Last night, I thought he could hardly muster a croak because of throat problems like my own, but the mask muffles his voice. I hope he can withstand these mutations.
“Attention! Asses up!”
We drop our pants. My brother’s ass puffs out, a lunar nightmare of craterous pustules. Semen worms slither out of his infected tissue and dive to the apple platter. They burrow into the marble where 1000 used to cower. Nobody has replaced the cider boy.
My spine aches and threatens to crack in two by the time the ass goblin taking roll reaches us many hours later. The sun never rises.
I brace myself for the typical swastika carving and rectal inspection. The guard sets one hand on my buttocks and lets his claws linger. I try to leave my body. No success. I nearly pull off the flying trick when the guard’s hand darts between my legs and tugs on my scrotum. Against my better judgment, I turn my head and catch sight of a needle.
The needle enters my right testicle. Barf and stomach acid rockets up my throat. I swirl it around in my mouth to keep from puking on the marble. I might already be in serious trouble for turning my head. The bile catches in the gaps between my teeth and congeals around my tongue. The needle drains my right testicle until the nut inside the sack shrivels to nothing.
I can't tell for sure, but the White Angel appears to give Otto the same needle treatment.
The snow turns to sleet.
When roll call ends, I rise into the black of night, my body crackling in a million different places. The White Angel orders us directly to the work assignment station. No kidskin for us today.
I pick bile from between my teeth with a clawed hand. Otto and I waddle side by side, rubbing our empty sacks. "Auschwitz is transforming," he says.
"We are the transformed ones,” I say. “They want to remake us in their image. They want Auschwitz to be a fairyland."
Chapter Ten
The White Angel also controls work assignments tonight. He stands under a flickering bulb that sways in the wind. When Otto steps up, the ass goblin hoots. Rather than handing over the next card in the pile, he takes a blank slip from his pocket and scribbles on it. "Doctor's orders."
Otto shuffles away with his head down. The White Angel gives me a special note as well. I am to report to the bicycle factory. I slosh through the mud, catching up with Otto. "Let me see your card," I say.
He holds the paper out to me, but the ink has already smeared into black rivers. "Surgery," he says, "I am going to surgery." And then he is gone.
We have never worked a day apart in our lives.
I trudge on toward the bicycle factory. Other children scurry to their own work assignments. Even in the storm, many do a double take when they see me.
A few ass goblins stand beneath awnings, drinking cider. Some of them whisper and point when I pass.
I stand outside the darkened bicycle factory and shiver from scalp to toe. No lights emanate from the underground. I descend the stairs, scraping my claws against the walls to my left and right, calling, “Hello? Hello?”
No reply. I knock on the door.
Again, silence. I turn the knob. The door creaks.
My work slip is a soggy shred of runny ink, so if I encounter an ass goblin down here, I'm liable to receive a Shit Slaughter regardless of the White Angel's sudden takeover of our daily routine.
I shut the door behind me and move by memory toward the guard’s corner. I swat at the air until I grab hold of the electricity pulley. I lower the chain. Gray lights dance around the room. They settle as the conveyor belt whirs alive.
I look around, paranoid that I am not alone. Assigning me to the bicycle factory could not be a mistake on the White Angel's part. He wanted me here. I am an experiment, a special project. A hated pet.
The ass goblins must be watching me, recording my actions. My instincts tell me to take advantage of this opportunity and go forth on Otto's dream of constructing bicycles to ride into the labyrinth. If this is a behavioral study, then rebelling against the ass goblins will result in death. They won't risk preserving a test subject whose foremost instinct is rebellion.
A red bulb combusts in the dusty core of my brain.
I run around the room, flailing my arms. I must find a bicycle . . . a bicycle that is already built! The ass goblins will condemn me for riding a bicycle into the labyrinth, but if I play it off as a genuine result of their genetic experiments, I might build intrigue and buy time.
