1000’s killing freaks me out. I try not to mind that I get nothing more than foot skin for breakfast, but cheese blisters hardly soothe your nerves when some chicken butt who has hidden in the cavity of your ribcage for so long suddenly bites the dust.
“What do you think?” I whisper to Otto.
He stops chewing on some girl’s face. “We separate ourselves. Before the ass goblins have a chance. We hide away bicycle parts until we can build a tandem bike.”
I choke on a toenail.
Chapter Six
I am assigned to the surgery cathedral again. Otto is assigned to the doll factory. I show him my work card. “Two days in a row,” I say. “They must be catching on.”
“Speaking to other prisoners is prohibited, 999,” my brother says. Apparently he’s switched back to rule-following mode.
We march toward the doll factory without speaking. Around us, ass goblins ride bicycles. They catch oily swastikles in their mouths. Every day, more and more children fall down and never stand up. Every day, things get so much worse. The Auschwitz population dwindles as toy production rises.
Winter is heck. No sunshine illuminates our organs as they ferment in barrels, and later, after the cider is drunk, no sunshine warms the ivy lacing through our bones. We endure it to pay off the debts of youth, but we will never reclaim those happy times. Our punishment goes without cause or redemption.
Otto knocks on the door of the factory. We stand with our hands folded behind our backs until an ass doll opens the door. The ass doll waves us inside. Red semen-worms slither up the doll’s nose. The doll shakes all over until the worms blast out of her rectum.
I hate the doll factory. We’ll build dolls long into the night while ass goblins plug them hot off the assembly line. We make ass dolls in the likeness of goblins, but there are a few key differences. Each doll has a giant nose on its face rather than a fanged mouth. Like the goblins, their torso is a giant ass, but being legless, they also have a lower ass. All of them share Adolf’s face, only theirs are made from rotten apples and have a nose behind the mustache. Like snow people made of children.
I used to fantasize that someday Otto and I would plug Frannie and her tiny twin the way goblins plug dolls, but today the idea disgusts me. Yolky fart bubbles stink up the air as goblins flop from doll to doll, playing musical chairs with the worm-spitting anuses.
No one stands guard in this factory, but misbehaving children still get caught. More than anywhere, asses really surround you here. Otto and I hopscotch between writhing dolls and goblins, making our way to the manufacturing line. No other children have arrived yet, so we take the first station, where we sculpt Adolf heads out of mushy apples, then attach the mustache. Despite knowing that the apples were once children, I believe most of their life essence drains out during fermentation, so sculpting heads isn’t as bad as the other stages of doll construction.
Other kids arrive and find a place in line. Although we hate the job, we are all responsible for bringing ass dolls to life.
Hours pass. They whimper into other hours, as if time works independently of our crooked hands to animate the dolls. But if our hands stop working, the assembly line will also stop. When you recognize that power, you cease being a slave to time. From that instant onward, you are a bastard slave. So much for epiphanies.
Eventually, two sentries come for me. Otto drops a mustache on the floor and they beat us until I throw up feces. “Missing in surgery,” they say. “Guilty, guilty!”
I rest my head on the shit-laced mustache and begin counting down from nine hundred ninety-nine.
On my thirty count, they nail our hands to a wooden surgeon’s table. At zero, they hammer into our feet. Otto and I sputter blood and shit as the sentries announce the punishment we are to be dealt: Revocation of Childhood by Molecular Entropy for the Advancement of the New Order. The guard reading this bumbles and slurs over every word. He obviously has no idea what it means, and neither do I. They leave.
An ass goblin in a full-body plastic suit enters the operating theater. Beneath the suit, the goblin appears to be white. This is strange, although considering that Otto and I may never face another roll call, it is not so strange. The prospect of dying exceeds all other absurdities.
The goblin in plastic turns his back and fiddles with something on a counter. He turns, and a swastika-shaped needle enters my arm.
I am not around for what happens next.
Chapter Seven
“Wake up!”
My eyes are already open when I return to consciousness. An ass goblin stands over me. I try turning my head to check on Otto, but my skull won’t budge from the icy table. All I see is the ass goblin in the plastic white coat, spreading his arms wide. His hood is down now.
“Beautiful! Marvelous!” the goblin says. “Bumblestum, come quick. Examine this child. The skin grafts are taking hold better than I’ve ever seen.”
This is the first time an ass goblin has referred to another by name in my presence. I realize that all of them must have names. Adolf is not alone.
An elderly ass goblin gets on a stepladder beside the table and raises his wrinkled, semi-deflated ass to my face. “You are correct. These skin grafts are splendid, eons ahead of anything else in the field. How is the other twin doing?”
