words meant nothing bad, nothing bad at all.
Curious Adele stood next to her baby sister with those wandering, all-knowing eyes she possessed, and seemed to have taken in everything her brother had said.
The voice recording came to an end. After four staccato ticks, it restarted. It seemed louder this time.
“Eleven months ago, you elected me as your caretaker, and I made a promise to protect you. Nothing has changed since then. For the good of the nation, and the safety of our society, I ask a simple favor: that all my citizens, all my loyal followers submit to analysis. We must see to the safety of our people. We must do all that is necessary to ensure our nation is the strongest, the most elite, and the most capable of them all.
“Remember, my people. Emigration is unnecessary, and unacceptable. We must stick together in this time of transformation. What is done is what must be done.”
The recording continued on, but Hope could not focus on those complicated, low-pitched words. They were moving closer, ever closer to that desk at the end of the hall, and she could get small glimpses of the figure at the counter. A bit of sweater here. A lock of dark hair there. They were almost there.
Ralph tugged at her time-worn, coarse sleeve. She peered around her father.
She could see them then, the figures leaving the crimson double-doors and heading out the exit. They were her neighbors, her classmates, clutching their arms, their foreheads, their chests, and various other body parts, and each wore around their neck a thick, flesh-clinging necklace. On these necklaces hung brass pendants in the shape of a large, imposing “D.”
“Papa,” beckoned little Hope.
“Shush, darling. Shush. We’ll be done soon, just be patient.”
They were at the counter now. It was high, high above Hope’s eyes, but she could just barely see the women’s face who stood with a rusty clipboard; she had thin, black eyes, and long, depthless hair that gathered behind her thick shoulders.
“Name,” said the woman.
“Lehmann.”
The woman smirked and eyed him.
“Occupation?”
“Custodial work.”
Her smirk faltered and her eyebrows gathered.
“What is your annual income, Mr. Lehmann?”
He coughed and shoved his hands in his coat pockets, which were ripped thoroughly.
“You are below the national poverty line, Mr. Lehmann?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A pity, sir. May I ask you to proceed through the double-doors to my right?”
“Is that necessary?”
“Yes.”
“If I refuse?”
“You shall be arrested, sir, and submitted to Absolute Ruler Konig’s procedures.”
Mr. Lehmann, his face white, his hands trembling, reached for his wife, kissed her, and left through the double-doors.
“Mrs. Lehmann,” asked the woman with the black eyes.
“Yes,” answered the pregnant, chronically depressed wife of Mr. Lehmann.
Little Hope had trouble hearing her mother as she spoke. Her voice was faint, and the sound of the recording overpowered the voices of both women. Hope did, however, see her mother grow deathly pallid, her eyes glaze over in a fervent water, and her hands clinch tight.
“You can’t,” Hope made out. “You can’t do this. It’s my child. My child!”
“I am sorry, ma’am. Under Ruler Konig’s orders, it must be aborted. You are degenerate, ma’am, and must be sterilized.”
“Degenerate?”
In a flurry of movements Hope could hardly keep up with, her mother made to run back toward the thick brass doors, and from the shadows of those pale, wide walls dark men came and held her mother. They took her through the crimson double-doors, and then returned, patting their hands.
“These too,” the woman at the counter told the men. “The children, they must be taken too.”
Hope, at this point, could not withstand her confusion and fear. Adele was tense beside her. Her eyes had brightened, and they were hard upon the men.
“Papa, where has Papa gone? And why did Mama go? Where are you taking us?”
“Silent, child. Come with us.”
As a man gripped Hope, a gust, summoned by no natural force, swept in among the crowd of people. Little Hope looked about. Ralph was bewildered. Adele, little silent Adele, stood amidst the crowd, her curious gray eyes staring the man straight in his eyes, her white curls fluttering around them, encircling her round, colorless face, and her mouth moving slowly, almost without sound.
“What was that, little girl,” the man bellowed, sneering at the faint being before him.
Her wispy, soprano voice was clear now, echoing throughout the hall as if encased by mountains and left to ring forever. Still, the words were indistinguishable. They were magic, deep, swelling with life at every end and every beginning.
Her words came fast and in drawn out sentences, none of which any could decipher, though they rang the slightest familiarity in one’s mind. The air was mobile now, not stale or heavy or dark or light, but forever moving.
The woman behind the counter took Adele by the arm, drug her through a long, dark corridor where a tall black door stood afar. As they reached it, the woman threw up her hand, tapped briskly upon its wood, and waited for an answer.
A husky, slow-moving voice answered.
“Come in.”
They entered, and with a bow that met her nose to her knees, the woman greeted her eternal leader.
“What is it?” the husky, slow voice demanded. Thin and depthless and shadowless eyes scrutinized the woman and small child above a pointed nose and hollow cheeks and below the darkest wisps of hair little Hope would ever have seen, had she been present.
The woman pushed Adele forward and she persisted speaking in foreign tongues, looking directly at her eternal leader with the same eyes she used to address her baby sister, with silent but direct solemnity.
After minutes of frustrated questioning, Absolute Ruler Konig sent for an interpreter, and a wise old man with Adele’s gray, all-seeing eyes was brought back to decipher her nonsense.
“What does she say,” demanded the ruler.
“Morituri te salutamus.”
The wise old man chuckled enthusiastically.
“She’s speaking Latin, my lord.”
“Well, what does she say?”
“She says, ‘we who are about to die salute you,’ my lord.”
“Corruptisima re publica plurimae leges.”
“It is all nonsense, my lord. Just a child’s playful teasing.”
“Is that so?”
“Damnant quodnon intelligent. Conscientia mille testes. Culpae poenae par esto.”
“Silence, child!”
“Culpae poenae par esto. Culpae poenae par esto.”
The ruler Konig could no longer stand the child’s senseless chattering and he sent her away. She, like her mother, father, brother, and sister, received what Konig ordered all of their kind and similar degenerate status to be given. On the evening of the date eleven months after Konig’s inauguration and two days after his declaration of dictatorship, the Lehmann family left old Mercy Surgical Center. Mr. Lehmann cradled his no longer pregnant but forever depressed wife, as his children, young Ralph, little Hope, and curious Adele, followed closely behind, clutching their wrists, which now bore a bold “D” in burned flesh, and wishing to remove the choking necklaces with brass pendants.
Curious Adele had, never before that date, spoken a word to her loved ones, and never again uttered a syllable, not even those in Latin. What puzzled her family the most was not her eternal silence, but the one day of voice she would ever give, for she was never instructed in Latin, and never again would be able to decipher the language. Her gray, all-knowing eyes remained as clear and colorless as they had that day in the surgical center, and for the rest of her days she wore the reminder of her deficiency upon her neck and on her wrist.
As for the Absolute Ruler Konig, in the days, months, and years following that questionable event in Mercy Surgical Center, he was forever followed by a frail figure in white, whose colorless hair and colorless eyes bore into his skull like fire and who haunted his dreams until his premature and confusing death only three years after becoming eternal rule of the State.
On the morning of his death, he was found to be naked, as colorless as the eyes that followed him for years, and with the brightest, boldest scarlet letter emblazoned upon his chest. None could ever explain how it came to be branded upon him. Some suppose he had etched it himself, driven insane by guilt, but even at his funeral, dressed in his best suit, the large, flaming “D” could not be concealed. Curious Adele attended this funeral, without invitation, and was never again seen by her family, although, on the fifth anniversary of that day in the surgical center, little Hope swore she saw her sister dancing on the grave of the dead dictator, the necklace with brass pendant gone and the wretched “D” erased from her skin.
