THE AWAKENING
“Next” yelled a voice.
“Next” it yelled again.
“You. Move the line” the voice screamed, this time prodding a blunt object into the back of The Father’s neck sending him crashing to the ground.
The Father squirmed on the ground, catching his breath before lifting his head. The blow reverberated through his body and shivered at his fingers. He had no idea where he was or what happened at all. All he had in his mind was the sound of his shouting voice, travelling out from his angered breath. It wasn’t the words that echoed, but the awkward stillness that sat in his throat, hollowed and uneven. It felt like a shadow that he was unwelcome to, a shiver he couldn’t shake.
“Get up” yelled the voice that had knocked him to the floor.
The Father lifted his sight. Everything around him was glowing white. It burned at first, but it was becoming clearer now as his eyes caught drift of shapes forming all around him.
He wasn’t alone. He was in a line. Behind him, there were outlines of maybe hundreds of thousands of people and they all carried the same sense of disheveled conscious appreciation to where they were and what was happening. It was like everyone was waking from a dream to find themselves in a queue they couldn’t remember joining. But as he stretched his sight and wore out the sleep in his muscles; arching his back like a morning cat, he felt less estranged knowing he was sharing this sense of absence with someone else; a lot of someone else’s, all wiping their blinded eyes, slowly hobbling forwards towards a grand golden arch where at its feet sat a single grey table attended by a man with neatly combed hair kept under a grey wide brimmed generals hat with a symbol of an eagle sitting above a silver skull and adorned in a domineering grey and black fitted uniform that seemed to command adherence to the finer detail of his pending rule.
“Next” spoke the man in sitting at the grey table.
The uniformed man hovering above The Father picked him up by his collar and shoved him forwards so that he collapsed at the foot of the table, just by the uniformed man’s feet.
“Where am I? Where is my family? Who are you?’ asked The Father despondingly.
“You are at the dispatch center, your family is fine and fair and faring well. Please tick the appropriate box” said that man at the grey table sliding a piece of paper to The Father.
The Father took the pen he was handed and looked at the question. It was less of a question and more of a declaration. It had two words: I and God. And below it was three boxes and beside each box, a word. Beside the first box was the word ‘Fear’. Beside the second was the word ‘Love’ and beside the third was the word ‘Submit’.
The Father looked at The Man with the Stamp confused.
“I don’t get it,” said The Father despairingly.
“If your belief is not listed, choose one that best fits your belief and tick it, any box, it doesn’t matter, just tick one…” said The Man at the Grey Table.
“But I don’t believe in God,” he said.
“Please tick one of the boxes. It is not terribly important what you believe or what you tick. I couldn’t care less but for proper dispatching, it is vital that you do choose one or the other.”
The Father pushed the paper back to The Man at the Grey Table.
“Sir. I have had a long and quite stressing day. Please do not make it any worse. If you would care to please tick one of the three boxes. Do you a fear god, b, love god or c, submit to god?”
The Father shook his head.
“You have to choose one of the three. You cannot pass without making a choice. That is your free will.”
The Father shook his head again.
“I cannot make the decision for you. You must exercise free will before you can pass processing. Do you fear god, love god or submit to god? You have to choose one. Which will it be? Please tick one of the three boxes and exercise your free will.”
“What if I don’t?” asked The Father.
The Man at the Grey Table had no expression on his face whatsoever. His emotion was as mixed as the color of the table in which he sat. He merely stared The Father dead in the eye whilst tapping his index finger on the table before him three times and on the third, a gloved hand reached over The Father’s shoulder, taking an inked feather between its fingers and placing hits hand neatly over The Father’s so that when the gloved hand moved to strike an x in one of the boxes, it was The Father’s hand that guided the inked feather to mark the paper.
Do you like cheese?” asked The Man at the Grey Table.
The Father lifted his eyes to the man’s chest. He had no idea what it meant, but the word Eichmann was written on his breast pocket.
The Father didn’t reply.
“Next” said The Man at the Grey Table., stamping the piece of paper and placing it neatly on a pile that was taken away by a neat looking woman with short blonde hair, dressed in a tight fitted grey skirt that pinned her knees and kissed the unblemished skin of her legs just below her knees as to invite a lingering stare without being slutty.
“Come with me sir,” said The Girl in the Grey Skirt.
