“I wanted to cause suffering.”
“But his suffering is over.”
“Not suffering for him. Suffering for you.”
She begins to chew a ragged thumbnail on her left hand. Staring at me, she worries it like a terrier with a rat, not noticing when she harries out a strip of skin that pulls to the quick; her body is so undernourished that it doesn’t even bleed.
I wait for her next question, knowing she’s smart enough to realize she has only asked one. I can wait longer than she, even though I feel the end of my time coming quickly.
The thumb falls from her mouth. “Why does it bother you if I praise God?”
“It does not bother me, fraulein.”
“You stayed past your shift to speak to me in private because of it.”
“I concede your point but still disagree.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
I move suddenly, jerking Von Erich’s body close to hers, putting Von Erich’s face in hers so I can study her eyes. She flinches at the movement but stares back at me. Her gaze is clear, wary, but without the flash of recognition I expected. She knows nothing about what is really going on.
But it won’t take her long.
I straighten. The bonds of our bargain fall on me. Truth, I must speak the truth.
“I shot your brother and I feel nothing. It was like shooting a dog or stray cat.” I pause to see if she will react. She doesn’t. “If anyone deserves praise it is I.”
She shakes her head. Her eyes slide away and her lip turns down.
That bothers me. Greatly. “What is that? Pity? From you?” Von Erich’s voice cracks as hellfire stirs in my belly. “How dare you!”
“You don’t realize you are just God’s instrument.”
The fire boils up, slicing through this voice like a whiplash. “I am nobody’s tool!”
She speaks softly, as if to a rabbit. “I do pity that you don’t see Him in even this nightmare like I do. You are His tool and this horrible place His smelting furnace.” Her jaw sets. “And I dare because I know He has not abandoned me.”
“Do you know what they do to people here?” I laughed, a short, harsh bark. “Your word ‘furnace’ is correct in ways you do not know.”
The chair creaked as she lunged forward, eyes wide and teeth gritted like a rabid animal. “We know exactly what you do to us here! I have smelled the rich heady scent of roasting meat and cried as my stomach growled for it even though I knew, I KNEW, what it was. I have worked the fields while ash fell on me like soft, gray snow, still warm against my face from the furnace. I have worn the clothes left from people I’ve known here, fighting against nausea brought by the chemicals saturating them from the ‘shower.’” Clawed fingers dig into her own thigh. “I know exactly what you do to us here.”
“Your God allows all of this.”
She shakes her head, sitting back, pulling herself together. “It is my turn to question you.” She waits to see if I will protest. I won’t. It is her turn. “Who are you?”
There.
There it is, the glimmer of recognition.
“You know. If you have the courage to speak it.”
I expect a hiss. I get a simple statement.
“Satan.”
Clever girl.
I nod. “That is what you people call me.”
She doesn’t speak. Taking it all in. Her mouth opens, then closes.
Then opens. “Why are...”
“Ah, ah, ah.” I wave Von Erich’s finger, cutting her off. “My turn. Why would you praise Him in the face of all this suffering?” Job couldn’t answer that one worth a shit. Let’s see how little Hadassah does with it.
“This is your fault, not His. I have no reason to withhold praise.”
Anger sparks and I laugh. “You think this is my fault? That I did this?” I point my finger at her. “Those were rhetorical. They don’t count.”
She nods.
I continue. “I had nothing to do with this. Believe it or not, I am innocent in this great suffering, this Holocaust. Humans, you base, worthless, sinful creatures, did all of this to yourselves.”
“You are never innocent.”
“Oh, ho, ho! The mortal speaks so definitively on things that occurred millennia before her birth. Understand this, you breath of a creature, I was innocent once. I was the very definition of innocent.”
“What happened?”
She’s out of turn but the heat in my belly won’t let me stop. “You happened. You, you...” It builds inside me, eons of hatred. I have no one to tell about it, no one to share my burden. It all comes out, poison in a wound. “...you come along and He indulges you. He forgives you even though you do things, horrible things to each other. You make places like this and allow your darkness free rein and He will forgive you just if you ask! But not me! All I wanted was to ascend next to Him, to be close to Him and He knocked me down here because of it. No second chance, no forgiveness.” The word tastes like shit on my tongue.
“Have you ever asked forgiveness?”
Von Erich’s hand is back before I realize it, clenched into a hard fist. She flinches, falling off the chair, scrambling away as fast as she can. The want, the need, to smash her to the ground, to pound her face until it’s a mess of red and bone and splatter clutches me around my chest, embracing me like a lover.
The bargain struck is the only thing that saves her from my black rage.
The limitation of my condition is a hot wire laid along the spine of this body. It reminds me. Time is drawing short. Breathing deeply, I drop Von Erich’s fist and straighten.
I turn away from her. “You can rise. You’re safe.”
“I don’t feel safe.”
“I don’t care. Get up.”
I hear the scrape of her bare feet on the rough wood as she stands, the clump of the chair leg against the same floor as she sits on the edge of it.
It’s my turn to ask a question.
“Do you think you will be rescued, Hadassah?”
