CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 8

THE CONTRACT

The German pulled some bread from his pocket, alongside a can of sardines. The crack of the sardine can put new life into me. The distinct salty fish smell filled my nostrils with such an attraction, that I was able to sit straight up and reach for them. He handed the sardines to me first. I licked the can clean before he could give me the bread.

“I was the best sniper the world had scene. Hitler personally wanted me in Normandy on the day the Yankees would invade, so that I may put a German bullet in each one of their American skulls the second their boots hit the sand. That’s exactly what I did. Not for country. I did it for Elsa. I thought that if I could kill armies of the enemy, if I could prove my loyalty, that perhaps Elsa and our unborn child would be sparred.”

I listened while washing the bread down with water from my tin cup.

“It turns out that I wasn’t the only German distraught with the party and the Fuhrer. The British Special Operations Executive had been keeping a file on me. When they became aware of my situation, they called for a German informant that I happened to be stationed with in Normandy, to advise me that my services were needed for a greater cause.”

With a mouth full of bread, I stopped chewing. My stomach turned in sickness. I knew where this was headed and what I did wrong all those years back in the war. I didn’t say anything or try to stop him. I knew I had to sit and listen.

“I met with the SOE a few kilometers outside of a German POW camp in Normandy near an abandoned American post that sat on the front line. Everything was to be top secret. Even the Americans had no clue as to what the Tommies were planning. Operation Foxley, they called it. They had it all worked out. In July of 1944, Hitler was to be at his chalet known as Berghof, located in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps.  Under the guise of a Berghof grounds guard, I was to infiltrate the compound on July 13^th, just before 10am. It was reported by a German POW who claimed he had been a guard at Berghof, that Hitler would take a 20-minute morning walk around the forest grounds of his chalet at the same time everyday just after 10am. With a little recon, it was proven the POW wasn’t lying. Not only did Hitler go for a little morning exercise, he insisted to take his walk alone, without the security of his bodyguards.”

He smiled a sarcastic grin and arched his brow in a way as to say, “Now do you feel like a dick?”

“I was to find concealment within 300 meters of his walking path and simply wait for him to find my crosshairs.  The assassination was to be done with a Wehrmacht standard, accurized Kar 98k. I would put a German bullet in Hitler’s skull, putting an end to his reign.”

“And I fucked it up.”

“Yes Mr. Blake, you did fuck it up.”

Blood started to flow from his eyes, nose, and mouth. Holes slowly appeared one by one, all over his face and uniform. He retook form of the bloody mess that I left him in.

“I had been briefed by the SOE and was given a brand new German guard’s uniform to match those worn at Berghof. I decided to try it on in the latrine to be sure of the fit. The chest was a bit tight, but nothing that would cause for alarm. I looked the part and being German through and through, no one would suspect me of sabotage.”

He looked over and stared at one of the cold steel walls of the Nest. It was almost as if he were looking right through it. Or perhaps he was somewhere far back in his mind.

“Elsa would be avenged.”

Blood from his reappearing wounds was running down his body in a flash flood of red.  Small streams merged into one major river on the floor, flowing in a direct path to where I was sitting.

“I was just about to change back into my pedestrian clothing, when I was struck with the urge to relieve myself of the tea and croissants provided so generously by my new British allies. It was the worst decision I ever made next to pledging my allegiance to the SS.  Moments later a trigger happy Yankee Doodle with a taste for Nazi blood, busted in the door and shot my plans of justice all to hell.”

“My platoon was told the post had been abandoned. The Brits weren’t supposed to be there. We thought maybe the post had fallen behind enemy lines and we were doing a quick sweep to clear it out. How was I to know? I, I…”

Bending down to one knee, he took a firm grip of my throat with his left hand and pulled a knife from his boot with his right. There was nothing I could do. I was powerless. 

“I don’t want your excuses Mr. Blake! My body went sixty days in that shithole before anyone found me. Sixty days, just like your sixty days in this solitary cell. Your gun fire scared off the Brits, believing your troop to be Germans, and nobody ever found out in all the confusion, that an act of “friendly fire” took place. Nobody came looking. I was found by some French children who proceeded in spitting and throwing rocks at my rotting carcass. I was listed as a traitor to my country and painted as an evil SS sniper in your history books. I lost to both sides and you were painted as a war hero.”

