The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz
by Cameron Pierce
The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz
Copyright 2009 by Cameron Pierce
www.meatmagick.wordpress.com
Eraserhead Press
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Portland, Oregon 97211
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“Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe.”
- William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads
“Evidence flows up and down the dung shoot.”
- Paul Celan, Flashlights
Chapter One
The morning siren screams and the barracks come alive.
Otto and I crabwalk to the foot of the bunk and step onto the cold floor. Around us, children leap from their wooden beds. Since mine and Otto's ribcages are attached, sharing a bed is nothing new to us. Sleeping together is not what makes Auschwitz a living heck.
Smothered by other children, we swarm out the door and enter the icicled hallway. Blisters on my feet pop and freeze with every step.
At the end of the hall, light filters down from above. By now, Otto and I are adept enough at climbing the disintegrating staircase that connects our barracks with the rest of Auschwitz. We also know better than to be the first children outside. Everyone knows better, but every single day, someone gets marked for sacrifice. Today it's a toddler named Willow. She has been coughing and fainting all week.
The hazy glow of the rising sun creeps over me. I close my eyes. Somewhere to my right, Willow cries until the crackle of her legs splitting in a game of chicken bone smothers everything. Every morning, two ass goblins tear apart the first kid out of the bunkers. I learned not to look a long time ago.
An ass goblins shouts, "Apple!"
Everyone hustles to find their place in line so that we can march onto the Marble Apple in perfect formation. With thousands of children imprisoned in Auschwitz, this is just one impossible task we face every morning as we brush off the nightmares and vermin.
“Apple!”
Adolf used to conduct roll call, but he disappeared after my first week. Now the ass goblins seem to assign each other duties based on who loses in their nightly games of gambling. Without a staunch ruler, the order of Auschwitz is decaying. These days, the ass goblins only want to drink and make us build toys.
"Apple!"
Although Otto and I are conjoined twins, the ass goblins assigned us numbers 999 and 1001 when they stamped us into the camp records. I am 999, 1000 is a skeletal mute, and Otto is 1001. I never call him by his number, although he calls me by mine. He rarely speaks these days.
We spot 1000 and push through the crowd until we reach him. Fortunately, the flesh covering our ribs has receded so much that 1000 fits into the joint hollow of our bodies like a baby bird.
“Apple!”
The now-orderly line snakes between surgery quarters, gunnery towers, and Toy Division. Finally we arrive at the Marble Apple in the center of Auschwitz Square.
We step onto the apple by the stem. In a few hours, we will exit through the bottom. We serpent-march until all prisoners are in place, unless the ass goblins grow impatient and go S.S. on us. S.S. is short for Shit Slaughter. Shit Slaughter is the worst sort of punishment.
Otto, 1000, and I stand somewhere near the center of the platter. From the apple's bottom, an ass goblin calls, “Attention! Pants down, asses up!”
We drop our red camp trousers at the same time as all the other children, raising our butts toward the sun.
For many of us, this is the most dangerous part of the day. If you survive roll call, you notch it off as another day survived. New children might be at highest risk. Living by the rhythm of your own death sentence is a difficult thing to learn.
In an outer row of the spiral, a child blubbers his final words. Toys mean freedom, then the spluttering of slit vocal cords. The idiot. He was picked out of the litter to be today’s apple. Did he really think spouting a goblin slogan would get him off the hook?
After the initial sacrifice, the apple is usually the second victim of the day. He or she is added to the cider vat, where they will ferment with the apples of previous days. Nobody knows how the ass goblins select the apple, but we suspect it has something to do with the ripeness of our assholes.
Frost lines my rectum by the time the roll call guard reaches us. I hold my breath and bite my tongue as a fat finger carves a swastika into the scar tissue of my left butt cheek.
The finger rockets up my dark zero. I bite deeper into my tongue. I seal my lips together, fighting the pain, ignoring the finger, and trying my best to remember that I am lucky because I am alive. Blood fills my mouth and drains down my throat, but I mustn’t cough. The slightest peep means execution.
Plop! The finger pulls out. The ass goblin marks my number on the roll call sheet. He moves on to 1000, gives him the same treatment.
The pain of my tongue and ass prevent me from passing out. I exhale and gasp for air after the guard inspects another twenty rectums. The elephant ears of ass goblins allow them to hear from a long ways off, but through trial and observation I am beginning to determine their auditory range. Poor 1000 shivers against Otto and I. We are relatively safe for now. Bloody frost cakes my butt.
The ass goblin reaches the center of the spiral. Only the apple died during today’s roll call, a rarity.
“Pants up! Eat breakfast!”
I pull my pants to my waist. Everyone else does the same thing. We disperse for breakfast only to discover that 1000 is frozen to our ribs. Otto and I shove at him, but he’s stuck. Unwilling to be separated from the herd, we drag him toward the mess hall in the snow as naturally as temporary triplets can manage.
Chapter Two
At the far end of the mess hall, ass goblins stand onstage strumming stringed instruments and pounding on drums. These instruments are made of child bones and innards. I may have crafted one of them in Toy Division.