“I believe God will save me.”
I look over. Her expression is open and raw, dark eyes haunted in their hollows. She believes it could happen, but isn’t sure it will happen. The fleeting nature of faith itself.
I smile at her. “I could take you from this place.”
She laughs. “That price is too great.”
“It would cost you nothing.”
“Liar.”
“A few words, the thanks due to someone who saved your life.” I shrug. “It’s nothing. Less than nothing.”
“Not when given to you.” She sits back in the chair, making it creak in the cold air. “Why do you keep fighting God when you know you cannot win?”
The question strikes me like a blow.
“I can win.”
“No you can’t. He is God.”
I laugh. “I grow stronger as time passes.” I hold Von Erich’s arms out to my side. “Such as this. The punishment handed to me when I was removed from Heaven included the limitation that I must live as one of you for one day each year. My strength has become such that this is the first body I’ve inhabited in two and a half centuries.” I feel the pride swelling Von Erich’s chest. For a split second I consider quelling it.
But only for a split second.
“I wanted to sit beside Him out of love, just to be near Him even though his attention was elsewhere. I alone, of all my brethren, had the wherewithal to ascend to the Throne of God. I found Him captivated by the first of your kind, the whole of the Trinity mooning over your brief, worthless, treacherous lives when I and the Host had done nothing but serve them and love them and obey them.”
The memory blasts into my mind clearly; the span of time has done nothing to dull the jagged edges of the memory. It fills my mind and the pride inside me curdles,
turning in on itself and becoming a bitter brew.
I stood, facing the back of the Godhood, bleeding from hundreds of scrapes and cuts, hands raw and torn open from climbing the great shard of rock that holds the Throne above all of Creation. They didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge me. Between their huddled forms I saw the Rift that acts as a window from there to here. They stared in rapt attention as Adam and Eve consorted beneath a summer sky. I dripped on that chunk of razored basalt and, for the first time in my existence, I felt a black bitter rage.
“How dare you?” I screamed, pouring it all into the voice They gave me. He didn’t turn from the spectacle He looked down on.
He simply reached out and struck me down.
I fell, grabbing onto a third of my brethren as I crashed through the Eternal Kingdom, dragging them down with me. I crashed in the Garden, blackened and battered and reduced to near nothing, a belly-crawler, a serpent. I crawled away in my shame, dragging my body along the rich soil and my mind through a desire for revenge.
My eyes fall on little Hadassah.
And I’ve been gathering my strength by breaking His beloved humanity ever since.
“You need to face the truth. I was His favorite until then and he batted me aside like an annoying pet. God has left you to the devices of your fellow man and this place is what they do when given free will. He watches your suffering for His own amusement.” The bargain chafes my neck at the falsehood, but I press on. “He will not deliver you from this place. You are completely alone here.”
Horror climbs her pretty face, pulling her features into a mask. Nail-bitten hands fly to cover her mouth. “No.”
“Yes. This will be your end because He will not save you.”
“He will.”
I grab her arm, pulling her to her feet. “You will see.”
We do not speak as I lead her back to the barracks where she will spend her last night.
At the door she stops before I can pull the bolt.
“Please.”
I wait.
“You should ask God to forgive you. He will. I know it.”
Von Erich’s face is a snarl. “You know nothing.”
She stumbles over the threshold as I push her in. Her knees hit the wooden planks, thin skin instantly bruising, blood welling around splinters. I feel nothing; the bargain has been kept.
She watches me close the door.
I slide the wrist-thick bolt in place, locking her inside.
***
Back in the room I sit at the desk, a pen held in Von Erich’s hand. The sun is moments away from rising and I feel it pressing the horizon. This day is almost over. Pulling the muscle memory, I swipe Von Erich’s hand across the paper in front of me. The nib of the fountain pen glides, spilling out a trail of ink that forms his signature. I fold the thick paper into thirds and seal it with a droplet of wax and the seal of Von Erich’s rank.
He’s never signed a Death Order.
When he discovers what he’s done it will drive him into the bottle, then drive his family from him, then drive him to emulate Judas’s last action.
Swing, batter batter, swing.
Hadassah will hold her faith even as she is stripped and herded into the square cement chamber with the fake showerheads. My words will haunt her as the Zyklon-B pellets drop to the floor from above and dissolve into the sticky-sweet, pungent gas that will wad her lungs like used tissues. She will doubt before she dies.
And I won’t think about her and the things she made me feel.
I won’t.
I hate days like today.
Overkill
Sara Taylor Woods
Of all the redneck joints, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks into mine. I blink, squeeze my eyes shut, and open them again, hope that it’s the shitty light playing tricks on me. But the light’s got nothing to do with it. He saunters towards the bar, swaggerin’ in those 501s like he knows his ass looks good.
I hope he hasn’t seen me. I’m afraid the same shitty light will make me look too much like my sister. I mumble something about needing to use the ladies’ room and flee into the kitchen. I’m leaning against the wall, panting, my heart hammering in my chest, when Kitty finds me.