He put the tip of the knife up to my throat with enough pressure to barley break the skin.

“They say you were put in here for stabbing a man in the throat Mr. Blake. They say he had a big swastika tattooed over his Adams apple. You killed him without ever asking a single question, didn’t you Mr. Blake? Let’s say, perhaps you were to find out that he wasn’t what you thought him to be? Perhaps his ghost comes to haunt you one day like I haunt you now and you find that he had a rational explanation for bearing such a mark? An explanation like the one I offer you now. But how were you to know? You never gave him the chance. You never gave me the chance Mr. Blake!”

The air in the humid dank Nest turned to a type of cold that I was unaccustomed to. A cold that was worthy of a season all its own. I could see my breath, but the German made no exhale.  

“Is it not the bane of men to jump before we look, to act before we think and to find answers before we ask questions?! We are biased by nature Mr. Blake. Understand this as I understand this. It’s our biased ways of thinking that act as easy to spot beacons of light in the fog of misunderstanding, misconception and fear. Looking for the quickest comfort, the shortest solution, we are so easily fooled by these misleading beacons of light. For if we follow our first initial biased beacon out of the fog, if we set sail directly into its light, we may very well lead our ships into the jagged rocks that rest as its foundation. It is to be said that our biased beacons should set off alarms in our minds, asking us to question our path. Forcing us to be sure that we are making rational decisions, and not following blindly, that which only “appears” to guide us.”

He released his hand from my throat and brought it around to a quick jerk on the back tuff of my hair. Pulling my head back, he pushed the knife a little deeper into my neck.

“There is only one way for you to understand this lesson Mr. Blake. It is your turn to be on the end of a trigger reaction, like I was when you shot me down.  It is your turn to feel the helplessness of being on the receiving end of blind hate, like the man whose throat you slashed to hamburger.  Now you will be at the mercy of a biased decision born of a careless urgency, like the black man in the folding room.”

He took the knife and started to cut into my throat. It was deep, but I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t trying to kill me or not. He purposely held back from pushing it into my windpipe, but with each cut he made, I felt that the next might be for keeps. I didn’t dare try to pull away or grab for the dagger, besides I would have been more effective trying to blow it away with my mouth rather than using my withered arms.

A few more cuts in, he dropped the blade into my lap and pulled a glass inkwell full of black ink from out of the cold thin air. He opened the inkwell and forced me to cup my hands out before him, than he carefully poured the black ink into my trembling palms

“This is a contract Mr. Blake. You have a choice. Make a mark to seal your fate, or refuse to mark and choose death.  If you should refuse to accept the mark, simply release the dark black ink, the darkness of your life, to the ground beneath you. Then pick up the dagger from your lap and lead it to your heart. By choosing death you will be admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility for them. Your honor will be restored and your darkness will be over.  Or, you can choose to bear the mark and…”

He stood up and turned his back to me.

“…live out the rest of your life in shame, knowing the coward that you are. You will forever be haunted by the people you destroyed and you will never escape the darkness that surrounds your pathetic existence. All you have to do is take the black ink and rub it into the gashes of your throat, binding your life in darkness and putting it on display for all to see.”

            “I don’t understand.”

 “The sentence is yours to choose Mr. Blake, life or death?  You are the judge of your future. I know it’s a difficult choice, you are biased towards living; it’s all you’ve known. Nobody wants to die. I didn’t want to die, but don’t forget what I said about being biased.”

“What would you do?”

He walked to the solid steel door of the Nest. Without turning back, he said,

“I would be with my Elsa. Auf Wiedersehen Mr. Blake. I hope we don’t meet again.”

He shut the door behind him. I was alone. I sat there in the confined darkness of the Nest. I couldn’t tell where the black ink in my hands ended and the darkness began. I wasn’t ready for death. I had too much of a survivors will within me. Besides, I didn’t even have the strength to pick up the damn dagger; much less stab it into my chest. Most of all, I was afraid.

I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. The German was right. I had found sympathy for him and understood what this all lead up to. I was a coward. I had always been a coward. We are all cowards making our way through the dark.  I thought about picking up the dagger. I went through the actions in my head. Even after all that the German had to say, I still couldn’t find my way out of the darkness.