Handlebars and half a wheel jut from a mound of bones. I raise my arms into the air, jiggle my fingers, and dig. The children whose bones and organs make up this bicycle, they're no longer the same. Neither am I. We all come to Auschwitz as children, but in the long run, we become something else . . . cider, bicycles, goblins, food for prisoners . . . dolls. Nobody remains a child.
I unbury the bike and wheel it to the guard's station. The rusted door in the back leads to the underground labyrinth. I prop the bike against the wall and turn the swastika handle.
The door swings open. Colored lights flash along two sides of a tunnel. Goblin laughter echoes from somewhere on the other end. I grab the bike and lift my right leg to mount it. Immense pressure builds in my ruined sack. I bite my tongue and pedal into the tunnel.
Chapter Eleven
I force myself not to depress the brakes at the end of the tunnel. That doesn't seem like an ass goblin thing to do, and maintaining appearances is essential to my survival.
It's a wise decision. Straight out of the tunnel, the trail plummets into three loops. Green and yellow lights swirl on the track. I hold on tight and pump my legs to gain enough momentum for the loop-de-loop-de-loop.
Upside down!
Right side up.
Upside down!
Right side up.
Upside down!
The trail splits two ways. The one I'm heading toward is a green spiral downward. I make a sharp left turn and take the yellow trail. Mist rises all around. Individual corn kernels comprise the squishy, bumpy road. The goblin laughter fades. Their bicycle labyrinth must be down the green path.
When the mist clears, I spot cockrats swimming in shallow canals that line the corn road. In front of me, a litter of cockrats dances after a cockroach bigger than an owl. I wonder what they're following it for.
I shift my eyes back to the yellow trail--
No time to brake. A brick wall blocks the path. I squeeze the handlebars, not skilled enough on a bike to maneuver a graceful fall. I close my eyes . . . and crash through soft bricks. The bike slips from under me and I go tumbling, landing in a pile of foam rectangles.
I pick up one of the black bricks, digging my claws into the soft sides. I drop the brick and stand. The bicycle drags itself toward me, shrinking smaller and smaller. The bicycle becomes my testicle, alleviating my scrotal pain. I pat the flesh-encased bicycle and carry on.
This side of the foam bricks, the corn kernels slowly diminish into warm chocolate cake. I sink up to my ankles in frosting. The yellow lights fade behind me, but holes of light on the ceiling guide my way. This is where the tree stumps lead. This is the lair of the toilet toads.
The walls that kept the path easy to follow cease. I decide that exploring the cavern is worth the risk of encountering a toad gang. This place almost seems untouched by the ass goblins. It’s more like Kidland.
A hill appears on the horizon. Before moving on, I dig both hands into the chocolate cake. At first, I only lick at the frosting, remembering the sickly sweet richness.
I mash two heaps of cake into my mouth at once. Cake plugs my nostrils, crusts over my eyes, and dribbles down my face. The frosting is so thick and creamy that it lines my throat and cuts off my breathing. I roll onto my back. Frosting suffocates me from outside and in. I slap my hands against my cheeks and half-chewed cake torpedoes from my mouth. Gravity jerks it back and the spit-up cake splats across my face. I sit up, no longer choking. I resolve to ease up on the cake consumption.
Looking like a mucky frosting monster, I bou
nd toward the hill. With today’s tweaked schedule and the White Angel running the show, who knows when work will end tonight. I’ll have to hurry. Now is not the time to go missing in action.
I realize what the hill is made of, and suddenly the cake tastes bitter. I wipe my hands on my trousers and tread over the dead kids at ground zero.
Chapter Twelve
I stand at the top of the hill and look out. The underground cavern is very bright from this vantage point. The walls appear to be chocolate cake, as penetrable and temporary as the floor. I think of Otto and sit down. Hopefully he is okay. You’re lucky if you return from one trip to the surgeon’s cathedral, and hopelessly lucky if you return from two visits.
