Acid Bubbles

by Paul H. Round

  Once the large nurse had left the room, the perfume dissipated all too quickly into the very efficient ventilating system. It did not, however, dissipate from my mind. It was still very much to the forefront and it started me considering something Rachel told me. She said it took her a long time to find a perfume that didn’t remind her of a concentration camp.

  This may sound more than very strange, how could beautiful perfumes remind anybody of such an awful place. Perfume was a reminder of the tortures that had taken Rachel’s innocence at the hands of Oberfuhrer Maximilian Haussler. As age crept into the soldier’s body his uncontrollable fondness for very young girls grew with each year. With his position of supreme power allowing him to indulge in any proclivity, he investigated warped versions of physical satisfaction to satisfy his base desires.

  The very slim fifteen-year-old Rachel was the special thing he was looking for. She had the appearance of a girl much younger than her years. Long-term starvation had slowed her development into full womanhood. The Oberfuhrer first laid his eyes on this young girl in the sewing shed. Rachel was repairing the awful recycled paper uniforms, often used many times over. Ten people could wear one item of clothing or twenty if careful repairs were carried out. With time the accountants could average the cost per head, and because the large turnover of people, high command could be satisfied the unit costs were low. You couldn’t waste good paper clothes by burning them.

  He was taken by her dark beauty thinking she was only twelve or thirteen-years-old. This excited him. Maximilian liked girls who could be “womanly”. In this he meant they could be used time and time again without too much damage, because physical damage would spoil his enjoyment; his only consideration. Rachel, however, was something special, though normally Haussler felt nothing emotionally for the young women he abused. Rachel was an unexpected vision enticing Maximilian to go in a different direction for the only time in his life.

  Easily bored he would use them for a few days, and when he tired of them, if they were lucky, he’d toss them back into the bowels of the camp. Sometimes if they lashed out at him he would shoot them in the face for fun more than punishment. Once he enjoyed the sensation of shooting a girl in the face as they were standing and he was taking her. Max wanted to feel the sensation of release, leaving her while she was having a death spasm. He didn’t say if he’d enjoyed it, but it was an experiment.

  Rachel proved to be different right from the very moment he saw her. Maximilian understood he must have her in his quarters. She would be is maid, his cook, his dresser, his personal little lady. He would find some clothes for her, pretty clothes, things that once belonged to rich families and now piled up in storage. Fine quality clothes from the best shops in pre-war Berlin, and this girl was small enough to wear the clothes of a twelve-year-old. The very thought of this made Maximilian very happy indeed. And so Rachel was fed every day, only just enough to keep away the hunger pains, not enough nourishment to bring her body into full womanhood.

  Her time as his plaything started with the bath, the first hot bath Rachel had had for months, or was it years? She really couldn’t remember. Then he combed her hair with great care for more than two hours. He sang soft childhood lullabies as he moved the comb with a gentle rhythm through her hair adding different products from time to time. He worked carefully smoothing the dark sooty tangle into glossy black sheen. He then insisted she always used a perfume he’d discovered while visiting Paris some years ago.

  He’d bought it as a special gift for his sister Ingrid. Now in the dark days of war with Ingrid burnt to dust, a victim of Allied bombing, he lavished it all on this other young girl. Perhaps facially though, not in colouring, she reminded him too much of Ingrid. This girl was dark, as Ingrid had been fair, this girl’s skin would bronze in the sun, where Ingrid’s was always white. He decided it was something in the face or was it the eyes that reminded him of a childhood with his lost sister?

  Decades down the road in my lovely bright room, I was getting to grips with the real world. My remembering the hideous world Rachel described was a diversion, part of my battle against cancer and my intoxication with the parallel universe. I was trying to remember the chronology of events in that camp. It annoyed me that my recollections were so jumbled, sometimes with painkillers, though I was now taking far less. It was difficult to pin down the order of events.

