American Reich

by Pliss, Todd

  The back alley dead-ended into the back of an apartment building. The wall of the dwelling towered twelve stories above him. He could go no further. Wayne kicked himself for being so stupid. How could he let himself get cornered like that?

  On the ground, besides trashcans too small for a person to fit into, was a large pile of flattened cardboard packing boxes. Wayne figured he was beat, but crawled anyway into the pile of boxes so that he was hidden.

  A squad of six SS Nazis, led by SS Officer Werner, entered the dark alley, illuminating their way with flashlights. They began to search every nook and cranny of the alley. The SS men kicked over trashcans, and kicked though small mounds of scattered debris, as they neared Wayne’s hiding place.

  This was it, Wayne thought - his final moments on Earth. He thought about his impending death. Would it hurt? Would there be a heaven? Could this be it- you live, you die- and that is it? He was sorry he hadn’t called Lauren before he left on this insane escapade. He would miss her more than anything else.

  Werner and his men neared the end of the alley. Werner eyed the pile of boxes, lit up by the Nazi’s torchlights. The SS men had their firearms at the pile.

  A flash of brilliant white light surrounded the heap of boxes and a loud, mysterious crackling noise rang out.

  The SS men stopped dead in their tracks. None of the men had ever witnessed so bizarre an incident. These trained men of steel, including Officer Werner, became apprehensive about what they had just seen.

  “Check it out,” Werner cautiously said to his men.

  Obeying directions from a superior, the five men, with weapons drawn, slowly pulled apart the pile of boxes. Nothing was found except for a few red ants scurrying about.

  Everybody was speechless. The men knew they had seen their fugitive run down into this alley. There was no other place he could have hid or could have gone to. Wanting not to appear weak in front of his men, SS Officer Werner simply said, “Move it out.” His men complied.

  The occurrence did haunt Werner, though. The once proud SS officer became a heavy drinker, and then a full-fledged alcoholic. He would die of liver failure in 1938 before the war broke out. His family never would understand why he became what he did, but to the five SS men with him on that night in that dark alley, there was little doubt as to what had caused Werner’s confidence to have been shaken and what had led to his inevitable decline.

  Pliss / Reich

  CHAPTER THREE

  Wayne materialized in the time machine in Dr. Hoffmann’s laboratory. Dr. Hoffmann was nowhere in sight. He got out of the contraption, stroked his ruffled hair, and exhaled deeply. He was relieved to be back home, and not a minute too soon.

  “I’ve been planning this for years. Nothing can go wrong,” Wayne said imitating Dr. Hoffmann. “Yeah, right.”

  The door to the lab was opened. In walked Dr. Lisa Hoffmann. Wayne noticied something was odd immediately.

  Dr. Hoffmann’s glasses were gone. Her hair had a sharp blond tint to it compared to the brown it had always been previously and was cut quite short, much like a military haircut. She was also less frail than she had looked when Wayne had last seen her. Dr. Hoffmann was more muscular and athletic.

  Wayne’s anger slipped away as he relaxed. He had planned on really letting Dr. Hoffmann know how angry he was with her for letting him stay in Nazi Germany for so long and for not telling him the real reason why she had sent him back, but he couldn’t muster the energy.

  “Boy, am I glad to finally see you!” Wayne blurted out. “You kept me there almost long enough to get me killed. But I’m back, damn it! And I ain’t never leaving again.”

  “Wie ist ihr name?” Dr. Hoffmann said with a German accent.

  “I did it, Doc. I did it! Just like you planned it.”

  “Wie ist ihr name?” Dr. Hoffmann said with annoyance.

  “What did you say?” Wayne asked.

  “Who are you?” Dr. Hoffmann wanted to know.

  “Hey, how long was I gone? Why didn’t you bring me back the same night I left? Did you cut your hair? I think I liked it better longer. Anyway, I-”

  Dr. Hoffmann stood firm. “You have three seconds to tell me who you are and what you are doing in my lab.”

  “Let me tell you, Dr. Hoffmann, you have a weird sense of humor. It’s me, Wayne Goldberg, who do you think?” Dr. Hoffmann did not look amused at all.

