Variant Exchange

by Fox J Wilde

  “Why is it not legal for you to smoke, Lena?”

  “Because...” the words stung even though she had already said it, “...because I am a child, Sir.”

  He poked her in the chest again, so hard that she stumbled back against the wall. She felt like falling and crumpling up into a ball right then. Yet she endeavored to find a median between standing her ground and not upsetting the man any more than he already was. It appeared, however, that she wouldn’t have the time to choose where that line was, or if it even existed.

  The man grabbed Lena’s arm roughly, squeezing the artery right below her armpit. Weakness seized her instantly as pain flared. He half-led, half-dragged her over to where the bright white wall was and stood her next to the chair, before promptly kicking it over.

  “This is the wall for liars, Lena,” the man menaced at her, saying her name in a hate-filled tone. “Stare at the lying wall, Lena. Stare at it…do not close your eyes, Lena! Do not even blink, Lena! If you blink, there will be consequences, Lena!”

  She thought it was a simple, silly thing he had asked her to do—for the first thirty seconds, that is. But as the seconds ticked on, the white wall began to hurt her eyes. It was so bright—so bright, in fact, that her eyes began to water. She blinked on instinct, both to knock a few of the excess tears lose and to apply the teardrops to where they actually needed to be on the rest of her precious eyeballs.

  ‘Whack!’

  A bright flash of pain spread across the back of Lena’s thighs, right below her buttocks. It was as if someone had cut her with a red-hot knife, piercing through clothing and skin alike. She instantly recoiled, grabbing her poor legs and prancing stupidly in place. Seconds later the welt became a glow, spreading into a five-alarm fire across her lower extremities.

  “Stare at the wall!” the man screamed at her. “Do not look away! Do not blink! Do not blink!”

  Lena’s eyes began to water once again, but for a completely different reason this time. A headache was beginning to spread from the sides of her temples down to her lower jaw. She squeezed her jaw so tightly that she wondered if she would crush a tooth. As she stared at the bright wall, seconds became minutes. Her eyes blurred and burned, as her tears were replaced by the unbearable dryness of her deprived sockets. “Oh god…how could it possibly get worse than this?!” she screamed inside her aching skull.

  A few minutes of silence and a few minutes of staring finally saw the pain in her legs subside to a dull echo. Then, after a few more minutes, Lena heard the familiar sound of a match striking rough paper, accompanied by the faint yet comforting sound of paper burning away. “My, that’s wonderful...” the man spoke behind her as a familiar smell crept into her nose. This symphony of smell married sweetly with a rush of smoke that made her eyes burn all the worse.

  “You know, Lena, nothing really satisfies like a cigarette does.” he said, his tone dripping with self-indulgence. “In stressful times like these, when I am trapped inside the walls of this building, with so much work ahead of me, it helps to take a few puffs. It really helps to take the edge off.”

  Almost instantly, Lena’s skin began to itch, as the blood inside her veins began to throb a desperate need for the precious nicotine—overwhelming her senses. She hadn’t even thought about cigarettes once since entering this terrible place—but now that she had been reminded of the smell, a cigarette was the only thing she wanted in the whole world. The minutes ticked on, her eyes continued to burn, and the itch in her blood became a tickle. Then the tickle became rough sandpaper scraping against every part of her. God…she felt thirsty for a cigarette. She literally felt thirsty…she hadn’t had a smoke in so long; but now all she could think about was culling the pins and needles in her veins and satisfying this desperate need that was begging for relief.

  “Would you like a cigarette?” the man spoke sweetly, after lighting a second one.

  This was a trick. She didn’t know much about this terrible man standing behind her, but she knew that much. She knew this was a trick—it had to be. And yet, she wanted one so bad…it had to be worth the risk. After all, he was asking which meant he was offering. So, technically answering for one was the correct course of action. Yes, yes…of course this was the correct thing to do—trying to satiate those awful pins and needles was only a secondary concern. She congratulated herself on making the right choice and decided to agree. “Oh god, I can almost taste it.” she winced.

