The Way the World Ends
1 am
Guards watch. Greasy hair, snake faces, granite eyes; armed with rifles. They do not move. Not even for Death's Concerto: first, the base of hag-coughs (pneumonia), then, a grating treble (prisoners clawing the stone walls). Together, an endless symphony, a spectral fantasy....a dream.
And the guards watch us exist, like dying monsters.
2 am
Death's Concerto stops. Hag's stifle their coughs. The world is quiet.
From my personal darkness (for it is mine) my ears prick up to understand the silence.
Hiss. The snakes have bitten. A rifle with a silencer shot about two cells down from me. Someone has failed to deliver their information. Someone has expired and thus the government has disposed of them, like rotting food.
Raised voices: the old debate about who gets which end of the corpse. Yin takes the arms, Yan the legs, blah blah blah. To me to you, to you to me...and back to silence.
One two three... and Death's Concerto begins again, this time in a sadder, slower movement. I cough, I feel I should join in. I cough again and spit out some bloody mucus onto the floor beside me.
I bite my fingers and feel nothing.
Am I in hell?
4 am
They stand in my personal darkness, do Yin and Yan. They stare like black statues. Grabbing me I am dragged through the corridors of lunes, cripples and political enemies.
We reach a room. A guard unlocks it. I am forced into a chair and my wrists fastened behind me, although I feel nothing – blood to my hands has long ceased.
And then he enters, a wizened man, the puppeteer of the hideous puppets that are the Guards, that watch into nothingness and do his bidding. He takes a dagger, cuts me three times, draws blood. He makes the threats "Death, death of my family, death of my dog" (the old tales). He wants information, he wants to suck it from me like a leech. He is a human Vampire. He wants names. The names of those who stood with me in the Tiananmen Protest. The people who wanted change. My friends.
I shake my head.
8 am
I am in hell.
I lie in a bath of my own blood in the room. Something worse than Death's Concerto is playing in my enflamed ears: the buzzing of a lamp. It’s a dormant sound, it increases the suspense. It almost throbs, like a heart.
I am in hell.
I can't open my mouth to curse the puppets, but I am gagged. I can't cry for my mother. I want to kick and wail, but my legs are broken. Am I a martyr?
I am in hell.
The Puppet Master comes in again and kneels beside me with a silver pistol. I get the ultimatum.
Like an infant I tell him the names of all my friends, gulping back my own blood. Like an infant I blab to the head teacher.
I am taken back to my cell, I probably will never leave.
The famous lines resonate in my head:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