In all my stubbornness, in all my selfish desire to be right and stay alive, I took my hands to my throat and accepted the darkness to follow. If only I would have realized that by not accepting a sentence to death, I would be sentencing myself to something much worse.

****

“This concludes our Parole Hearing of Walter Blake, inmate number 0032186.  We will now take a lunch break and meet back here in one hour.”

            “Excuse Me?’

            “Is there a problem Mr. Blake?”

            “What happened? Where am…”

            “Your Parole has been granted Mr. Blake. You’re to return to your cell, collect your things and be ready for release within the hour. Are you having trouble understanding this?”

            “Yes sir, I mean, No sir, I just…”

            “Guard, please escort Mr. Blake back to his cell. Don’t worry Mr. Blake, we understand that you are feeling overwhelmed, but you have shown that you are ready to enter back into society and we have full faith that you will be just fine.”

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 7

SALVATION IN STARVATION

            I was hungry. Twenty days in the Nest and my body was eating itself. Despite my cries for help, nobody answered or came to my call.  I had water. I don’t know how, but I had water. Every time I woke up from sleep, a small tin cup would be filled by my side. I tried to refuse it at first, like I was protesting in some sort of thirst strike, but my body gave me no choice and I eventually drank.  A man trapped under water can only control himself so long before the brain demands oxygen, betraying him to take in a deep gulp of liquid death. The same goes for the brains demand of water. I don’t remember drinking from the cup; I just know that I must have.

 It’s funny if you think about it, two elements necessary to the survival of our species, and if you get too little? Dead. Too much? Dead just the same.  It seems to me that my whole life has been nothing but a bunch of too little or too much. No just right or in-between. Everything in existence is balanced on a fertile equator of “just right”. Too far south? Too little. Too far North? Too much, and vice versa. By the way I was feeling I’m pretty sure I was south bound and moving fast.

By day 25, (at least I think it was day 25, could have been 2 months or 2 days for all I knew.), my primal brain finally overpowered the frontal lobe. There were only three things I could eat, besides myself, the rotten Nazi corpse, the Nazis leather boots, or the maggots that were eating the rotten Nazi corpse. My body was in need of protein and the maggots had it.  Essentially, by eating the maggots, I was eating the Nazi, but there was no way I would go and take a chunk of that putrid fascist flesh from the source.

Thankfully I was so out of my mind with hunger that the taste of the maggots began to seem rather pleasant.  I don’t know where they came from, but they kept coming. The Nazi corpse, infested with what seemed like infinite hordes of larva, in a sense provided a role in a vital ecosystem that offered me survival within The Nest. The maggots ate the corpse, I ate the maggots, and the way I look at, the Nazi ate away at me. The Circle of Life. The thing they don’t tell you about the Circle of Life, is that it’s just as equally a Circle of Death. It all depends on what direction you’re moving in the circle.

Eventually the maggots started to thin out. It got to the point where I had to really dig for them. What ones I couldn’t get to, turned into flies, so I figured that I’d wait for them to lay more larva and be a little more sparring the next go around. Even with the energy the maggots provided, it still wasn’t enough. My body was starting to shut down.

My head would wander into what felt like other times, other dimensions.  I found myself back in the war a lot. Terrible memories made real and revisited in this state of hallucinations.  I was 60 days in when I found myself at the side of a bath tub.  My beautiful Olivia was in the warm, soapy water humming an old love song. I knew it couldn’t be her. She died, burnt up over fever just before I shipped out. She looked at me with her big green eyes and asked if I would rub her back. I reached for her and fell into the water, into her arms.

I broke into a deep sob. No oxygen, no water, no food could replenish the energy depleted by my breaking heart. I was dying. I didn’t think of Heaven and already knew too much of Hell. My only sadness at that moment was with Olivia.  I wrapped my arms around her and cried out all the life that was left in me.

“Now, now, you’re quit alright.”

I came to, sobbing in the arms of the German. He was holding me and looked well alive.  Not a day of rot was on him.  I thought about pushing him back, but was too weak. He gently sat me down on the floor. I didn’t have the strength to sit, so I spread out on the ground and kept my eyes on him the best I could.