  “Y-yes…yes, Sir.”

  “Mind your manners, Lena,” the man spoke, in an almost fatherly tone. “If you want something, you need to ask politely for it.”

  “Sir…” Lena began weakly, “May I please have a cigarette, Sir?”

  “Of course, Lena! I would love to share a cigarette with you!”

  With this, he promptly lit a cigarette, and placed the business end in her mouth. Almost instantly, the rush of sweet forgiveness and mercy from the great gods above overwhelmed her. Her head began to spin, and her heart began to race as she slowly drew on the sweetest, most deliciously satisfying drag of her life. “God, this is sooo good…” she thought to herself, completely ignoring the smoke wafting into her eyes. It hurt—terribly even—but god, it was worth every second.

  “Do me a favor, Lena. Raise your arms.” the man spoke in the same fatherly tone. She did, but he quickly corrected her, “No, no…raise them to your sides, right about shoulder-height. Yes…that’s it. Really get a good stretch!”

  After Lena stretched her arms out, the man reached around her and yanked the cigarette out of her mouth, promptly replacing it in the fingers of one of her outstretched arms.

  “What was I thinking, Lena?” the man said in a tone of mock embarrassment. “You are a child! You are too young for cigarettes! But lucky for me, you are not too young to hold my cigarettes for me.” With this, the man yanked the cigarette out of her fingers, took a long, nearly pornographic drag on it, and then placed it back in her fingers. “Keep your arms up, young Lena! If you lower them, even an inch, I shall have to be cross with you!”

  Lena realized then how much worse it could be than it was before. Her eyes burned, her blood was beginning to itch again, and she was angry with herself for trusting the cruel trick he had just played on her. She raged inside at her own stupidity and the sheer insolence of this man making her hold his cigarette—it was almost unbearable.

  An hour later she was still staring at the wall, holding her arms out for his cigarettes. The burning in her eyes was altogether dwarfed by the achy, throbby pain in her shoulders and back as she struggled to keep her arms raised. She had made the mistake of letting them lower just a tiny bit, and this infraction was once again met with the scream of slicing pain across the back of her legs.

  She was being assaulted on all five senses, along with a few she didn’t know that she had. Her eyes were blinded by the smoke and the wall, and the resulting headache was intolerable. The rest of her body hurt equally from the terrible sting in her legs, to the mounting pressure on her shoulders, and the phantom pain from not knowing what her captor had in store for her as he stood so close behind her. Her nose smelled the smoke, and the longing for just one more drag only intensified. She was consumed with pain, fear and longing; dying from outside in to inside out. “This is hell...I am in hell…this is what it is to burn alive...”

  She tried to distract herself with thoughts of something else—anything else—but her brain screamed so many messages of imminent danger she couldn’t fathom even the smallest concern. She thought she might begin hyperventilating soon if she couldn’t figure a way out of here, but she knew she was stuck—she was so very stuck—right here, whether she liked it or not. She was the property of the State—a mere plaything.

  “Lena...” the man spoke after what seemed like an hour of silence, with an utterly filthy tone in his voice, “What are you?”

  “I’m a…I’m a...” Lena began to cry with
tears of shame welling up in her eyes anew, “I’m a-a child, S-sir! I’m just a child! I’m nothing but a child! I’m nothing but a child!”

  Großvater

  “Clang clang clang clang clang...”

  Once again the heavy metal stick beat against the outside of her cell door, and once again the voice yelled at her: “Sleeping time is over! Sit up! Hands behind head! Head forward...” The dizzyingly long series of instructions had become automatic for Lena. She knew them all by heart now—apparently, her captors had caught on to this because they had begun adding slight variations to the instructions. She had mistakenly placed her head at a 45-degree angle up instead of a 90-degree angle forward, which had earned her a round of bildungsbälle—a series of pepper balls fired at her through the food hole in her door. These stung terribly when they hit her; and they hit her everywhere—in her arms, in her stomach, and on her chest. She recoiled and desperately tried to assume the correct position, but once the pepper-gas filled her lungs, the violent, coughing choke became a more pressing issue than the intense stinging of the balls against her skin. As she choked and cried, she vowed to never miss an instruction again.