This brings me back to the days in Kidland, when everyone lived happy and free. Older kids like Otto and I taught lessons in schoolhouses, but that was the limit of authority. After lessons, we played as equals with the students. Everyone got along and no one was ever bullied. We cooked communal dinners on grassy knolls, smoked dandelions, played games with lemmings and other creatures, and snacked on whatever fruit happened to be in season. I liked strawberries the most.
I try to remember when the ass goblins first arrived, and I fail. We were a city of children, then one day we became prisoners, though not all at once. They stole us from our tree houses in droves. Nobody left their quarters after word got around. The sun fell out of the sky. I remember staying up late one night after the raids began. I wanted to catch sight of our abductors. That was the night the ass goblins came for us. Reeking of skunk spray, two goblins bashed our faces and said, “Don’t you cry.” They put us in a boxcar crammed with children. In the dark I cried, “Who are they? What do they want with us?”
“Ass goblins,” somebody said, “they live in a place called Auschwitz.”
When the train to Auschwitz arrived and the doors were thrown open, Otto and I stumbled out. The sun reappeared. Sunbeams the color of algae touched our skin, but the light made us cold. It began to snow.
There’s an unspoken rule in Auschwitz. We never speak of Kidland. As far as I’m concerned, nobody came up with this rule. Silence is an easier response to horror. It swallows up your memories. Sometimes, though, one is belched up from the blackness. I lie down on the hilltop and rest my left cheek in the palm of a dead girl. I look into her sunken eyes and say, “What do they want with us?”
It’s just like before, only this time I have an answer. I reach out and touch the girl’s lips. They’re hardened into a smile, a hopeful thing. Children who died in Kidland always died smiling. I sit up and brush shavings of rot from my body. I think I will escape now. I won't find a better chance. I can burrow through the chocolate cake and get out of Auschwitz.
If I don't flee now, I'll reface the scalpel like Otto. My brother, eternally at my side until of late, and Frannie . . . our conversations meant the world when not even Otto spoke to me. Together, in their special ways, the two of them sustained my will to survive the daily trials. Leaving them behind, I would lose a piece of myself. I could never, but I have to . . . Ribbit!
Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!
Toilet toads hop up Dead Kid Hill on every side. I spin around, seeking out the best passage down the hill. They block all possible escape routes. Their tongues flail as they leap and crawl closer, inviting me to a personal death party in the lingo of amphibians.
The toads swarm as one fluid mass. The top of the hill no longer seems high up. I squeeze my bike sack and wonder if dying -- the act itself -- actually hurts.
Hot pressure builds in my scrotum as the toilet toads approach the top.
Their front line passes the halfway mark. They belch a unanimous rat-tat croak as the bicycle grows inside me, reversing its earlier shrinking process.
I hold the flesh-encased bike until my sack pops. Teeth grinding the pain away, I mount the bicycle and pedal like mad. I head in the direction of the loop-de-loop-de-loop because it serves as my sole chance of survival. The toads and I are set to collide three-quarters to the top.
I rear back on the handlebars. The front tire elevates. Afraid of falling, I lean forward and duck my head. Toilet toads gnash at the air as I soar beyond the reach of their tongues.
The rest of the journey down Dead Kid Hill through chocolate cake and up the yellow road blurs as adrenaline pumps the chewed pieces of my heart past overdrive.
Chapter Thirteen
The door to the bicycle shop is still open when I emerge from the underground. I twist the swastika handle and push on the door, ensuring that it is locked. Before I turn around, an ass goblin hoots behind me. “What are you doing here?”
“N-nothing.”
“Nothing?” The goblin waddles toward me, brushing swastikles off its swastika armbands.
“My work assignment ordered me to the bicycle factory.”
It points toward the door at my back and hoots a second time. “Did your work assignment order you through that door?”
I shake my head left and right. A gun sits on the counter of the guard station, out of the ass goblin’s sight. I was too occupied to notice it before. Guns are so rare, it’s easy to forget they exist.
“Are you Experiment 999?” the ass goblin says.