  “I can’t believe I actually did it,” Wayne continued. “I slipped the stuff into the drink, then he croaked, and then, these fuckin’ Nazi soldiers...”

  Dr. Hoffmann walked out of the lab, closing and locking the door behind her.

  Wayne was bewildered. “Doc, where are you going?” he yelled. He attempted to open the door, but couldn’t. Wayne looked at the clock on the wall. It read 9:35. Wayne sat down and tried to figure out what Dr. Hoffmann was up to. Is this how he would be thanked for risking his life for her?

  Ten minutes later, Wayne was pacing back and forth. “I don’t know,” he thought out loud, “maybe she soaked up too much radiation and that made her go bonkers.” Wayne heard the sound of the lab door being unlocked. “It’s about time.” The door swung open.

  “Did you finally come to your sen-”

  Wayne’s jaw dropped ajar as two men entered the laboratory gripping machine guns and pointed the weapons directly at him. More startling to Wayne was the fact that the men were dressed exactly like the Nazis he had eluded previously that night, right down to their swastika armbands. Dr. Lisa Hoffmann was present with these men.

  “A joke is a joke, Doctor,” Wayne said. “What’s going on?”

  The two men dressed as Nazis took hold of Wayne, who resisted. One of the men he resisted struck Wayne in the face, connecting hard, causing his nose to bleed.

  “You fuckin’ asshole!” Wayne cried out.

  One of the men handcuffed Wayne’s hands behind his back, while the other blindfolded him.

  Wayne was shocked at what was happening. “What is this? You hate Nazis,” he managed to scream out. “Remember the letter your father wrote you before the Nazis murdered him and your mother-”

  Wayne was gagged with a cloth, and dragged out of the lab room by the two men. As Dr. Hoffmann watched this intruder being “escorted” out, worry lines creased her forehead.

  The inside of Gestapo headquarters in New Berlin City looked much like a typical police station would, with its generic bland desks in neat rows. A Gestapo man sat at each desk, some talking on the telephone and others doing paperwork.

  Seated on a chair, in front of one of the desks, a young lady wept. On the desk sat a loaf of bread.

  “Please forgive me, but I was starving.” the young lady said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I have not eaten in a week.”

  A Gestapo man sat stoically behind the desk. “The Party makes sure everybody gets enough to eat. Stealing is a severe criminal act.”

  “Yes, but I spent my food allowance on my child. He has a high fever and needed additional medicine. The doctor-”

  The Gestapo man was not impressed. “Every German citizen is aware of the penalty for theft. The Reich cannot have a society of animals running around stealing. You shall receive the proper punishment,” he said emotionless.

  The Gestapo man stood up. He surveyed the young lady’s right hand. It was days like this that he realized just how much he loved his occupation and how he would not change it for anything in the world.

  “No! No! Please!” the young lady frantically cried.

  Wayne was brought into the building and roughly escorted between the rows of desks towards the back of the room.

  Wayne sensed that something had gone terribly wrong. Wayne thought that somehow he must have changed the course of history.

  The Gestapo Nazis who had brought him in threw Wayne onto a small, wooden chair.

  SS Captain Von Helldorf strode over. The Gestapo man saluted him.

  Wayne’s blindfold was removed, as was the gag from his mouth. His h
ands, however, were left handcuffed. The handcuffs had been locked tightly around his wrists, and Wayne wished that they had been removed before the blindfold or gag.

  “Wie ist ihr name, mein freund?” Von Helldorf asked.

  Wayne remained silent. Von Helldorf saw fit to slap him hard.

  “Wie ist ihr name?” Von Helldorf asked him again.

  “Why don’t you speak English?” Wayne said. “This is America, for God’s sake.”

  “So, my friend, you prefer to speak English. How come that does not surprise me?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me, dickface,” Wayne said bravely.

  Von Helldorf smirked, “Ah, I can see that interrogating you shall be a lot of fun. I have not had a fun interrogation in, oh... a week. It seems that my prisoners usually die just as the fun is about to begin.” The SS Captain paused, then asked, “One last time: who are you?”

  Wayne remained quiet.

