Part Two of Two | For Clo's Contest
(A/N: This is a tad long, I apologize. I didn't want to split 2,000 words into two 1,000 word pieces. It's kind of vague and intricate, so pay close attention.)
--
There is a new one on the bed.
Darkness falls around, like a woman undoing her hair in a mirror. Alfred just sits there, watching the little girl, humming. The sound of her breathing is soft and wonderful, thrilling his blood. The room heaves and he can barely keep still – he's so impatient for her to wake up, because he can only do it when they're awake, when they are aware. Her blonde hair traces down her face, like straw leaking from the sleeves of a scarecrow. Her lips glisten. They move. He has to restrain. He has to restrain himself.
He flicks open his switchblade and closes it and flicks it open again, to keep his nerves controlled.
He takes a deep breath and tries to think about something else, tries to control his flurrying thoughts that bluster around like dust blown off of old things. The nerve gas will wear off soon. It will wear off soon and then he can take her. Then he can –
-- Lined up. Hands in their pockets with fingers freezing blue. Old shawls and tattered scarves in the wind and no talking. Only words from the guards, and they are coarse, mocking ones at that. Coughing. Everyone is coughing. The snow is powdery. Some people don't have shoes, or have holes in their shoes and the cold and the ice causes them to leave behind bloody footprints. The train. Blowing cinderash that gets in your eyes if you're too close. It leaves. Gates big and black, with curls of barbed wire. People behind the gates. Narrow-bodied and close. Gray as hobos. Faces carved and boxy. Eyes snuffed out, no more flame, empty little nutshells.
They give us badges. Yellow. Star of David. File in, fall into rows. March. Even the women and the children. March, march, march. Limbs are wound up and cramped from the train ride. Little boys and girls have dirty faces and lines of snot running down their faces. Coughing. Might have croup. Doubled up and bentbacked, folding like letters stuffed into envelopes.
Arbeit Macht Frei, says the sign above the gate. Pass under it. Blonde guards with sullen, ashy faces. Sick with anger. Sick with hate. Cheeks caved in, eyes splintery. March us to a building, black, squatted. Inside, smells of fear and crap. Boxed in, piled in. Bodies so close together that the cold goes away. Strip. Peel away our clothes. Such a stink. Take the rags away and burn them outside. Nothing but our shoes, hobnailed and misshapen. Into the shower rooms. Everyone is naked and embarrassed, red skin, hot flesh. Turn on the water. Faucets squeak and choke. Cold drops drizzle out, spray us with shame and humility. White now. Shivering women with shriveled breasts. Can't keep my eyes off of them. They don't bother to hide. Let go of the last strings of humanness. Let go, let go. Can't afford to keep it. Somebody is crying. No one cares. We stare ahead. We know what happens next.
– She wakes up. Alfred watches her. She stays completely still and so does he. Even in the half-dark he can tell her eyes are blue as dusk. Perfect little girl. Perfect little human. He closes his switchblade and stands up.
**
I wake up sweating, everything skin moist and fungal. My heart throbs for no reason and I'm out of breath. There is the feeling of residual terror, something black and unremembered, but it fades away like embers inside a tired fire. I sit up and feel my forehead. My mouth is cottony. It hurts when I swallow. I swing my legs over the side of my bed and my feet touch the floor, which is cold. The face of the alarm clock reddens the walls of the room, rosy as the noses of children in the winter.
The night outside is black and stoic.
It looks as if it could gobble up any light, or anyone who stepped into it.
I leave my room and I walk down the hallway. Grave silence. Everything solemn and sorrowful and still, like churchbells. I step quietly onto the staircase, half afraid I'll disturb some lightly sleeping monster. The sticky padding of my feet. I keep my breath as shallow as I can, and I keep my arms around my shoulders.
Into the kitchen. I get a glass from the cupboard and I fill it with water. My lips are so dry and crinkly, even after I drink. I fill up another glass.
The dark is vulturous.
I hear something.
Crying.
I listen closer.
“Papa?”
Muffled and far away, but shaped into real words, I can tell. My heart starts to pound again. I stay where I am, trying to wake up a little more, confused, scared. It's coming from under me. It's coming from the basement.
I run upstairs to get Papa, but when I get to his bed, he's not there.
Just neatly folded sheets and the smell of old folks.
**
“Hello?” she says.
Alfred steps towards her.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Who's there?”
He lights a candle. The flame is timid and shy, like a bird that won't eat out of your hand.
“You can call me Alfred.”
“Where am I?”
“In my house.”
“I want to go home now.”
“I do, too. But I can't. See, my home was taken away from me. Long gone. Probably burnt to the ground. Do you want to know where I lived? I lived in Warsaw, which is in Poland, which is really far away. Across the ocean.”
He lights another candle.
“I want to go home,” she says, firmer. He is delighted by this. She lies there in the dimness with a vaguely displeased expression on her face, pulling at her restraints. No danger. Confusion, maybe. Curiousness. This will change. She regards him like some kind measly beggar on the streetcorner with a cardboard sign. He reaches out. He touches her. She flinches. Her skin is warm and new. He pulls back. Her expression has changed. Disgust now. Impatience.
“Is this a game?”
“No.”
“Then take me home!”