“You okay, darlin’?” Kitty’s sweet, but sounds like three miles of gravel road and looks even worse. She’s been married to the owner of The Wet Spot for thirty-five years, and every one of them has been soaked in moonshine and carved into her face, between her brows, bracketing her mouth.
“Yeah.” I give her a tight smile, fumbling for a lie. “Girl out there just reminds me of my sister.”
“Oh, Cara,” she says, and pulls me against her to hug me. Something ratchets tight in my chest and I realize I don’t want her pity. I don’t want anyone’s pity.
I want revenge.
She pulls back, her hands on my shoulders, so she can look at me. “You wanna talk about it?”
Bennie, my big sister, my only family, is dead. I found her in the apartment we shared as I was coming home from work. She’d been decapitated. They’d salted the stump of her neck and taken her head. They probably burned it. Fucking barbarians.
They. They they they.
They call themselves hunters. I call them murderers.
And one of them is standing at my bar right now—I recognize the salted butter stink of him—probably ordering something strong enough to give him the courage to attack innocent women in their beds. I’ve heard about them, seen their pictures. Never met one—never wanted to.
Now I don’t think I have a choice.
I shake my head. Kitty cups my cheek with one dry hand, her knuckles cracked and withered. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “Do you need to go home?”
“No,” I say, and I mean it. I need to see him. I need to watch him.
She smiles. “You brave girl.”
I try to return it, but I know it’s too weak to be convincing. “Only way out is through.”
She winks at me. “Well, ain’t that the God’s honest truth. Come on back out whenever you’re ready. And take a break when you need to.”
“Thanks, Kitty,” I say, and she leaves me alone.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the decapitation or the salt or the hunters. She doesn’t know anything about my sister.
She doesn’t know about me.
***
Hamp serves them beer after beer after beer, this hunter and his hunter buddies. He doesn’t know any better. He knows their names, but doesn’t recognize their stink. Nobody here does. I don’t know enough about them to know what they’re capable of. Sometimes the blond one, the one with haunted brown eyes, lifts his head and looks around like a dog tasting the wind.
But they’re just sucking down the Coors Light and every once in a while the pale one with too much leg for his body gets out to dance to “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” They’re drinking casually, drinking for fun, not paying too much attention to anyone.
Some hunters go to classy joints. Swirl their wine, watching the slide of liquid down the curve of the glass. But not this group. They like this place, the bubbled felt on the pool tables, the cracked vinyl on the stools. They like the taxidermy that serves as decor. Probably reminds them of home.
The guy in the 501s comes up to my register and, all of a sudden, breathing requires concentration. He’s wearing a camo Under Armour ballcap and an Alabama ROLL TIDE t-shirt. He leans over the counter, one corner of his mouth curled up in a little smirk somebody probably told him was sexy, and reseats the hat on his head so he can see me a little better. He beckons me with two fingers to lean toward him. I do, warily.
He cocks an eyebrow and says, “I know what you are.”
I blink, try not to show any fear. I’m holding my breath, waiting for him to say it. Waiting for him. Waiting. Waiting.
He tips a finger at
me, almost wagging it. He’s young, younger than I thought he’d be, and pretty drunk. Just not drunk enough to disregard.
It isn’t comforting. I’m still not breathing. The music in here is loud, too fucking loud, shrieking against my eardrums. I accept that I won’t hear him say it, that I’ll have to watch his mouth.
He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, his white teeth a sharp contrast to the pink of his lip. Here it comes. My hands tighten around the lip of the bar.
He smiles, lips parted. They come together, press down around the bilabial stop.
I couldn’t swallow even if I tried. They won’t need a machete. They won’t need salt and fire. This motherfucker is going to give me a heart attack.
He says, “Pisces.”
My breath floods out in a rush. I am not a Pisces. I manage to wink at him. “You got me. How’d you do that?”
He grins again. “Magic.”
I give him an indulgent smile. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I wonder if this is the guy who held Bennie’s hair or if he was the guy with the machete. “Man, you should take that shit on the road.”
“I am,” he says. “I mean, I do. I travel a lot. Me and my buddies.”
“Yeah?”Don’t push it, Cara. Don’t push it.“For work?”
He’s tracing designs on the countertop with his index finger. I think I know what he’s doing, but I can’t tell him to stop without giving myself away. “Sort of,” he says. “We don’t really get paid. Well. Traditionally. It’s dangerous work.”
Legs comes up and hooks an arm around his friend’s neck. “Are you flirting with her?”
“Fuck you,” 501s says, but he’s smiling.
Legs sticks his hand out to me. “Matt,” he says. “And you’ve met Jason.”
I shake it and Matt winks at me. My hands are shaking on the bar. I just want them out of here, out of my face. He says, “Come on, Casanova,” and pulls Jason with him away from the bar. He glances over his shoulder at me and smiles when he sees I’m still watching them.
I escape into the kitchen again. Kitty doesn’t follow me this time, which is just as well. I’m trembling, and after a few seconds, I realize it isn’t just fear anymore. It’s fury.
The Big Bad II Page 12