  “Clang clang clang clang clang...”

  Now it was the newly-modified contemplation position. Soon, it would be the eating position, then it would be the other modified contemplation position. After that it would be the Körperliche Gesundheit positions where she would do slow pushups, sit-ups, and other painful exercises designed to “promote wellness and good cheer through fitness.” This is what a guard had told her through the cell door, yet the giggling on the other side as she struggled to hold her body weight up told her that it wasn’t entirely for her good cheer.

  After that, it was her daily interrogation where she would again stand facing that damn wall, with her arms outstretched, holding her interrogator’s cigarettes. He would ask her benign questions aimed at weakening her resolve and sense of ‘self’ as they listened to the radio. He would critique each song as it came on, berating it for how socially irresponsible it was.

  “What are these idiots thinking?!” he would howl as “Love in a Void” by Siouxie and the Banshees would play. “You know their lead singer is a prostitute and heroin addict? They are all on heroin over there! No wonder the GDR defeats Britain in every single sports match... they all have hepatitis! You should see it on TV; it’s disgusting! They look like zombies, every last one!”

  “The audacity!” he jeered, as Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” played. “We sent those ingrates in America our agricultural techniques, and this is how they express their newfound fortunes?! Writing songs about West German cars! This is capitalism, Lena: forgetting who your friends are! You know she drank herself to death in sorrow after writing this song, don’t you?”

  “What nonsense is this?!” he ranted as Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” played. “Hypocrisy! You know the British and French are building walls of their own to keep out the influx of West German refugees? Not like here in the GDR where we let folks into our country freely! It’s not neighborly…its bad governing! The world has no place for their perversions of socialism!”

  “Disgusting!” he wailed as Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” played. “Do you know that America has become swamped with AIDS? The bodies of men and women litter the streets, I’m told! It’s because of songs like this—homosexuality and inbreeding have ruined America! They have lost touch with good values…not like here in the GDR! You would never find the perverted being celebrated so in our country. It just goes to show...”

  Lena was really trying to pay attention; she really was. It was just that her eyes hurt so bad, and her arms burned like fire, and her poor heart was deprived of nicotine, and everything…just, everything was so terrible. Under normal circumstances she might have had the wits to see through his propaganda and the thinly veiled attempts to turn her against her own beliefs and ideals; but he was just so angry about it all. In her weakened and confused state, her mind reasoned that at least some of what he said must have been true.

  The first few interrogations she had been able to remain true to herself, but this became increasingly difficult with each session, as her identity began to melt away. At first, she had also been able to mark the passage of time; but this too was slipping away. One day—or night; she really didn’t know anymore—she had arrived to find the room in near-complete darkness, lit only by a spotlight aimed at the bright white wall. After that point, Lena gave up completely on figuring out what day or what when. It didn’t matter anymore. Very few things seemed to matter anymore. She had become less a human being and more a piece of furniture, rotting away in a dismal and forgotten place. She realized this when her interrogator had become warm one day. “What an unseasonably hot day it is!” he had said as he hung his heavy overcoat over one of her arms. That was a long day.

  Less and less did her thoughts belong to her. The days of her former punk-rock self were so far away, it was as if they had never existed. She had become a walking shell, and survival was simply a series of instructions to follow. She refused to admit it to herself, but she was beginning to feel safe in the minute-by-minute instructions: Every barked command was simple, after all. She need only follow it exactly and she would be safe—if only for a few seconds. The better she listened, and the more careful she reacted to commands, the safer she would be. Her body didn’t belong to her anymore. In the first days she had rested comfortably inside her head, secure in the knowledge that her body was trapped; but her thoughts were her own. She would let her body be controlled by the barking orders while she experienced a little safety and freedom in that little space behind her eyeballs. They could torture her, pummel her flesh, burn her skin, even gas her, but they couldn’t hurt her. They were only hurting her body—her mind was still her own.

  This was simply not the case anymore. She had lost herself—trapped in an empty oblivion and living hell. The best times she had now were staring at her cell door. She knew every dent and every chip of paint; knew every rivet, every panel, and every inch of the frame that held her door and its parts in place. She loved that door—for all of its galvanized steel and rusting rivets. It had become her safe space, and it was far better than the hell of staring at that bright white wall with the god-forsaken pain in her arms, and the smoke wafting into her already burned-out eyes, and the blaring of that horrible music.

  “Now this right here is a good band!” her interrogator cheered happily as The Dead Weights played their new single, “The New Old Reality”. He absolutely loved the songs of these musicians. “It’s loud,” he hollered as the radio blared, “but these youngsters know what good socialist values are!”

  “Why would we seek escape

  From this precious hand of fate

  Where lands so sovereign led

  Keep capitalism at bay?!”

  “I think, young Lena,” he continued, “if this band were to ever make their way to the GDR, I would provide them a tour of the country myself. I would pull strings and get them on our State record label. These youngsters are who you should be listening to—good, community-oriented musicians!”

  Lena couldn’t take it anymore. The beatings, the bildungsbälle, the horrid wall, punishment loaf, the gas, her arms hurting, the long interrogations…she just couldn’t take it anymore. Synapses snapped, connections frayed, and tarantulas of pain and nerves danced gleefully down her sputtering spinal cord like drops of poisoned sweat as she finally gave up. What started as a tremble ended as a full-fledged tremor, sinking her to her knees uncontrollably.

  She fell to the floor and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. “Oh god...” she said softly as she quivered and shook, “Oh fucking god, why...” She rolled herself up into a ball, making herself as small a target as she could for the kicks that were soon to follow. She didn’t care when they came—she hoped they would. Maybe if she were lucky a boot would find her throat, collapsing it ins
tantly. Then she could die, and this horrible nightmare would finally end. Oh, how she just wanted to die. She begged God for it, “Please…just let it end…kill me please...”

  Yet the kicks never came. Her interrogator only stood stoically above her, smoking the cigarette that she had been holding. He said nothing. He simply remained there, towering as if a judge, expressionless in his power.

  “Young, Lena?” he asked, gently.

  “y-y-yes S-s-s-sir...” she stuttered, through a mouth that wasn’t working quite right.

  “What are you, young Lena?”

  “A-a-a ch-ch-child…I’m a-a ch-ch-child, S-s-sir…”

  “That’s not what I want to hear, Lena. Tell me what you are.”

  “I’m a-a-a cri-cri-criminal…a cri-cri-criminal a cri-criminal…I’m a criminal.”

  “Clang clang clang clang clang clang clang...”

  Another round of pepper-balls. Another round of positions. Another round of clanging with the baton. Another night of fitful sleep. Another round of positions. Another round of ‘wellness’ exercises. Another round of giggling outside her door. None of it mattered anymore—Lena was completely broken. Half the instructions she didn’t even follow. It wasn’t that she refused to or didn’t care. She was simply too busy falling apart to really pay attention. When the motivational bildungsbälle began again in five-second bursts, she didn’t even try to defend herself. She simply lay there like a whipped dog, taking round after round, coughing up colors and crying silently. The guards on the other side had laughed uproariously at first, taking sadistic pleasure in her misery; but now, upset by her lack of response, they hollered at her—with anger that was quickly turning to rage. She knew the gas was soon to follow. She cared then—oh how Lena cared—yet she couldn’t bring herself to even roll over.

  “Achtung!” a voice yelled, and her cell was promptly opened.