A painting of Adolf collects dust on the wall above the stage. Adolf looks almost identical to all the other ass goblins. He wears the same brown uniform, swastika armband adorning each sleeve, pimpled, plague-ridden ass sagging over his thighs. His ass is the biggest part of his body, no different than the ass of any other ass goblin.
His mustache sets him apart. His mustache is twice the size of his skull. Whereas normal ass goblins have a mouth that takes up their entire face, Hitler’s mustache takes up his.
And Adolf walks backwards.
And dresses backwards.
He stands backwards in the painting.
No goblins have noses, which is how they fart up the earth without ever noticing. Their eyes hang from long, scaled stalks that jut out of their butt cheeks. In the painting, a cloud of yellow perspiration floats around Adolf’s mossy skin. Other ass goblins consider him the purest and most perfect being on the planet. At least, they did until he disappeared.
Our trio mechanically gravitates to the nearest available table. We sit down and dig into the hill of dried skin piled in front of us. I reach for a face and the girl beside me slaps my hand. I punch her and tear the face from its boneless, meatless husk before she can react. I hold the face up to my own, peering through the eyeholes. I sink my teeth into the crusty lips. The lingering salt stings my tongue. Dried saliva liquefies in my mouth. Saliva drops are tasty, but I waste no time sucking them down. I’m starved, and we won’t eat again until nightfall. Plus, t
here’s a slight chance that the girl will risk attracting the guards’ attention and try to steal this face from me. Faces are the most digestible part of a child.
I slide the nose over my bottom lip, forcing myself to swallow the cartilage without chewing, but I still taste some dead kid’s bittersweet boogers.
I feel 1000 separating from my ribs. I look to my left just long enough to see that he is finally unfrozen. He breaks free from Otto and I. We’re fortunate that the cider vats sit in the underground chamber beneath the mess hall. The rising heat makes it a lot hotter in here than outside.
I eat the face until only a strip of skin around the eye sockets remains. Whenever I get a face from the pile, I always leave this part for last. This way, I can make sure that I am not looking at anyone else while I eat. If you’re suspected of looking at another child, even if they’re thirty tables away, the ass goblins might accuse you of conspiring.
The band slams on their instruments. Over a discordant melody, they shout the mantra that hangs in neon over the main gate of Auschwitz. “Toys mean freedom! Toys mean freedom! Toys mean freedom!”
This means breakfast is over. It is time to work. It is time to build toys.
Chapter Three
I tilt my mouth toward Otto’s right ear as we shuffle out of the mess hall. “What did you eat?” I ask. Black swastikles flutter to the ground.
Otto rarely says a word before breakfast or after work, so this transition period is my sole opportunity to speak with my brother. He's silent, shedding pounds . . .
“The ass goblins forbid conversation between workers.”
. . . shrinking and shrinking . . . a five and a half foot dead baby.
“What did you eat, Otto?”
He says nothing and jerks away from me, but we’re attached. There’s no escape.
“C’mon, I’ll tell you what I ate if you tell me.”
“999, I will report all dissidents.”
“You wouldn’t report anyone, not your own brother. You would go down with me, don’t you forget that.”
We stand in line at the work assignment station and wait our turn. The line moves fast. Each child takes a card and reports to the Toy Division factory written on it, unless they are assigned to the surgery ward. The ass goblin dispensing the cards always gives Otto and I separate ones despite it being impossible for us to be in two places at once. Even Adolf made that mistake. Maybe it’s an oversight on their part. Maybe we’re the unknowing subject of an experiment, our every action observed and recorded until the day the doctors come for us. Most conjoined twins never sleep a night in the barracks. They go straight to the scalpel.
I hold the card right up to my eyes and squint at the scrawl. Today, I am supposed to report to the surgery ward. This has never happened to me. The surgeons are death doctors. Otto glances at his card and tugs me along. “Where are we going?” I ask.
He holds up his card. I strain my eyes, but it remains blurry. I can’t read it. “Tell me what it says.”
“The bicycle factory.”
“Shouldn’t we go to surgery? That’s what I pulled, and you know what the scientists do to kids who ditch out.”
“I must report to the bicycle factory and fulfill my duty as a worker. Go where you want.”
I sigh. Otto is like a robot these days. I’m worried about him, and worried what will happen when the ass goblins realize they’re missing me in surgery. They seem to find out every time. The kids who play hooky from surgery always disappear, but I know nothing more than rumors. Otto and I have never entered the surgery bay.
I wonder where Frannie got assigned, and if I’ll see her tonight. She used to sleep in the bunk below Otto and I, but her twin has insisted that they sleep in faraway beds for the last three nights, which isn’t fair at all. Frannie 2 is attached to Frannie’s bellybutton and is no bigger than a doll. She shouldn’t get to tell Frannie what to do. “I have to poop,” I say, trying to forget her, thinking about my body’s needs for once.
“Hold it,” Otto says.
Are my eyes are as red and bugged out as his? We're both lice factories, that's for sure.
The sun is up and scaly cockrats scurry from their hiding places to scavenge for polar snakes. I wish we could eat them, but the ass goblins feed the cockrats and other creatures so much radiation that consuming animals is suicide. An easy suicide, I remember.