  It was something like this. Oberfuhrer Maximilian Haussler used her with rapacious brutality as his sex toy for five months. Being his slave kept her body alive, not her soul, that part died more each day. In the sense of physical being, many of the people who had been in the sewing shed with her had now perished from disease or gas. She was feeling guilty about staying alive, because she was given small amounts of good quality food, clothing and warmth, others had nothing. Rachel was his sex slave being kept just right for a man who liked young girls, she loathes herself, but what could she do? To rage against Maximilian would be committing suicide, or fight on?

  The Oberfuhrer was gluttonous in his appetites desiring many young girls, and on his more depraved days would select others bringing them to share his pleasures. This would worry Rachel, though she would never voice her thoughts to that monster. She might be replaced and sent back to the shed if she were lucky. Some of the women would be a danger, accusing her of collaboration, others would be just sad for her.

  On the occasions he did bring the other girls none of them ever stayed more than one night. Two of them died in front of her, and he pointed out it would increase her diligence in pleasuring him. He told Rachel about the girl he’d shot in the face during orgasm and how he wanted to feel her spasms. This man knew no bounds, and she was trapped in his world of terror.

  Eventually Maximilian never ever shared their moments together with anybody else. She was exclusively his. He was a man of heavy needs, and to this extent he used every part of Rachel’s body in the search of satisfaction. Sometimes he lay there naked next to her, sweaty, drunken, snoring and so openly vulnerable. Rachel wanted to grab his ceremonial dagger, a very elaborate gold and pearl handled device, and plunge it into his heart killing the monster. She also knew for this action she would die a more terrible death than most of the terrible deaths in the camp. So Maximilian lived, and so did only a small part of Rachel.

  In the final days before the Allied advance swamped the camp, bringing Rachel to the rehabilitation hospital and her first-ever meeting with Abraham, two things happened. The first was she went to sleep naked in the pungent, sweaty, post-sexual embrace of Maximilian, and woke up alone. She could hear distant guns. All the Nazis had left. Rachel was stunned. They had gone and she was still alive. Perhaps Maximilian had thought something of her, or the Allied advance had taken him by surprise giving him no time to return and kill her. Many others had taken bullets moments from freedom as the Nazis escaped. Rachel would survive!

  The second was that for a few precious minutes there was a non-reality where nobody could believe they’d left. Rachel used this to scour her body of any smell of the perfume, and rubbed herself in her own filth to make herself part of the camp and not some collaborator. Again she donned a disgusting old paper uniform pulled from a corpse near the officers’ block. She wouldn’t stand out, and she hoped some of the more crazy ones seeking wild retribution couldn’t smell her!

  She’d not been guilty, but had been fed, and survived. Others had lost all their families. Blame had to go somewhere, and frustrations over the terrible inability to fight had to be taken out on something. The madness didn’t find Rachel. Maximilian disappeared forever, possibly dead in the final fight for Berlin, or he’d turned into vapour and hid from his crimes in a sympathetic country. Rachel knew she would never see him again. For a long time she thought about seeing him in the street somewhere, and what would she do if she saw him again? But she never would.

  I was getting very tired now and starting to slip off the edge into sleep. This wasn’t an automatic entry into the parallel universe. I had to rem
ember that only recently I wanted to be there all the time despite the feelings of terrible guilt at some unspeakable crime every time I awoke. At that time I was so addicted to the other dimension I was having difficulty focusing on the staying alive bit! I concentrated on the harshness of mankind… my world… I slipped into sleep.

  This super reality didn’t start off in a white void, or a black void. No, it started off with a bell ringing. A loud, ding, ding, ding, ding was ringing in my ears. I was standing by a gated level crossing with a very nice red bicycle held by the saddle with my right hand. I was waiting for the train to thunder through the crossing in a cloud of vapour. As always it was a beautiful sun dappled day, and I could already see Jennifer waiting outside the Old Vaporous Loco tavern just across the tracks. She had a bicycle with her too.

