Lord Piggy finally spoke, with a quick, “Yes. Yes, I promise!”
“Good.” Fancy-man said. “And just in case you decide you are going to have a little change of heart, our friend here…” he said, motioning to Dragon Lady, “is going to be following your every move. Understand that she is excellent at tracking down people like you. And this I promise you…” Fancy-man leaned into Lord Piggy’s face, menacing so close that his breath fogged the man’s eyeballs, “She will start with your kids. Then she’ll move on to your wife. This will be a slow process, and you will see every second of it. I promise you, the last thoughts your precious family will have is of how dissapointed they are that you got them murdered, because you wanted to abuse a boy. Then and only then, after she has slowly killed everyone you hold dear, will she finally kill you. Understand?”
“Yes! Yes, good sir! I swear it!”
“Good.” Fancy-man said, as he raised his arm, motioning to the rest of the agents in the room. As everyone started towards the door, he added, “Now, we have an agent that we need to get to the infirmary, and then the rest of us need to get some sleep. Of course, we owe you a token of appreciation for your indiscretion. In order to thank you properly for raping one of my agents, I’m going to leave you with our lovely friend here for the rest of the night.”
Dragon Lady approached with a vile grin on her face. Through the most wide, dead eyes Lena had ever seen, she visibly relished the events that were to come.
“Like he said…” Fancy-man stated plainly, before walking out the front door, “they can attach anywhere.”
The room began clearing out then, beginning with the tired-looking man and one of the trashy women who helped Patrick stumble into the hallway. As Wart-face walked by the table with Lena’s pen on it, however, he turned to look at it.
“You want a souvenir?” he growled, picking it up and motioning it towards Lena. For a few scant seconds, Lena judged whether accepting it back counted as ‘liking them’, or if she could still give the impression of hateful acceptance. Deciding that now was not the time to be obstinate, she grudgingly took it and threw it in her purse. As Lena slowly followed Wart-face out the door, she heard the begging and pleading behind her. Soon, the pleading turned into screams, then louder screams, and finally high-pitched wails. Lena tried to close her eyes as she shut the door behind her, but she did catch a glimpse of Lord Piggy soiling himself.
Das Großartige Spiel
As their touring van rolled through Checkpoint Charlie just a few minutes ago, Lena’s vision had tunneled, punctuating the furious tightening in her chest. She felt like prey to the armed Americans with their machine guns, and the East German soldiers who barked orders loudly back and forth. She clearly saw the razor wire, and the killing zone with the tank-stars, the turrets and the searchlights. And she felt precisely what they were intended to make her feel. “Turn back!” the toxic fortifications screamed, “It’s not safe on the other side! Turn back for your life!” She held her breath in fear, awaiting any number of terrible sequences that would culminate in her life oozing out onto the already-soiled dirt. Gunmetal decay with a lead-flavored grin; another silenced no-one; a squished bedbug on the brown-soiled mattress of internationalism and nihilist game theory.
But now that she was through, West Berlin appeared so bright and colorful it almost hurt her eyes. As the van drove further into the West, Lena couldn’t help but compare the two worlds (and make no mistake, they were worlds apart). Oh sure, neon signs existed on both sides of the blockade, as did, cars, first dates, beer and night-time music. But here in the West, the sheer scope made your head spin. The neon signs were everywhere, along with event centers for everything from pornography (that existed openly?!?) to drugs (drugs?! People did drugs?!) and wild dance clubs (they looked like orgies from outside). It was positively scandalous! Advertisements filled every flat surface, openly suggesting the reward of free sex for purchasing everything from toothpaste to dry-cleaning. That, or they offered everything from a moonlight fetish-show to a coke-fueled art gallery. Night-time music here, in contrast, made her punk band look practically kitsch. From their little tour van, she could hear everything from wailing electric guitars to brawny synths, mashing against tribal drums that were equal parts death knell and mating dance. God, this city had everything.
The second-most readily visible difference were the cars. In the East, there were very few car factories and basically no imports. Thus, there were really only a few cars everyone purchased: a Wartburg or a Trabant. These were homely little tin-cans that were as comfortable as they were zippy— which is to say not very. This was largely owed to the fact that they had been mostly the same models since the late 60’s. After all, why improve on something that worked and likely wouldn’t kill you for most of its stated service life? Besides, it was completely realistic to wait almost ten years for your car to arrive after paying for it, and until that point, it was either mass transit or good old pedal power. When your square-wheeled, Socialist-flavored jalopy finally showed up, well, it was a reason for the whole neighborhood to celebrate.
Here in the West, however, cars were absolutely everywhere, and absolutely everyone had one. Some even had two, Lena had heard! And there were so many kinds—BMW’s, Mercedes, Volkswagens—all with multitudinous colors, custom parts (like fancy hubcaps!!!) and speakers that blared music Lena had never heard before. These cars choked the roads like stampeding metal wilder beasts. It must have been terrifying to cross the street with so many death-machines rolling around everywhere. Yet folks just scampered across the road every which way, completely ignoring the very real reality of instant horrible death that sat honking mere inches away.
Then there was the skyline itself, filled with millions (if not more) of tall, crazy-looking buildings. She had seen them from afar, sure, but looking at them through the gaps in razor-wire was such a pale comparison to the real thing. Half of them looked to be made entirely of glass, and each one looked to be its own separate village, as if designed irrespective of its surroundings. The buildings didn’t have the same stoic concrete-appeal as they did in the GDR. They didn’t look like they would last quite as long, and there was no familiarity to them. Yet they were so vivid. This, combined with bright neon colors and graffiti that clung inelegantly to them, all seemed horribly irresponsible. Lena loved that profusely.
“Just look at it!” Jakob was the first to speak as he pressed his face against the glass of the small touring van, “Just fuckin’ look at it! It’s fuckin’ beautiful!”
“It’s so bright.” Vortecx said in a tone that more or less suggested agreement.
“I feel like I’m home!” Vivika exclaimed, “Oh Lena, just look at all of it! It’s like a masterpiece of… of… grit!”
“I know.” Lena agreed, “It feels like it should be home.”
“I don’t think I could spend an entire month here.” Vortecx said, “It’s great for a visit, though.”
“Suit your fuckin’ selves!” Jakob exclaimed, “I want to run right out into it all, and do everything there is to possibly do! And I don’t want to stop until it kills me!”