I nod and step up to the counter, resting my hands there as naturally as my nerves can muster.
The ass goblin charges. “No sudden movements!”
I grab the pistol, fire, miss. Fire and miss. Fire and miss. I close my eyes and fire. The gun clicks. I open my eyes. The ass goblin transforms into S.S. mode five feet away. Backed against the door, I raise my clawed hands, as if showing the Shit Slaughterer that I’m part goblin will save my scalp.
He swipes at my brow. I duck.
"Hoot! Hoot!" He makes another swipe.
I dodge to the left, but his claws rake across my chest. I crumple into a ball and tuck my head to my knees.
He kicks me in the stomach. I curl up even tighter.
The door leading to the rest of Toy Division opens wide. In steps the White Angel. “What's this nonsense?” he says.
"The prisoner entered forbidden quarters," the Shit Slaughterer says. He kicks me again.
The White Angel storms across the room and seizes the goblin by his jaws. After yanking out a handful of teeth, he shoves the goblin to his knees. "You do not reprimand my experiments," the White Angel says. "Consider this your final warning."
The Shit Slaughterer bows his head.
“Come, child,” the White Angel says. He grabs my elbows and pulls me to my feet.
“Science awaits you.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me why I keep you alive,” the White Angel says.
Chained to a chair, I stare at the paleface goblin, seeing double. Funhouse mirrors cover the walls, distorting the ass goblin and I. The mirrored ceiling reflects the swastika painted on the ground, twists it around into a star.
“Do you remember when Adolf governed Auschwitz?”
“He vanished not long after we-- I arrived.”
“What do you remember about his reign?”
The rule of Auschwitz is that children should listen and never be heard, so I am unused to answering questions.
“Answer the question!”
“Children die now the same as before.”
“I want to make Auschwitz the happiest place on earth.”
“Then stop killing us, stop making us work.”
“You will work no longer, 999. That is why I ordered the bicycle factory to be unoccupied when you arrived. I needed to understand what you would do, where you would go. Most ass goblins want you dead. They’re afraid to watch you, a child, become one of them without losing the grace of childhood.”
“One of them? But I'm not an ass goblin.”
The White Angel ignores me. “Considering twins are more inclined to display psychic abilities, I might know just the trick to solidify my argument supporting your value as a test subject.”
“I am not a monster.”
&
nbsp; “Not yet, at least. Your brother, on the other hand, finds himself in a radically different situation, thanks in part to your confrontation with the sentry, who insisted that some punishment be dealt. Retribution in the name of science is the greatest retribution. That is where Adolf and I disagreed. I am sure he would be pleased to learn that I punished your brother instead of you, the guilty one. If Adolf were still with us. . . but his ideas were ass backwards” The White Angel laughs maniacally. “Bring in the spider goblin!”
The wall straight ahead opens up. Two ass goblins drag a hideous creature into the room by heavy chains padlocked to its neck. I scream until the White Angel punches my nose. I pipe down, choking on blood and snot.
Otto, my brother, is no longer Otto. He cannot be Otto. Eight hairy arachnid legs hold his torso ten feet off the ground. His arms and legs are gone. Except for the spider limbs and goblin ass, bandages mask his entire body.
“Enough frontal,” the White Angel says. “Show us that ass!”
The sentries march around the spider goblin like they’re in a cakewalk. They spin Otto’s rear toward me. An apple-sized eye blinks out at me from his rectum.
“I’ve always thought spiders were nature’s freaks. They have too many eyes. With eight legs, a single peeper should suit your brother fine. He’s an ideal prototype for arachnids of the future. He’s spidery and gobliny, but childlike. The two of you are my greatest creations, and I’m only getting started. Take the experiments to Cell Eight and ask Stumblebum to prepare for the next procedure."
I scream that I do not want any part in this. The White Angel pats my head. I bite his hand. He thrusts a syringe down my peehole and injects a searing fluid, I guess to scold me. "You will be my perfect toy soldier," he says.
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