“I had a girl too you know? She was with child. I heard you talking to a woman in your sleep.”

I mustered enough strength to speak to the bastard. Words came in whispers.

“Let me guess, your girl was a blonde hair, blue eyed bitch with a stomach full of Nazi youth?”

“No Mr. Blake.”

“Bullshit! Wasn’t that what it was all about? Insure the reign of the superior race? Aryans fucking Aryans like rabbits until the whole fucking globe was German!”

“Yes, that was part of it Mr. Blake, but not so with Elsa. You see, she was a Jew.”

I didn’t know what to say; besides I used the last of my energy talking.

“We thought we could keep it a secret, but while I was away in Normandy, the SS put two bullets in her, one in her stomach, and a day later, one in her head.”

He lowered his head.

“They tossed her in a mass grave from what I was told. Some friends were able to reach me by letter. I failed her. I promised her that I would return and that everything would be alright, that we would have our son and a hearty pay for my service to the country. It’s true that I was SS, but in that moment, I hated all of Germany. I hated myself. Once I knew what had happened, I thought about deserting my post, or perhaps suicide. It wasn’t long before I was approached with another option.”

CYCLED SENTENCE-PART6

NAZI PARTY POOPER

I tried scrubbing the letters off for days. I even resorted to grinding my knuckles damn near to bone against my cell wall. It was no use. Once my flesh scarred over, the letters were still in place, solid and clear to make out.  I couldn’t get the horror of it all out of my mind. Where did the nightmares begin and end? What would be expected of me now?

 The only thing I could be certain of was that the Nazis obviously had more power in the prison than the average inmates behind its bars.  This was evident in the change of my treatment after my so called initiation. My usual meals would be delivered with double portions, I was given new books to read, and my time in the yard each day was extended by half an hour.

I felt uneasy by all my new found liberties.  I knew better than to view them as a reward, but more as an allowance. Unfortunately, in prison, all allowances are loans that almost always come with a large set interest.  If I could have stopped the deposits of forced gratitude, I would have, but I was more, so to say, in the position of the white safari explorer being so generously overfed by the native tribal cannibals, happy with the idol like worship, all the while being fattened for the pot.  

In the passing days I didn’t talk or come in contact with any of the known Nazis in the prison.  I figured that they would at least come up to me in the yard, but to my confusion, they acted as if nothing had changed.  In fact, I tried to approach a group of skins at the yard bleachers and they rose with the same hostel stance of that they would show to an approaching nigger.  I was clearly unwelcome. 

I steered clear of both blacks and whites for the week to pass and figured it best to just go on about my sentence without asking questions.  One night, reading in my bunk, I could hear the distant rumble of a coming storm.  I had a sick feeling that night in my gut that they would send for me, and sure enough, they did. 

Like clockwork, the power went out again, but it felt more as if it had been cut by switch and not the result of the storm.  I was wide awake and ready for what was to come, or at least I thought I was ready.  I could hear the footsteps of two guards coming down the block.  I knew they were coming for me.  A chill danced down my spine when I saw that both guards where in uniform, but had white pointed hoods placed over their heads.

“On your feet inmate!”

I rose from my bunk as they unlocked my cell door. I was sure that they would enter my cell or put me in cuffs, but the second my gate was open they marched off into the dark uncertainty.

I knew that I was to follow. Making my way through the night block, my pace fell short of the guards and I lost them to the forward darkness. I reluctantly caught up to them where they were waiting for me, standing in the same emergency spotlight of the dark folding room that I was directed to last time. 

“He wants to speak with you now.”

They pointed at an open doorway at the far end of the folding room. It was the entrance to a block that the inmates called La Paloma. Somehow pigeons were getting into the block and shitting all over the place. The fowl infestation had been going on for decades and the prison did nothing to stop it. The cells of La Paloma are mostly filled with crazies.  Guys that should be in mental hospitals line the block, writing their prophetic delusions out in bird shit on cell walls.   

La Paloma is also grounds to “The Nest”, a five by five foot solid steal solitary confinement cell at the very end of the block. It has no windows, or bunks, and is completely empty aside from a steal toilet with no seat lid.  When I stepped into the hall, I had a dreadful fear that “He” would be in the Nest.  I walked the long corridor that reeked of mildew newspaper and pigeon waste. Inmates incoherently screamed and reached out for me through the bars of their cells with white and gray shit covered hands.  It truly felt like a passage to Hell.

The two guards followed a few paces back, leaving me no way to go, but forward.  I reached the Nest. The door was open.

“Get in!”

One of the hooded guards shoved me forward; the other quickly slammed the door behind me.  In a pitch black panic I searched the confines of the cell.  Banging on all four walls, almost filling as much space as the darkness around me, I quickly exhausted my strength, soon finding my efforts curled up into a corner.  I was alone in the cell, I was certain of it. That is when, clear in my ear, I heard a voice. A voice in the Nest that I was sure to be alone in. A voice with a German accent.

“You know, Adolf Hitler’s secret hideout in Obersalzberg was called the Kehlsteinhaus, better known to the American troops as the Eagle’s Nest.”

I jumped to my feet, violently swinging and reaching into the dark. Nothing.

“Who’s there?”

“Though, this pigeon nest I’m afraid, would not be to the artistic taste of the Fuhrer.”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am Mr. Blake.”

“What do you want from me?”

I could feel the breath on the hairs of my ear as he whispered,

“I simply want to have a little chat.”

I swung my fist in the small confined space, only hitting air.

“How are you doing this? Where are you?”

He laughed,

“Do you smoke Mr. Blake?”

Just then, a flick of a match, the cell wash bathed in light where I could see in the opposite corner of me, a blond haired man lighting a cigarette. Just as quickly he shook the match and darkness superseded the light.  I rushed to grab at him, but my hands found only the cold steal wall. Not even the cherry glow of this cigarette remained, but the cell was quickly filling in smoke.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Do you not remember me Mr. Blake?”

“Yeah, you’re the Nazi fuck that told me to return to my cell after the little KKK tea party you and your Hitler youth put on for me, right?”

“Yes, but do you not recognize more to me?”

“No, should I?”

“I would certainly hope so. We shared such a dynamic moment, you and I.”

“I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.”

Cigarette smoke filled the cell, so much that I could barely breathe.

“Maybe this will jar your noggin.”

In the smoke, a red haze of light illuminated over the toilet the corpse of a Nazi officer, hunched over, filled with bullet holes.

            I had seen tons worse than the devil back in the war, but the sight of a dead blonde head German boy on the shitter was the one that never found peace in my mind. Now here he was, flesh incarnate, give or take.  I couldn’t tell if my heart was stopping or starting in my panic as his corpse, just a few feet from me, raised its head and said,

“Do you know how long I sat on this toilet after you killed me Mr. Blake? How long, I rotted with flies that would eat my shit, then land on my lips and lay their maggot larva to feast on my decomposing tongue? How can you kill a man and then leave him in such a way and not remember his face?”

A fly flew from out of his mouth and landed just below my left eye. I reacted the only way I knew how, with anger and hostility.

“Fuck you Nazi scum!

Trying to fight the fear, I kicked my right foot into his chest. With all my weight behind it, my leg sunk knee deep within his rib cage, collapsing into the hallow maggot eaten cavity that was his torso.  The Nest went dark just as I acted out, bringing light to the sensation of wet and cold from my shin down. Losing my balance, I reached forward to find the top of the steal toilet, and my foot lodged in the bowl. The German had vanished with the light. God damn foot was stuck.

“Do you want to know a secret?”

I stood still with my leg stuck in the toilet, questioning my own sanity. In all the hells I’ve traveled, this would be the worst. I listened in the darkness.

“A Nazi sympathizer is no better than a Nazi, agreed Mr. Blake?”

I didn’t answer.

“What if somebody, unknowingly supported the Nazi movement? What if somebody, without intention, was single handedly responsible for extending the reign of the Third Reich? Would this person not be guilty of the horrific acts that they unintentionally extended?”

I jarred my leg free from the shitter and fell back into a corner. I couldn’t understand what the German was getting at.

“Perhaps I am being too broad with my approach Mr. Blake. Let me give you another point of view to start from. What if a soldier was only following orders? What if a soldier committed genocide to spare himself from almost certain death?”