  The train only took two minutes to come through and pass. It seemed like an age. I wanted to join my lovely friend. She’d already got the beer in, but then I realised I was sweating. She’d beaten me to the pub, or more to the point shot away before the gates closed. How she got served so quickly is a mystery, but then this is Jennifer’s world, so she knew the train was coming. She’d probably phoned the pub to tell them she would arrive at 1.23pm, or something like that. She was laughing at me. My gaze travelled from her beautiful smile and down. I could see a little bit more of my hidden past getting ready to greet me. The briefcase was in a little basket on a rack above the back wheel. I knew it waited for me alone.

  That stupid little pixie would be in there somewhere. I imagined she’d be wearing cycling gear today, or that dreaded fireman’s uniform. Of course, as always, I was wrong.

  Eventually the train had passed, the crossing opened, and at that moment I was free to enjoy a beer with my exquisite companion. Today she was mostly wearing Lycra, except Lycra didn’t exist in the parallel in the sense we know it. This was more a silk and Merino wool affair, but the effect on me was quite profound. This is what I think caused me to spend most of the day cycling behind her, and how I got caught out at the level crossing. Too much concentration on the wrong kind of thing can be bad for your health, particularly at level crossings!

  When I arrived propping my bike up against hers I asked where the large dog O’Duke was today. She informed me he was here and still guarding the bag. There was no evidence whatsoever of an Irish wolfhound no matter where I looked. I investigated everywhere, under the tables, around the pub yard, across the road in the bushes. Full investigation revealed no sign of the big Irish wolfhound. I voiced this to Jennifer who laughed her lovely tinkling laugh.

  “Don’t be silly. You don’t have to see him all the time, but he’s here,” she said.

  I didn’t want to take the bag away from the pixies, or destroy it, but I had the urge to stand up, undo the clasp, and pull it open. Jennifer, however, had pre-empted me. She took a huge drink from her pint, and standing up grasped the bag with both hands. She then pulled it open with a flourish, and as she did this the most curious thing happened. It seemed to gain a little bit of weight and her arms sank slightly. Out of the bag came the huge head of an Irish wolfhound, it laughed at me, all teeth and grinning. Then to my surprise the big dog, and this is the truth, winked at me, then disappeared back down into the bag. As he went down into the darkness it was obvious the bag got lighter, the weight disappearing from Jennifer’s arms.

  She couldn’t hold the whole weight of an Irish wolfhound, so I concluded the bit you could see was the only bit that weighed anything. It was still guarding the bag. This diligence would catch the unwary, those foolish enough to open it would discover the full wolfhound, and this is where I stress the word “wolf”!

  “How am I going to get into the bag if the hound’s in there?” I asked.

  After I said this I took a big long refreshing drink of glorious beer with my head back, my eyes closed. When I opened them to put the beer glass back on the table I was standing in the blackness once again. Just to reassure myself I looked up. Above me were three things, not including the sky of course. One of them was smiling at me and he was an Irish wolfhound. The other was also smiling at me with a little bit of an ironic twist to the corner of her mouth. The sort of look that says, “We caught you there didn’t we”? Finally I was still definitely in the pub yard because above both of them silhouetted against the blue sky I could see the pub sign, “The Old Vaporous Loco”.

  Inside, the Lylybel who I called pixie was already waiting dressed in the finest God knows what. She was dancing around making a strange little skipping arm waving dance. During this performance it looked as if the pixie weighed almost nothing. This must be impossible, I thought, as she was wearing an enormous backpack. It was a canvas device similar to a very old hiker’s backpack. However, the canvas appeared to be of a very fine lightweight quality. The bag itself was colossal. It was the size of a small car hitched up high on the back of this delicate and now wondrously strong creature.

  As always she pre-empted my question. I was going to ask what was in the bag. My little friend had already realised this and told me it was an antidote to the bubbles. I was just about to ask if it was full of water when she mentioned this was a different antidote, one that would work in a different way, and was sometimes a little bit more effective. This would have me back to normal with a little less suffering. I noticed she didn’t say without suffering, just a little less. The pixie could be such a liar.