“I can't. You need to pay for what your parents and your grandparents have done.”
He flips open the switchblade. “The perfect little human being. My little Aryan.”
She catches on.
She screams.
**
My teeth are chattering.
I stand at the door of the basement. The sound is louder now. Screaming. Frantic, choking, horrible screaming. I open the door and cold air brushes past me like escaping birds. My chest is really tight and compressed and it's kind of hard to breath. There is a miserable light coming from down in the basement. The screaming tears at my ears until my head thumps, like the hard, sharp footplay of dancers.
I slink down the stairs, slowly, slowly.
And then.
It stops.
The air loses its tautness and collapses and my ears ring. A scream hangs in the air, suspended. The walls are saturated with it, like drunks. The stillness makes the sound of movement down in the basement even more apparent. I bite my lip. I step so I can see inside the room.
– Sickness. Everywhere there is sickness. Withered people, effigies in their gray clothes. Wisps. Float away, float away. They have been hollowed out. Flesh scooped away like ice cream. Takes all of out energy to stand. When we lie, it is hard to get back up. Blood seeped out. Skeleton-man. Nothing left but old memories. Dusty. Faded. Mostly made up of ancient songs and childishness. But it is food. We stand narrow and bony as crucifixes. Stand with cold feet in the mud. Scramble for scraps. Scrape your cheeks with a bit of glass to keep them looking fresh, ruddy. Otherwise, you look old and sick. Cart you away. Never come back from a hospital bed. Springs and sheets and disease.
Fight and bicker. Die. Always dying. Relief, sadness, wishing. The only way to survive is to wish and to hate. So hard to keep a thought alive, keep it healthy, keep it standing upright. Hate, though, is hardy, tough. Holds out strong. Even in this cancer, it grows. Especially in this cancer, it grows. We fill up. Until we piss hate and anger. Until it feeds off us. Off of our feeble supply of energy. Such a poison. Such a release. We can feel it. Corrosive. Gnawing. We dream. Dream of killing. Killing the man who sleeps beneath you because he snores. Killing the guard who spits in your face every morning. Killing the women who are always sniveling, whining like dogs, weeping. Killing God because he put you here. He cursed you and left you for dead. Killing the self-righteous ones who hold out for love and forgiveness and the basic good of man.
It's too late. For you. Rotten. Dead. Flies are gathering. Maybe you're walking. But it's too late. Too late. –
There is Papa. His back is turned. He works over a bed, jumping and skewed in the candlelight. I step closer. It's freezing and I hug myself tighter and my toes aren't moving anymore, milky and hard as pearls.
“Papa?”
He stops.
My voice sounds so small.
He doesn't turn around.
“Papa?”
“Go away. Go back to bed, Thomas.” His voice is hoarse. The darkness wrinkles around him, like the angry, closed up, purple-lidded eyes of newborns.
I glance at what he's doing.
A girl. Pretty girl. Blonde hair pooling around her face, cushioning it, presenting it like some kind of jewel. Features cold. Blood. Blood everywhere. Especially around her neck. Red as lust. Glistening wetly. Eyes staring, wide, shocked. Reaped away and limp.
Whispered. “Go away, Thomas.”
I open my mouth.
Froze up, frostbitten tongue.
He turns around.
His eyes are black mouseholes. He seems to grow real big, filling up the room, cracking out of some kind of shellskin. In his hand, he holds a switchblade. His face is blank, but I can see pain hidden in it.
I'm saying words, but I'm not sure which ones. They fall out of my mouth but I can't hear them. All I'm focused on is Papa's face and the girl, dessicated and disturbed like a robbed grave. He steps towards me.
“You shouldn't oughta come here,” he says. “Why did you have to see? Why did you have to come? Thomas, Thomas!”
He reaches for me.
I turn and run.
“Thomas!”
Can't get the breath out fast enough, evicting it. My eyes bulge like suitcases. I runrunrun! And he's behind me, close behind me, breath on the nape of my neck. Tickling. Up the stairs into the kitchen. The darkness pulling at me, tugging at me, curling between my legs like cats. He sucks for me. His voice is broken and grated. Rattling.
“Thomas!”
He lunges. He catches me around the waist. We fall. Walls tremble. I punch and kick at him, screaming, but my blows sink into him like he's made out of warm candlewax. He cries, he sobs. Why'd you have to see! Why'd you have to see! He holds me and I struggle. He holds me tight. Papa! What is this? There is blood on his hands, greasy. The dark stands above us. It stands above us like a priest. You can't know. You can't know. Sin in the air. Hate in the pulse. Cradled like the words in between the spine of a book. Held there, can't escape. Cupped in the jar of his hug. My teeth chatter, I don't know why. His tears are hot on my face. We lay here. They gotta pay, he whispers. Their kids have gotta pay for what they did to me. What they did to me!
He puts his hand over my mouth.
You can't know.
I bite him, but he doesn't care.
You can't.
He lifts the switchblade.
**
Alfred holds the boy for a long time. They sit there. They sit there together, close. He rests his forehead on Thomas's cheek, growing cold, like a windowpane. The blood is all over him, but he doesn't care. He draws in shaking, trembling, guttering gulps of air. His boy is dead.
His boy is dead.
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