“I’d say he was a fucking coward!”

“Yes, you’re right! You’re right I’m afraid. He would be a coward. But, this is easy to decide with a well fed belly and mind. Starve a man of knowledge by feeding him only propaganda of hate, and fill his stomach with the honey and milk of delusion, and he soon becomes nothing more than a coward at the teeth of hysteria.”

“Bullshit you gutless motherfucker!”

“Funny you should say such words Mr. Blake, for now it is my shit and guts that you must take from if you are to survive. You are now at the mercy of a Nazi, Mr. Blake. You can take from me and survive, or refuse and perish, but I must assure you Mr. Blake, you will sympathize with me before you leave this Nest and you will see the hate that makes you as I.”

“Hate? As you?”

“Yes Mr. Blake, the hate that makes us as dead as we are alive, and as alive as we are dead.”

His rotting corpse reappeared over the toilet, motionless. This time the Nest went silent; all except for the buzzing of flies. I didn’t know it at the time, but I wouldn’t hear the Germans voice or be leaving the Nest for another sixty days.   

Insomnia in a Hotel Room

Work tomorrow and the rest of my life to follow.  Work.  This hotel room offers all basic amenities. This hotel room crawls with unseen life. There's more darkness in its darkness then meets the light. I can feel the filth, but I ignore it.  In my opinion, ain't  no human worthy of being called human if they can't lay in the muck pits of our species and survive.  

Lately I bore myself. I've lost all creative desire and spend my nights reading books about safari guiding in Africa or lost cities in the Amazon. That's if I don't just sit back in my hotel room and watch the television with all its unreal reality shows. ( Oh, I've been staying in a lot of hotels lately for work purposes.)  Writing this now is the closest I've come to being creative in a while. I've decided to forget about trying to create and instead, just sit back and enjoy nature and shit. <- I'm also working on dumbing down the way I speak, as seen in the sentence prior to this one and in the standard vocabulary of your average American teenager.  (pretty impressive,huh?)   

Anyway, I'm excited because I will be going on a real adventure this weekend with my girlfriend and her wonderful mother. We will be rafting the Arkansas River in the Royal Gorge of Colorado. We have already tested the white water of the Snake River in Wyoming and it was one of the greatest moments in my life.  I had to sign a waiver today that told me I might die. This didn't worry me much considering that "might" is far better than "will". If the waiver said "You will die!", then I would not have signed it.  I could give you all a waiver to sign right now that says "You might die.", and it wouldn't be a false statement. I hope I don't die rafting. 

I just turned 29 years old this past weekend. I've gotten a lot of people saying things like "Almost thirty!", and "Last year in your twenties!".  I feel like all ages that end in a 9 get overlooked. Can't I just be 29? Besides, mathematically speaking, a number can't "almost" be another number. A 2 can only be a 2. A 2 is not almost a 3; or a fucking 1 for that matter. Saying 29 is almost 30, is like saying a 2 is almost a Grizzly Bear. It just doesn't add up; and that's a fact you can count on.

I wrote a bunch of music in the last year and I don't know what to do with it. I recorded all kinds of songs and ideas onto my ipad.  I did instruments ( guitar, bass, and drums) on a cheap Sanyo keyboard. I sang lead vocals and then backed myself up on another track.  Its childsplay at best, but I feel like its some of the coolest stuff I've written. Unfortunately, I feel like these songs will probably never be professionally recorded or played with a real band. I've started considering what it would take to just go to some cheap recording studio and just do it all on keyboards and say fuck it to the hopes of using real guitars and shit. Then maybe I can just tour with a keyboard and a car. I know it might sound weak, but I guarantee that I'd still overpower some of the "hardcore" bands out there today. ( At least according to my taste.)  I'm pretty sure using only a keyboard to play punk music would be considered a betrayal to the "punk genre", but that kind of makes me want to do it even more. Bozos won't know what hit'em.  

I guess I should give up on this ramble and try to sleep. These days I can't help but lay awake at night and think of "what ifs?".  What if i cant make it to work on time tomorrow? What if I never left AZ?  What if my brother were to still be alive? What if I catch a disease from sleeping in this hotel bed? What if i put out my own music? What if I die rafting? What if?