  “You shall be my entertainment for the night.” He turned to his men, “Bring him into the main room.”

  The Gestapo men led Wayne up a steep flight of stairs and down a long hallway. Criminals and deviators often received their “just” punishment from the Gestapo in one of the various rooms on this floor of horrors.

  Wayne was led past the glass door to one of these rooms. In the room, the unfortunate young lady who had been caught stealing the loaf of bread was present with a few Gestapo men. The buzzing of a chainsaw rang out. Wayne heard the young lady’s screams pierce the air as blood squirted in all directions in the room.

  Wayne was shoved into an interrogation room at the very end of the hall.

  This special room contained many different torture devices, including some that looked like they came right out of a medieval castle, such as the iron maiden, where a prisoner could be locked in a confining metal device as if a mummy.

  Wayne was stripped down to his underwear and then securely vertically tied spread eagle to a lashing rack.

  “You do not want to talk; let the fun begin,” SS Captain Von Helldorf said.

  Wayne looked around the room in disbelief. He felt as if he had walked onto the set of a Bela Lugosi movie. He realized that the men whom had brought him to this dungeon fully intended to make use of the available torture machines and weapons. Wayne decided he better talk. He didn’t have a high tolerance for pain. He remembered when he broke his arm in junior high and winced, he had thought he was going to die.

  “Look, you want the truth, you’ve got it,” Wayne said. “My name is Wayne Goldberg, and I’m a college student. One of my professors invented a time machine. She sent me back in time to kill Adolf Hitler, and then I was brought back to 1995. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. That’s the honest-to-God truth, I swear it.”

  Von Helldorf laughed. “Time machine? As in a device that would enable someone to travel between time periods?”

  “Yes,” Wayne nervously responded. “Look, I know it’s crazy, but it’s the truth.”

  “Do not waste my valuable time. I will give you points for originality, young man, but none for honesty.”

  One of the Gestapo men held a thick leather bullwhip in his hand.

  Captain Von Helldorf ordered him, “One lash.”

  The Gestapo was only too happy to listen. Wayne received one lashing on his bare back and he groaned loudly.

  “You can stop this anytime,” Von Helldorf said.

  “I told you the truth. I swear it!”

  “Three lashes.” The whip stopped and Wayne felt welts rising on his back as he gasped for air.

  “You must enjoy the pain, my friend,” Von Helldorf said. “That is fine with me. I enjoy giving it.” He turned to his trusty man with the bullwhip and said, “Twenty lashes.”

  Wayne’s groans turned to screams. Each crack of the leather whip hurt more than the previous one. The pain was intense - worse than anything Wayne had ever experienced in his life. About the time of lash number twelve, Wayne felt his consciousness slipping away.

  SS Captain Von Helldorf commanded one of the Gestapo men, “Revive him.”

  The Gestapo man picked up a large bucket of ice-cold water and splashed the it onto Wayne’s face. Wayne slowly woke up.

  “Are you ready to talk, or shall we continue on?” Von Helldorf asked of Wayne.

  In pain and shock, Wayne was ready to tell Von Helldorf anything that he wanted to know. He mumbled, “I’ll talk.”

  The Gestapo men untied Wayne from the lashing rack, then seated and strapped him onto a large, uncomfortable wooden chair.

  “What is your name?” Von Helldorf demanded.

  “Wayne Goldberg.”

  “Where have you come from? What underground resistance are you with? Tell me.”

  Wayne, obviously, had no idea what the sadistic SS Captain was inquiring about. Wayne had already attempted to tell Von Helldorf the truth, but he didn’t buy it. Wayne knew he had to say something. Anything. He was hurting. “It’s underground in... in...the Bronx.”

  “Where is the Bronx?”

  “North of the City, near Yonkers.”

  “Bronx?” The SS Captain questioned. “Was that not the name of an American city prior to the war?” he asked the Gestapo.

  “I believe so, sir. If it was the city that I think it was, it would now be located in Quadrant F-42.”

  “You are lying. I do not like liars,” Von Helldorf said aggravated. He slapped Wayne hard across the face. “TALK.”