To get to the bicycle factory, we return toward the barracks, passing the apple platter in Auschwitz Square and descending a stairwell between the doll factory and the music factory.
Rumor says the entire underground of Auschwitz is dedicated to bicycles. It’s supposed to be a maze of loops and tunnels and hills where ass goblins cycle, their favorite pastime. Frannie told me. She has no way of knowing, and she also told me that kids who survive long enough, well, they evolve beyond childhood and start looking like ass goblins. Frannie admitted she would have killed herself if she couldn’t make up stories in her head. These must be some of her stories.
Even before we reach the bottom of the stairs, egg-shaped fart bubbles stink up the air. I cough into my hand.
Otto presents his work card to the ass goblin at the door. The goblin waves both of us in and slurps from a cider mug. Most twins -- even non-conjoined twins -- vanish shortly after entering Auschwitz. The Frannies are the only other pair to work in Toy Division for so long. Maybe we survive because ass goblins are always drunk and liable to make a few mistakes despite thinking they are perfect, or maybe Adolf was saving us for a special project before he vanished. I hope it’s not the latter. I do not want to be special.
We find our place in a manufacturing line and set to work. Most children get assigned to the bicycle factory. A lot of bikes have to be built every day because they fall to pieces under the weight of the goblins’ asses.
Today, Otto and I blow children’s bladders into tubes and fit them into tires made of brains. Many brains go into each tire. Children near the beginning of the manufacturing line pull the brains from a vat and sculpt them into tires, making some fat and some skinny because ass goblins like a variety of bikes. I prefer making tires to filling and fitting tubes, but trading duties is forbidden.
I lean over the conveyor belt, careful not to brush up against the spinal frames, arm handlebars, or skull and foot seats that are beginning to pass by. I lift a bladder out of a barrel, feeling like my own bladder might explode any second. I blow air into a pre-slit end. After it’s tight with pressure, I remove a brain tire from a different barrel and fit the tube into the jellylike groove. I drop the tire onto the belt and repeat the process a second time. I repeat it again and again, hour after hour.
Sometimes, I think the ass goblins chant my name as they ride bicycles, but they are only laughing. I no longer know my real name.
Chapter Four
Supervised by the eyeballs bulging out of goblin asses, we eat dinner in the bathroom, one floor below the barracks. “Asses down!” a goblin shouts.
Everyone drops their pants and plops down on a hollow tree stump that leads somewhere far below Auschwitz, maybe to the bicycle labyrinth. The ass goblins let us eat breakfast the child way, but they force us to eat dinner like them. With our asses. They flash yellow teeth at us, their grins widening to fill their entire faces. Watching so many children sit on toilet stumps makes them happy as heck. The band starts up with a detuned lullaby and all the goblins raise their quarts of cider, spilling everywhere. “Bring on the toads! Bring on the toads! Bring on the toads!” they chant. And they chug, chug, chug.
After breakfast and work, we end the day with toilet toads, creatures who live in the stumps and only emerge when summoned by the music of the ass goblins.
Inside my stump, a toilet toad croaks. Otto's toad croaks too. Here they come. I dig my fingers into soggy wood and hold on for dear life.
Slap! A tongue slips inside my rectum. Far longer than a goblin finger, the tongue wriggles all the way inside me and swims around my belly. Fed only the skin of
children, there’s nothing inside me for the toilet toad to grab, so it wedges another vital organ from its place. The pain differs from night to night, depending on what the tongue decides to pull from my body. Tonight is the worst kind, my insides flaring up like I’m full of a thousand long knives.
I scream. Tears clean some ash from my cheeks. The ass goblins do not care how much we cry during dinner, so long as we plant ourselves to the tree stumps and let the toilet toads do their work.
My ass cheeks swell out as the tongue stretches my rectum wide enough for a large organ to plop out. Blood and feces gushing out, I focus on bracing myself to the stump. This is the point where some kids fall into the toilet, never to be seen again.
Then it’s over, at least the first part. The toilet toad squeezes around my rear and hops into my lap. Toilet toads always melt a bit, as if they’re made of chocolate. They're shit, though. Pure shit.
The toad wags its tongue, presenting me the pulsing red blob that it stole from my body. You never know what you’ll be eating for dinner until this point. Tonight it’s my heart. “Eat! Eat! Eat!” the ass goblins chant, relishing the festival of child misery.
I glance over at Otto. Apparently he’ll be eating a kidney. “It’s alright,” I tell him, “I ate one last night. They taste better than the rest.”
He glares at me, his eyes gray and his face in shadow. He’s dead inside, broken. He unwraps the toad tongue and raises his kidney to his thin lips, takes a bite.
I take my heart in my hands but get caught up watching Otto. He smiles for the first time since the ass goblins took us from Kidland.
“Eat! Eat! Eat!”
Otto spits a kidney stone. The toad on his lap snatches it up and disappears between his legs, down into the tree stump. I didn’t even know Otto had kidney stones. Maybe that’s what has upset him so much. I hope he feels better now.
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