“What’s happening?” asked The Father as he hobbled after The Girl in the Grey Skirt, his legs giving him no reason to believe he could run; bound by the fabric of fear alone.
“So you are a Christian. Ok then” she said.
“I’m not a Christian. I don’t believe in god” said The Father.
“Well, it says here you are Christian. You ticked the box” said The Girl in the Grey Skirt.
“I didn’t tick anything. Where am I? My family, have you seen them?” he asked.
“Halt” yelled a booming voice just before the grand golden arch.
The Father stopped and looked around. The hundreds of thousands of people he had seen were gone. The man sitting at the grey table was no longer sitting at a grey table that was no longer at his sight.
Around him, everything glowed painfully as if he were pressing his open eye against the refrigerator light. When he turned back to the golden arch, a giant uniformed man in front of him extended its fist and knocked him backwards and as he fell down, uniformed men from the left and right rushed like the onset of eve onto his trembling body and pinned his arms and his legs while the great uniformed man in front; with his mastodonic hands, ripped his shirt from his body then tore of his jeans and underwear leaving him trapped, vulnerable and naked; pinned to the floor by men following orders.
“Depilation, delouse, rinse, brand,” said The Girl in the Grey Skirt, reading a directive to the uniformed men and though they already knew, she and they were just adhering to protocol and being useful and efficient.
The Father cursed and spat, kicking away at his legs and thrashing his arms but to no avail. He couldn’t shake the grip of the men or monsters or whatever they were holding onto his limbs and keeping him steady whilst The Giant Uniformed Man took a cutting machine to his head and body, shearing off all of the hair.
The buzzing noise; as the machine tore out clumps of hair, played as a harmony to the dire bellowing of The Father whose warm tears streamed down his thrashing naked body. When every last hair was removed, the uniformed men surrounding The Father liberated his trembling body into a defeated slump as he curled into a foetal ball, pinning his knees into his chest and burying his face into his arms, rocking back and forth as he wept and blubbered the names of his children.
“Delouse,” said The Giant Uniformed Man in a heavy accent.
The Father simply braced, he could do nothing more. Several of the uniformed men came running like a gust of wind from the emptiness of space about him, each carrying in their hands, a see-through bag filled with white powder.
The uniformed men emptied the bags over The Father who held his breath and tried to keep himself caged in his defenses, but it was no use.
They prodded his skin with machines in their hands, sending waves of electricity through his body that pulsed through his skin and flapped his body about like a fish out of
water; his nails, ripping off his fingers as they spread wide and clutched at the cold concrete floor, his eyelids peeled back somewhere in the crevice of his skull and his jaw spread wide open in a look of absolute awe as if his all of his beliefs had just been broken.
As he thrashed about, the uniformed men emptied the white powder onto every inch of his flesh and into every orifice of his body and the more he thrashed about, the easier their work became.
With every scream, the white powder filled his gums and it coated the back of his throat. It tasted like fire. It felt like he was inhaling a volcano.
The uniformed man brushed his skin so vigorously that many of the metal bristles of their stabbing and probing utensils broke off and lay like pine petals, beside The Father’s white body.
“Rinse,” said The Giant Uniformed Man immediately the other uniformed men retreated into the bright light and from another side came more, this time carrying a long hose.
The Giant Uniformed Man nodded once and the others braced themselves as water burst from the hose, sending The father sliding along the ground, struggling to work himself to his knees and pull himself in a ball again but the closer he got to his own skin, the more his eyes and throat stung from the white powder that was painted on his skin. The uniformed men held the hose on him for seconds that at the mouth of the flood, felt like an eternity.
“Branding,” said The Giant Uniformed Man.
“Please, help me” blubbered The Father lifting his head just barely, enough for The Girl in the Grey Skirt to see the desiccated look in his eye, his anger and fight now seared from his skin and washed away along with his dignity.
The Girl in the Grey Skirt ignored his outstretched hand and beseeching eyes having spent a lifetime in her day injecting green fluid in small tiny unwanted animals, learning the art of separation from the necessity of her work.
A heavy set man, more so than any of the others, came into the room and picked The Father up by the scruff of the neck. The Father had no struggle in him. He went limp like any dog would and slumped in the steel chair where he was sat, his wrists and ankles cuffed as his body slouched over a metal table so that the back of his neck was exposed.