  “I told you the truth. I’m a college student at New York University. My professor there invented a time machine, sent me back in time to 1933 to kill Hitler, I did. And then I came back to this damn nightmare. That’s the whole truth and nothing but the fucking truth,” he raved.

  “You refer to places that have not existed for over thirty years. Why? Who has taught you these things?”

  Wayne didn’t answer the SS Captain; he just stared blankly.

  Von Helldorf was becoming impatient. “The fun has begun to wear thin. Bring over the electrodes.”

  A cart with a shock treatment device was brought over. The Gestapo cranked it up and attached the two electrodes to Wayne’s testicles, one electrode per ball.

  “Let me tell you something, my naïve prisoner. Your kind, no matter what it is,” Von Helldorf worked himself up into a sweat, “Jew, Slavic, Pole, homosexual or any other of the inferior slave peoples that infect the Reich, will be crushed and destroyed. That is the Gestapo’s number one priority.” Furiously he said, “Tell me the truth.”

  “I already did,” Wayne frantically said.

  “Hochspannung.” Von Helldorf commanded.

  The Gestapo manning the machine turned a dial a small amount to the right.

  Wayne’s body became rigid and his muscles tense as electricity shot through his groin. He bit his lip hard, trying not to scream.

  “Hohes tier!” Von Helldorf commanded.

  The man turned the dial all the way to the right, as far as it would go. All of the three Gestapo men present clearly were amused and received a perverted satisfaction from the proceedings. These mindless robots had no idea of the pain actually being inflicted on their prisoner.

  Wayne could not hold it any longer. He shrieked and it echoed off the walls.

  Later that evening, the Gestapo men whom had been working downstairs would offer their congratulations for a job well done to their colleague and mentor, SS Captain Von Helldorf. After all, it wasn’t every interrogation when they were able to hear the victim’s screams through the ceiling above their heads.

  The jail cellblock contained numerous small cells, however, the cells lacked the usual iron gates that kept a prisoner contained. Instead, the prisoners were confined by lines of red laser beams that ran from the ceiling down to the floor in front of each diminutive cell. If a prisoner tried to escape, that prisoner would be fried to a crisp by the intense heat generated by the laser beam. The Gestapo men always got a kick out of seeing a prisoner, who could not take being
locked up anymore or any of the many forms of torture that would be perpetrated on him, commit suicide by throwing himself, or as the case sometimes was, herself, into the scorching red hot center of the laser beam. The small jail cells were devoid of any furnishings, windows, or even a simple piece of plumbing for a basic human need - a toilet.

  The cellblock housed six prisoners, four men and two women. These once proud citizens were filthy and had been reduced, by repeated punishments back to a childlike state of mind. Why were some of the prisoners incarcerated? One poor man, a dentist, had an alcohol problem. Another prisoner was accused of embezzlement from his company. This was typical of the prison system in the Reich.

  A seventh prisoner was added to the cellblock that night. The thick, steel entrance door was opened and Wayne was brought in by the Gestapo who had interrogated him. Captain Von Helldorf followed them in. Wayne, wearing only his underwear, was pushed into a vacant cell.

  “You are to stand at attention with your eyes looking straight ahead, arms at your side,” Von Helldorf instructed the prisoner. “If you are found sitting, sleeping, or in any other position than what I just described, you will be shot like a dog. Let me assure you, that if you are foolish enough to try to leave, you will be cooked alive.”

  The Captain took a remote control device out of his coat pocket. He aimed the remote control towards a sensor at the top of the jail cell and pressed a button on it. Lines of red laser beams appeared, running from ceiling to floor in front of the cell.

  Wayne assumed the position of standing at attention.

  Von Helldorf and his men left the cellblock, locking the door behind them.

  To say that Wayne was a little in pain then would have been like saying the Grand Canyon was nothing more than a little hold in the ground. Wayne mustered the tiny amount of strength he had remaining to keep standing, a torture in its own way. He ached everywhere and wavered where he stood.

  Later that evening, around midnight, SS Captain Von Helldorf was busy working in his office. His office was by no means extravagant, but was beautifully furnished with velvet furniture and ivory carved figures. Ivory, imported from Africa, was the latest craze among the SS elite.