“Did you finally come to your sen—”
Wayne’s jaw dropped ajar as two men entered the laboratory gripping machine guns and pointed the weapons directly at him. More startling to Wayne was the fact that the men were dressed exactly like the Nazis he had eluded previously that night, right down to their swastika armbands. Dr. Lisa Hoffmann was present with these men.
“A joke is a joke, Doctor,” Wayne said. “What’s going on?”
The two men dressed as Nazis took hold of Wayne, who resisted. One of the men he resisted struck Wayne in the face, connecting hard, causing his nose to bleed.
“You fuckin’ asshole!” Wayne cried out.
One of the men handcuffed Wayne’s hands behind his back, while the other blindfolded him.
Wayne was shocked at what was happening. “What is this? You hate Nazis,” he managed to scream out. “Remember the letter your father wrote you before the Nazis murdered him and your mother—”
Wayne was gagged with a cloth, and dragged out of the lab room by the two men. As Dr. Hoffmann watched this intruder being “escorted” out, worry lines creased her forehead.
The inside of Gestapo headquarters in New Berlin City looked much like a typical police station would, with its generic bland desks in neat rows. A Gestapo man sat at each desk, some talking on the telephone and others doing paperwork.
Seated on a chair, in front of one of the desks, a young lady wept. On the desk sat a loaf of bread.
“Please forgive me, but I was starving.” the young lady said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I have not eaten in a week.”
A Gestapo man sat stoically behind the desk. “The Party makes sure everybody gets enough to eat. Stealing is a severe criminal act.”
“Yes, but I spent my food allowance on my child. He has a high fever and needed additional medicine. The doctor—”
The Gestapo man was not impressed. “Every German citizen is aware of the penalty for theft. The Reich cannot have a society of animals running around stealing. You shall receive the proper punishment,” he said emotionless.
The Gestapo man stood up. He surveyed the young lady’s right hand. It was days like this that he realized just how much he loved his occupation and how he would not change it for anything in the world.
“No! No! Please!” the young lady frantically cried.
Wayne was brought into the building and roughly escorted between the rows of desks towards the back of the room.
Wayne sensed that something had gone terribly wrong. Wayne thought that somehow he must have changed the course of history.
The Gestapo Nazis who had brought him in threw Wayne onto a small, wooden chair.
SS Captain Von Helldorf strode over. The Gestapo man saluted him.
Wayne’s blindfold was removed, as was the gag from his mouth. His hands, however, were left handcuffed. The handcuffs had been locked tightly around his wrists, and Wayne wished that they had been removed before the blindfold or gag.
“Wie ist Ihr Name, mein Freund?” Von Helldorf asked.
Wayne remained silent. Von Helldorf saw fit to slap him hard.
“Wie ist Ihr Name?” Von Helldorf asked him again.
“Why don’t you speak English?” Wayne said. “This is America, for God’s sake.”
“So, my friend, you prefer to speak English. How come that does not surprise me?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me, dickface,” Wayne said bravely.
Von Helldorf smirked, “Ah, I can see that interrogating you shall be a lot of fun. I have not had a fun interrogation in, oh… a week. It seems that my prisoners usually die just as the fun is about to begin.” The SS Captain paused, then asked, “One last time: who are you?”
Wayne remained quiet.
“You shall be my entertainment for the night.” He turned to his men, “Bring him into the main room.”
The Gestapo men led Wayne up a steep flight of stairs and down a long hallway. Criminals and deviators often received their “just” punishment from the Gestapo in one of the various rooms on this floor of horrors.
Wayne was led past the glass door to one of these rooms. In the room, the unfortunate young lady who had been caught stealing the loaf of bread was present with a few Gestapo men. The buzzing of a chainsaw rang out. Wayne heard the young lady’s screams pierce the air as blood squirted in all directions in the room.
Wayne was shoved into an interrogation room at the very end of the hall.
This special room contained many different torture devices, including some that looked like they came right out of a medieval castle, such as the iron maiden, where a prisoner could be locked in a confining metal device as if a mummy.
Wayne was stripped down to his underwear and then securely vertically tied spread eagle to a lashing rack.
“You do not want to talk; let the fun begin,” SS Captain Von Helldorf said.
Wayne looked around the room in disbelief. He felt as if he had walked onto the set of a Bela Lugosi movie. He realized that the men whom had brought him to this dungeon fully intended to make use of the available torture machines and weapons. Wayne decided he better talk. He didn’t have a high tolerance for pain. He remembered when he broke his arm in junior high and winced, he had thought he was going to die.
“Look, you want the truth, you’ve got it,” Wayne said. “My name is Wayne Goldberg, and I’m a college student. One of my professors invented a time machine. She sent me back in time to kill Adolf Hitler, and then I was brought back to 1995. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. That’s the honest-to-God truth, I swear it.”
Von Helldorf laughed. “Time machine? As in a device that would enable someone to travel between time periods?”
“Yes,” Wayne nervously responded. “Look, I know it’s crazy, but it’s the truth.”
“Do not waste my valuable time. I will give you points for originality, young man, but none for honesty.”
One of the Gestapo men held a thick leather bullwhip in his hand.
Captain Von Helldorf ordered him, “One lash.”
The Gestapo was only too happy to listen. Wayne received one lashing on his bare back and he groaned loudly.
“You can stop this anytime,” Von Helldorf said.
“I told you the truth. I swear it!”
“Three lashes.” The whip stopped and Wayne felt welts rising on his back as he gasped for air.
“You must enjoy the pain, my friend,” Von Helldorf said. “That is fine with me. I enjoy giving it.” He turned to his trusty man with the bullwhip and said, “Twenty lashes.”
Wayne’s groans turned to screams. Each crack of the leather whip hurt more than the previous one. The pain was intense - worse than anything Wayne had ever experienced in his life. About the time of lash number twelve, Wayne felt his consciousness slipping away.
SS Captain Von Helldorf commanded one of the Gestapo men, “Revive him.”
The Gestapo man picked up a large bucket of ice-cold water and splashed the it onto Wayne’s face. Wayne slowly woke up.
“Are you ready to talk, or shall we continue on?” Von Helldorf asked of Wayne.
In pain and shock, Wayne was ready to tell Von Helldorf anything that he wanted to know. He mumbled, “I’ll talk.”
The Gestapo men untied Wayne from the lashing rack, then seated and strapped him onto a large, uncomfortable wooden chair.
“What is your name?” Von Helldorf demanded.
“Wayne Goldberg.”
“Where have you come from? What underground resistance are you with? Tell me.”
Wayne, obviously, had no idea what the sadistic SS Captain was inquiring about. Wayne had already attempted to tell Von Helldorf the truth, but he didn’t buy it. Wayne knew he had to say something. Anything. He was hurting. “It’s underground in… in…the Bronx.”