“What have you done with my brother?” I croak.
Bumblestum expels a gas cloud into my face, dazing me into yellow nausea.
The ass goblin in the white coat sighs. “For the first several hours, 1001 demonstrated remarkable external healing. I believed I had found what we’ve been looking for. All the while, 999 was dying. I am at a loss to explain what happened next. 999 made a comeback, reconfiguring a fraction of his DNA structure, just enough to survive, while the life force drained from 1001.
“Now that’s science!” Bumblestum says.
“Although it is policy to dispense of twins post-surgery, I believe 999 and 1001 bear great potential for the scientific community. They have survived better than many children since their arrival, potentially destroying Adolf’s theory that twins, especially conjoined twins, are inferior to the single-type child.”
“Adolf is not a scientist, but if our research disproved any of the rational arguments he laid out in Mein Puppe, Auschwitz could lose its science division, and we would lose our asses.”
“The odds of Adolf returning are slim. I anticipate taking full charge of Auschwitz by morning. It will be the dawn of the renaissance we’ve been fighting for.” The goblin in the white coat smiles. The overhead lights reflect off his flesh, making him look shiny and beatific, a white angel.
“Auschwitz will be a great kingdom…”
The White Angel nods. “Tonight, I’ll return them to the barracks and begin the study on their post-conjoined lives.”
Bumblestum hops off the stepladder, clapping and giggling. “Genius! If we remake children in our likeness, we will be so close to discovering a viable childhood serum. This could be the greatest leap forward in ass goblin evolution since the invention of ass dolls.”
The White Angel’s eye stems elongate from his ass as he pokes and prods my body. “Nay, it is greater. After we acquire innocence and youth, our race will be unstoppable. We will become immortals.”
For the most part, I am numb. I imagine this is how it feels to be dead… tingling feet and a desire to puke.
The ass goblins turn off the lights and exit the room.
Chapter Eight
The White Angel takes me to the barracks after lights out. The ass goblin who is supposed to be holding post outside the door waddles over from a card game with the other guards. “Just a game of gambling,” he explains, his eyes peeping out from his fat buttocks, staring guiltily up at the scientist.
“I am only returning a prisoner,” the White Angel says. “No need to be alarmed. Doing my duty, as you do yours.”
He scales the staircase two steps at a time, leaving me alone with the guard. His gambling buddies holler at him. Some want him to return, others drunkenly clamor for a wee hour Shit Slaughter. “Ah, fuck it. You got the mark of a hot one.” He unlocks the door, pushes me through, and locks it behind me.
I hold my breath in the darkness. Children whisper in their bunks. My entrance must have startled them. My vision isn’t adjusting, so I grope along from bunk to bunk until I find the eighth on the wall to my right. That is where Otto and I slept. I run my hands against the side, calculating the easiest way to pull myself up. My right hand brushes against something cold and small. I slide my fingers over each of its sides and realize that I have discovered a foot. The foot’s owner jerks away and I leap back. The foot owner sits up, leans close to me. “Who are you? What do you want?” she whispers.
I would recognize that whisper anywhere. It’s Frannie. She’s alive after all. “It’s me,” I say, my throat raspy and soar.
“Who are you?” Her eyes must be closed. They aren’t flashing in the dark like they used to.
“999, Otto’s twin.”
“Oh…”
Someone stirs beside Frannie. The form pushes Frannie down on the wooden cot and creeps to the end of the bunk. I fail to make out the face until sour breath curdles my nostril hairs.
It’s an ass goblin. Frannie is sleeping in my old bed with an ass goblin.
“999,” the ass goblin croaks, “It is Otto, your brother.”
I grab hold of the cot to keep from collapsing on the floor, and in one unbearable moment, it all comes rushing back to me. I understand the meaning of the conversation between the White Angel and Bumblestum after our separation.
“I am not an ass goblin,” he says, his voice totally ruined. He couldn’t speak above the softest whisper if he tried. And neither could I.
“I’m sorry I let you down,” I say. “I’m sorry for cutting us apart. I messed up our entire plan. We’ll die here for certain now.”
“Your eyes are weak, but in the morning, you will see that we can no longer pass as children.”
“What’s to be done about this?”
“Climb into bed. The morning siren should be sounding soon. We must rest until then.”
Otto slides his hands under my arms. Claws he never had before dig into my back as he lifts me onto the bunk. I push Frannie into the middle, between Otto and I, and pass into a dream about plugging her miniature twin, my first Auschwitz dream.