  She produced from nowhere, or hidden back pockets in her clothes, the two familiar devices. The ornate silver cup and the blowing ring, which of course wasn’t a key. Or was it the key? This time the ornate vessel in which the bubbles lived, I suppose I can use that word, was quite small, much smaller than I’d seen before, and I was wondering if the key would fit into it. Of course when I saw the key I realised it would. This too was tiny, so I was expecting a myriad of small bubbles, and that’s exactly what I didn’t get.

  Pixie didn’t take a breath. She dipped the tiny device into the silver pot, held it up in front of her face, pursed her lips, and at this point the giant haversack started to get very slightly smaller, not smaller by a large amount, but very slightly smaller. The draft, because it was nothing more coming from her lips started to produce a bubble, not a stream of bubbles, just a single tiny almost black bubble. It looked horrific, nightmarish. The bubble continued to expand as the enormous backpack became a little smaller. It was still a massive backpack, but by now the bubble was coloured light grey and enormous, the size of an elephant. It wobbled around on the end of the blowing device looking for the world like a bouncy castle version of this creature.

  “Go on then! Go on then! Pop it! Pop it!“ pixie demanded. She’d disappeared entirely behind the colossal bubble, and there was no sign of the vessel, or the key. Through the translucent glow of this very light grey bubble, I could see the pixie was now wearing what appeared to be an early Boy Scout uniform complete with shorts, hairy socks, brogues and an enormously stupid large brimmed Scout hat. She removed this monstrous headgear and threw it at the bubble. It bounced off the grey blob flopping to the floor. She then told me the only way I could pop this one was to run at it going full pelt. She informed me not to run at it “half arsed”. Some pixie!

  So, I ran at the bubble on full power. I was doing fifteen miles an hour when I hit it producing a big wet pop!

  To me it sounded like I’d dived below the surface of a pool, the stunning rush of a quieter sound, full of strange ghost echoes.

  Pixie heard a big pop and laughed so much she almost burst!

  Chapter 22 – Forgotten times relived, sometimes you’ve got to laugh!

  In my hand I held a fresh packet of non-filter cigarettes, and a half bottle of whisky rested in my pocket. I was standing in a hospital corridor. I scanned this way and that looking for somebody official with who I could enquire as to the whereabouts of one Leonard Stubbington. This was his unused birth certificate name, to everyone else in the outside world this particular Leonard was known as the more immediate Le
nny the Helmet, famous for his continuous carrying of a crash helmet, and that’s the story he told his mother.

  Lenny was on the trauma ward having had a bizarre accident a few days earlier. He’d spent the first few days in intensive care. Lenny was in luck. They weren’t too bothered about head trauma or anything considered sinister by the neural consultants. The biggest worry for the doctors were blood clots coming from the many broken bones in his legs and the possibility of bone marrow leaking into his system causing heart problems. He was pretty bashed about after suffering a nasty accident riding his much loved Lambretta 225 cc SX scooter. This had not survived the brutal impact. Lenny had not been told of its sad demise. I knew the big greasy dork would be mortified at the loss of his loved one.

  I didn’t know the details of the accident, however, I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out from the man himself. That was if I could find him in this maze of corridors, small rooms, and signposting that was useless for finding anything you were looking for, or for that matter anything you weren’t! They consisted entirely of numbers and acronyms. After a quarter of an hour of looking around, I had at last located my quarry in a small side ward with three other patients, all of them young, all of them in traction, and all of them motorcyclists. Most of them would return to 2 two wheels, Lenny included.

  “Hey, hi, man, cool to see you. I’m doing just great, fantastic, amazing!” Lenny said, as high as a kite on painkillers. All this was said in a slurred and difficult to understand voice. I suggested I return tomorrow but he would have none of it and wanted to tell me all about it, how he’d come to find that sometimes fluffy clouds are solid. This had me mystified, and I asked him what he meant by solid clouds. At this Lenny laughed like a drain. “Man, the mist, it was solid, solid as a rock, and I tried to ride through it!” Lenny managed. After this he slurred out an explanation as to the circumstances of his accident. He took the long route round, and the whole tale carried on for about an hour before I could make out exactly what he was saying. It was like this: