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skull_bearer) wrote2007-02-09 03:45 pm
Past Tense- Part two, Chapter one
Since this post is too long, it's been cut in half.
Part 2
Chapter 1
The hospital is strung through with spider’s webs of barbed wire, and searchlights beam down from the fences that are now the walls. It’s empty, but there are shadows on the walls. The beds are blackened pits with canisters of gasoline next to them, and Erik wants to turn away so as not to see the blackened bones inside them. The tables are spread white and covered in bone saws and scalpels and flesh knives. The cloth is stained with blood, but the tools are well oiled and glistening. They seem too big for the tables holding them, and even the scalpels are big enough to cut him in half.
He wants to run, but the air’s like water, and even walking is almost impossible, each step taking a tremendous effort. He’s trying to get out of the door, but it’s taking too long and the doctor steps out. He’s the hospital doctor but he’s wearing a paper mask that makes him look like Mengele, and the seams of his gloves are razor-sharp.
He tries to scream, he can feel the air leaving his lungs, but it never reaches his mouth. He tries to run, but no matter how much he runs he can’t move. Charles walks out behind the doctor, he’s smiling and wearing one of the white coats the hospital orderlies wear, only the red cross has the broken arms of a swastika and the red is bleeding out into the coat.
“It’s okay.” He says, he reaches out and Erik can see he’s wearing the same gloves as the doctor. “They just want to take your number down, and then we’ll take our masks off.” Erik suddenly realises Charles is also wearing a mask, only it’s made of cardboard and it makes him look as though he’s smiling, even though his lips aren’t moving.
The doctor picks up a scalpel from the table next to him, and a takes a clipboard from Charles. He writes something with the scalpel and looks at Erik expectantly. But when Erik lifts his sleeve his arm’s covered in numbers, blue all the way round and he doesn’t know where to start. He looks desperately at the doctor, then back down at his arm. His eyes can’t seem to focus and he can’t read the numbers, only a blur of blue and white.
Then the doctor leans over impatiently and has a look at the blurry mess. He sighs. “I need your number.” He says coldly in Mengele’s voice.
“You should give it to him,” Charles puts in, and Erik can hear the fear in his voice, even though his mask keeps smiling.
Erik tries to say, I can’t, but the words get lost on the way to his mouth. He looks back down at his arm.
The doctor reaches over and touches Erik’s arm with one hand. The seam cuts through his skin like a knife through sugar paper as the doctor firmly carves 29338 into his skin. This time the scream makes it to his throat and he cries out.
“There, was that so difficult?” The doctor turns to write something on his clipboard, and when he turns around Erik can see that he wasn’t wearing a mask- it was his real face.
Terrified, he looks at Charles, but he’s lying slumped against the wall. The mask has cut an obscenely wide smile across his face, and the cardboard is soggy from the blood.
He screams again.
-Shut him up-
And turns to run.
-he’s waking the others-
But it’s like running through water, and his legs won’t work, starting to crumple under him, like they have so often done lately.
-If he won’t be quiet, we’ll have to give him morphine, you know that?-
Then the doctor grabbed him from behind and started to shake him and shake him and shake him…
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - until he wakes up - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Erik’s eyes open, and his body twitches violently as consciousness abruptly returns, as though it wants to jump off the mattress. He doesn’t, and for a moment he thinks he’s still dreaming, being held still by the air. But no. He’s lived with the aching weakness in his muscles long enough that he can’t mistake it for anything else.
The hands holding him are Charles‘, and behind him Erik sees the nurse and two orderlies. The sight of them makes him start, the memories of his dream coming back with a vengeance. But they’re not wearing masks, and they’re not Mengele, and although his arm is still aching in ghost-pain, it’s quickly fading. The staff are glaring at him, he frowns back, and hears them say something to Charles which he can’t translate before leaving.
It’s been almost two weeks since they arrived at the hospital, the first few days passing in the same thick, feverish haze as the ones before. Bits and pieces to recollect. Waking up at strange times, only able to judge the time by the varying quality of light filtering through the window above the bed. The texture of a food that had no taste. The sting of a needle inside his arm. The warmth and sharp edges of Charles curled up against him.
Then the fog had slowly cleared, revealing the ward in which he and Charles shared a bed due to the overcrowding. The white-washed walls and ceiling which were all he could see, without the strength to sit up and look through the window. He’d lie there, watching the spiders spin their webs across the ceiling and listen to Charles describe what was happening outside. The hospital is used for wounded soldiers, but most of the army is camped outside. Charles described the small village of tents that crowd next to the hospital walls, and the soldiers walking to and fro.
They’ve mostly left now, and by the time the sound of the grinding trucks reached them, Erik had been able to look out and see for himself. The food might be tasteless and the injections painful but they did work, and with Charles’ help he could sit up without wanting to be sick or getting too dizzy.
He’s in no mood to look out now though. The voices from his nightmare keep echoing in his ears, and despite the sleep, he still feels exhausted. His body still aches, even though it feels like he hasn’t moved for weeks- which, he reminds himself, he hasn‘t- and he feels his muscles complain as he stretches out on the old hospital bed, turning on his side and pressing his cheek into the cool fabric of the pillow. The blankets are rough and the sheets full of holes, but they’re clean and warm and after sleeping on straw covered boards for three years, even the lumpy mattress feels wonderful.
There wasn’t room to stretch out in the bunks, not with three other people to compete with for space. His back would ache from the hard boards and his arms would be stiff and he would long to be able to turn over. But if he did, he would force Charles out, or one of the other two people crushed in on his left. The blankets were ancient ones once used for horses, and so thick with lice they seemed to move by themselves.
He hears Charles sigh, and feels the mattress dip a little as his friend resettles himself on the edge of the bed, next to him. Technically he shouldn’t be out of bed, but the hospital is so understaffed that he has to get their meals rather than having them brought to them. It takes an enormous effort for Erik to sit up, leaning back against the wall, the iron headboard of the bed digging into the small of his back. Charles sits at the other end and hands him his share of breakfast.
In the ghetto, meals had been erratic, relying on how much he and his siblings could steal. It was invariably poor and although they were better off than many in Warsaw, it was one of the reasons his parents had left the ghetto for the Nazi‘s lies.
In the camps they usually got one or two meals a day, thin soup and a scraps of bread, and anything they dared to steal. Later on even those meals stopped and they’d had to fight for everything.
Or Charles had to fight, a voice whispers in Erik’s mind. You just lay there uselessly while he risked his life for you, as you’re lying useless now. Erik forces the thought away. There has never been debts between them, and he certainly won’t start counting them now. He looks down at his bowl, frowning.
It doesn’t look very different from what they’d been given in the camps, a thin, grey gruel with all the taste of cardboard. The only improvement is that they get larger portions and are actually getting three regular meals a day for the first time since Erik can remember.
The hunger. That was something he would always remember. Even after meals when they had been able to scrounge enough to feel better, it was still there, a gnawing reminder. Then the nausea would set in and it was all they could do not to be sick and lose what they’d been able to force down
It feels almost painful to eat now, trying to adjust to eating normally after so long.
“What did they want?” his voice is still slightly raw, but better than before, and it no longer hurts to speak. He swallows a mouthful of the porridge, the one good thing about the food was that unlike nearly everything else he’s had to eat in the last few months, he doesn’t get the urge to throw it up immediately afterwards.
“The same as always.” Charles sighs, “Just because we’ve been through… what we’ve been through,” He stumbles over the words and Erik frowns when Charles averts his eyes, “Doesn’t mean we have the right to wake the whole hospital when we have nightmares.”
Charles’ voice sounds better too, and has lost the harsh rasp that marked it for the first few days they spent here. He looks better too, Erik decides, probably they both do, but he hasn’t seen a mirror in several years and doesn’t know what he looks like. He still feels as thin as before, although the hunger‘s finally vanished. Charles looks much the same, and sitting cross-legged as he is just emphasises the way his bones stick out, but at least they’re both able to wash regularly and have clean clothes. Charles wears a pair of army trousers much too large for him, turned up several times at the ankle and tied around his waist with string, and a loose jacket who’s hood he keeps pulled up over his bare head.
He did sometimes wonder what had happened to Charles to make him lose his hair, they all had their hair shaved off when they arrived at the camp, and at regular intervals after that, but one day Charles’ had just stopped growing back. No one had any idea why, and Erik rather envied him. The barbers at Auschwitz tended to be the best liars and bribers than the best at cutting hair. The job got you an extra ration of soup and those who got it generally got it through bribing a Kapo. This meant that it ended up being quite a bloody job.
Erik rubs the side of his head where he’d once been badly nicked, he can feel the shallow groove through the spikes of his slowly growing hair.
“If they can come up with a remedy for nightmares,” Erik retorts, “I will take it. Otherwise-” He shrugs and takes another mouthful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles sighs. Erik doesn’t think much of the other patients in the hospital, despite the fact that they were from the same army that rescued them from the train. The hospital is incredibly crowded, but Charles for one doesn’t mind. It means he has an excuse to share the bed with Erik, and after so long he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to sleep alone again.
He’s not sure he should anyway, if he has any more of those dreams- He bites the thought off. This is a hospital, not Auschwitz. If he has another dream, what’s the worse he could see?
If he’d known about the dreams at first, Charles doesn’t know how he would have been able to sleep in Auschwitz, although he didn’t have to be asleep to have them.
He’d never forget the first one. It had been the middle of the night, in the first few months since they had first arrived. He was tired, cripplingly tired but something was pulling him back to consciousness, and all the problems and pains that entailed. It came again, not something to do with him, but something around him. A crash and rattle and roar from somewhere close by, and a vibration that shook the bunks. Charles felt himself start to slip, and scrabbled with the filthy blanket, trying to avoid falling out.
An arm emerged from the stinking cover and wrapped around Charles’ waist, pulling him back in and yanking him close to another body. A brief flash of light from the barrack’s high window lit up Erik’s face, all angles and sharp edges, his eyes glittering.
“Be careful.” He whispered, relaxing his hold but not moving away. He couldn’t. There were two other people crammed up behind him.
The noise had woken most of the barrack, and now the whisper went around- ‘Just a transport, go back to sleep’- quietly so as not to attract the attention of the Kapo.
‘Just another transport.’ Charles thought bleakly, resting his head on his bundled clothes. Just a few thousand poor souls sent off to be murdered. Go back to sleep.
Charles closed his eyes, next to him, he could hear Erik’s breathing slow as his friend fell asleep. What was there to do? Nothing but sleep. All the same, it was a long time before he sank back to his dreams.
And what strange dreams they were.
It was dark, and the noise was deafening. The voices went on and on, the emotions screaming even louder. Fear. Dread. Shock. Desperate hope. Worry. Where are we? Where are they taking us? Where is my husband? Where are my children? Where is my mother? Why did they take them away? Why aren’t they coming with us to the showers?
The showers…
With a jolt, Charles’ own mind reasserted itself. Not showers. He’d seen those ‘showers’ for himself, those that swallowed whole families and belched their ashes through the chimney. The showers who bled gas rather than water. The showers that the Nazis sent all those they didn’t want. The old, the women, the children.
Somehow the voices heard him, and began screaming. Hope vanished like a spark snuffed out and terror set in. Charles felt their panic, their fear, He felt them start to struggle, and it was his fists which struck out to fight his way free, and his flesh which the fists landed on. It was his throat which shrieked and his ears which hurt from the din. He heard the shots and he skin crawled a thousand times over at the sound of the barking dogs as the SS tried to restore order, forcing the people along the path and down the steps. More shots, and God, it was his finger pulling the trigger, and his pain when the bullet struck home. A young man, old enough to work but crippled in one hand. Charles had felt him cry out when he realised they were being led to their deaths, felt him fight and scream and shout for his younger sister, lost in the throng, felt the bullet as it passed through his chest and his mind winked out.
Felt death.
The door closed, and Charles heard it lock even as his hands turned the bolt. The screams were stifled in the small space. Some were crying, others hammering on the door. His tears, his sobs, his bleeding fists. They were all still dressed.