The Heavy Set Man wore small black rubber gloves on his hands. His body was a work of art. There were thousands of drawings along his skin and they all shifted and shaped around as if they part of a moving gallery. There were three black horned beasts shaded on his back that swept over the crest of a mountain where below, sketches of men in robes lit triangular fires and prayed upon a stone altar.
The Heavy Set Man threw The Father’s head forwards so that the back of his neck sat clear enough for him to scribe. He then took a long needle, one brutish enough to hold together the stern of a ship, and with a firm grip of his hand, and with his fingers latched soundly, The Heavy Set Man dragged the needle across The Father’s neck, cutting through the fine hairs that curled over, looking for the right patch of skin to write upon;.
The Girl in the Grey Skirt looked on, picking dirt from beneath her nails in strained boredom. The Father, though, he could look nowhere else except for the table where his head was being pressed. And in the reflection, he could see the bridge of his nose and the shadow of his ears that stuck out from his shaven head. And he could see, towering behind him, a great hulking mass of a man, holding a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other.
The Father shuddered as he watched that hulking mass of a man or the monster or both, lowering the tip of that needle, that thick ferine nail, into a vat of steaming black tar. And he shut his eyes, when the nail disappeared somewhere over his neck and the hammer, ambitiously high, out, away from the orbit of his thoughts.
And the steel clapped as the hammer came crushing down on the end of the needle, puncturing the thick skin on the back of The Father’s neck, who with every pounding drive, clutched fretless at the soles of his naked feet, doing his best to curl his body once more, to round off the searing pain.
The hammer clapped.
The needle stabbed.
Ink poured in.
Blood flowed out.
And an equation was scribed on The Father’s neck.
The Father screamed as the needle tore through his flesh. It felt like his skin was on fire, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t move so instead he submitted and gave himself to their will and surrendered to the pain while The Giant Uniformed Man continued to carve the last of the numbers and letters into the back of his neck, stopping momentarily to appreciate the extent of his art, whilst wiping away streams of blood.
It took an hour; maybe three or four. It might have even taken a day, maybe two. And the whole time, The Father slipped in and out of exhaustive comas in the paltry interludes between the needle tearing in and ripping out from the open wounds in his skin. And in that second, as The Heavy Set Man hacked at the back of his throat and spat a thick yellowish phlegm onto The Father’s neck to wipe away the smears of black and red, The Father tumbled backwards into a stupefied and numbing slumber, his consciousness becoming blacker than the thick oil and tar that was inking his skin.
But as quickly as the silence and the searing pain lulled The Father into conscious abandon, that sleep was broken as a calamitous hand came crashing back down onto his neck, swinging from a great height, as if it were breaking through an iron wall, and rupturing the thick skin of The Father’s neck, as if it were puncturing a balloon.
“Finished,” said The Heavy Set Man.
When the branding was done, the uniformed man backed away and let The Father gather his senses, immediately pulling his hand to the back of his neck and wincing as he grazed the swollen tender skin. He ran his finger over the markings and sounded out the symbols in his mind. There were letters and numbers and symbols of equation, but he had no idea what the equation meant.
“Take the clothes,” said The Girl in the Grey Skirt, handing a pile of grey clothing to The Father who was on his feet but curled over himself shamefully trying to hide his genitals with his trembling hands. “Shall we?” she said congealing.
Her voice was so considerate. He felt like some kind of dumb and unwitting contestant, being taken from one wrong outcome to the next but he felt a little less stupid in her hands.
They reached a golden arch. The Father was stunned by its beauty. His eyes first caught the shimmer from the floor and they widened in amazement as he looked up and saw that there seemed to be no end; that these golden arches soared further than his imagination would allow.
In front of him, the gates of golden arch creaked and opened slowly. He stood right at the foot of the arch where the two sides were begging to part, looking up towards an infinite end where the gold arches continued well past his imagination and into the realm of the impossible. He looked around and the uniformed men were all gone. There was nothing but the stinging white blinding his eyes, that and the neat looking woman in a grey skirt.
“Welcome to heaven,” said The Girl in the Grey Skirt smiling, lifting her left arm to usher The Father with kind invitation, past the golden arches and into The Kingdom of Heaven.