The Sonderkommando will have a long job this morning. Charles thought.
Again, they heard him, but this time the panic proved short lived. There was a clinking in the pipes above their heads and for the moment the panic ebbed. It sounded like the sound of hot water through cold pipes. Perhaps, the thoughts echoed, they were wrong? That this was not the death they had feared?
Charles saw through a hundred eyes as they looked up at the showerheads, felt the hundredfold sense of expectation. Heard the soft hiss, almost inaudible hiss as the gas reacted with the air. And, finally, saw the soft mist starting to drift down from the slots high above their heads.
The screams were as much in his mind as in the air, and Charles thought his head would split in half from the sheer emotion contained in it. It was so loud, so terrible, that it woke him up.
His eyes opened. The barrack was still once again, the inhabitants grabbing as much sleep as they could before the coming day. But how could they? Still the scream went on and on. He could feel his body being crushed as others tried to climb above the gas to reach the air. He could taste the acrid burn of it on his tongue, and felt his lungs scream as he breathed it in. But at the same time he could feel bodies beneath his feet, his hands scratching themselves bloody on the wall in a desperate attempt to climb higher still.
And here and there the voices were dying, mental shield rising and winking out one by one as the gas filled their lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe! Charles twisted aside, trying to get away, his lungs spasmed, trying to snatch in one last gasp of air. He turned, thrashed, and nearly fell out of the bunk. As if from a distance he felt Erik grab him and drag him back into the bed, pinning him down as he convulsed. Why? He’d thought Erik was his friend. They looked after each other but now he was holding him down, letting the gas fill his lungs and strip away his life, He could feel them, one by one flickering and going out as first consciousness then life fled. Erik! I’m dying! Help me! The words didn’t come, yet they did. A scream in his mind almost loud enough to wake the dead.
Almost.
He couldn’t breathe, his mind felt foggy. The pain was blinding, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t think of anything but the pain. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe!
Death, when it came, was a blessing.
Charles sucked in a lungful of air. It was stuffy, sticky and foul, and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever experienced. He drew in another, then another. Then he opened his mouth and started to scream.
Almost immediately a hand was slapped over his mouth, cutting him of in mid-cry. The terror of suffocation returned full force and Charles kicked out wildly, hands flailing. He bit the hand and heard a yelp as it was snatched back, and again he started to scream, twisting to get away from the hands trying to pin him down.
“For God’s sake shut him up!” Someone shouted.
Hands closed on him, pushing him onto his front and burying his face into the tangle of cloth that serves as a pillow. His screams were stifled to a sob, they were pushing him down to die! Forcing him back down into the gas. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe!
Yes. You can.
The words whispered in the back of his mind, spoken- insanely- in Erik’s voice. Abruptly, Charles stopped struggling and lifted his head. Erik was sitting next to him, eyes wide and one hand on the back of his neck.
He has no idea why it had been Erik’s voice he’d heard, but he’s re-lived this dream many times in his sleep, and it often was because of this that the orderlies threatened him with morphine. It’s a hollow threat, Charles knows, the orderlies wouldn‘t be able to get anyone- nurse or doctor- to approve it but Erik doesn‘t take well to it, and it’s the main reason he’s not on particularly friendly terms with the staff. Charles suspects it’s because his friend can’t wholly believe that the threat is a false one.
He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to convince Erik that they’re safe, he’s having enough trouble convincing himself. It doesn’t feel safe here, although perhaps because he’d forgotten what that feels like.
He’d believed he was safe with his family, until he’d seen them torn apart before his eyes. He’s believed they were safe in the camp, before he saw the smoke rising from the crematorium. He’d thought that they were safe when they were working, before he’d seen one who shared their bunk beaten to death for losing his cap. He’d thought they were safe in their barracks, before he’d seen the SS storm in and shoot two men for stealing bread. One by one he’d lost those illusions and now the only place he could feel even remotely safe was in Erik’s arms.
And if they’d stayed in the camps any longer, he had no doubt he’d have seen just how hollow that particularly comfort was too.