Terrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets

by Steve Wetherell

  Without hesitation or fanfare, the guard pushed her head against the post with one hand and unsheathed his combat knife with the other. He slashed her throat wide open, holding her still as she thrashed about for a moment. A river of blood flowed down her jumpsuit in the seconds it took before she stopped moving. I read once it took only seven seconds for a person to bleed out if their carotid arteries are cut. I never timed it, but that seemed about right.

  We all stood perfectly still. Nobody gasped in shock or cried out in anguish. Nobody cursed the guards or collapsed to the dirt in sorrow. Those of us entertaining a sick curiosity watched out of the corner of our eye; the rest of us stared straight ahead.

  Satisfied justice had been served, Captain Renshaw stormed off and the whistle for breakfast was blown. We quietly marched to the mess hall as inmate 401586 remained strapped to the Death Post. Head down, chest covered in blood, they left her on display for the rest of the day until she was cut her down and incinerated after dark.

  One less meal to serve.

  +

  Breakfast was a ball of rice and a cup of watered down, chicken-flavored stock. Same breakfast as the day before and every day since I’d arrived at camp. It was not to be confused with dinner, which consisted of a ball of rice and a cup of watered down chicken-flavored stock. The only variety occurred in the temperature of each item, which varied from cold to lukewarm.

  The only meat came from the rats we caught ourselves. It wasn’t against the rules, since it helped to keep the rodent population in check and offered the guards a source of entertainment as they watched us hunt and trap them.

  There were a lot of rats in camp. Strange, considering we left no food scraps behind. Despite that, they were hard to find and harder to catch. Since rat meat was so hard to come by, it also served as a valuable form of currency. That, however, was against the rules. Any sort of inmate-to-inmate commerce was a punishable offence.

  I sat down at my usual table deciding to go with rice soup that morning, dumping the ball into the cup and having both items at the same time. My friend Ezra sat down opposite me and ate his meal the same as always - all the rice first, followed by the broth. He gave up long ago trying to convince me that you got fuller eating it this way.

  We sat in silence until there were just a few grains left in his cup. “I knew her, you know,” he said.

  “Huh? Who?”

  He nodded toward the yard.

  “Oh.” I ran my finger along the inside of the plastic cup and licked it clean. “Was it true?”

  Ezra glanced to both sides to make sure no guards were in earshot. “The escape talk? I think so.”

  Ezra noticed the look of shock on my face and waved it off. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t into anything. I’d only heard rumors. She never spoke about it directly to me.”

  “If the guards saw you two talking enough times…”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”

  A guard posted by the door blew his whistle, signaling the end of breakfast. We got to our feet and lined up to return the dirty dishes.

  I didn’t bother asking Ezra how they caught the girl, because it was the same story every time. Another inmate reported her. The State kept us in check in two ways. The regular executions, beatings, and general abuse was effective, but even more so was the mistrust among the prisoners. Mothers betrayed husbands and children betrayed parents. Survival in the camp was a full time job and if dropping the dime on another inmate earned you an extra ration or reprieve from an abusive guard, you took it without shame. Just the way the State liked it.

  There was only one person left on the planet I trusted, and he happened to be walking with me as we left the mess hall. I’d known Ezra since I was a kid. We served together in Kazakhstan and I saved his life on two occasions. He returned the favor once for me. As a result, we trusted each other completely. Yet, in my darkest hours as I lay awake in the middle of the night, doubt crept in. Ezra was arrested almost three years before I was and he looked weaker each day. I saw the despair in his eyes and every man has his breaking point. How long would it be before I started to watch what I said around him?

  “You ever think about it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You know. The big ‘E’ word.”

  “I’m not that brainwashed yet,” I said. “Of course I think about it. But I’m not dumb enough to talk about it out loud, so let’s change the subject.”

  We picked a spot in the middle of the yard and sat in the dirt, facing away from the dead girl. Enough October sunlight penetrated the smog layer above our heads to feel good on my skin. I closed my eyes and faced the sky, trying to forget another miserable winter would soon be upon us.

  “What’s the good word, Brothers?” Another inmate, Malachi, squatted in front of us. “I heard they found a coal pocket in the hills outside Braselton.”

  “And I heard they found your missing thumb up your ass,” I said. “What’s your point?”

  Ezra laughed.

  “You’re a real prick sometimes, Jack.” Malachi said.

  “Today it’s coal in Braselton. Last week it was a patch of land in Dover ready to take corn.” I picked up a pebble and bounced it off Malachi’s chest. “You put more effort into spreading rumors than actual work, if it were to come along. And you’d be the first to bitch about it once it got here.”

  Malachi stood. “Piss off then. You’re a real prick sometimes, you know that?” he repeated.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Ezra shook his head and watched Malachi storm off. “Bit ornery today, are we?”

  “The hell with him and his coal.”

  We were in a co-called labor camp, but labor had been hard to come by over the last few years. When I’d first arrived, it was twelve hour days in the fields outside the camp. We’d board buses at dawn and spend all day planting seeds, plowing fields, picking weeds, and harvesting crops. In the winter, it was working in the coal mines, swinging picks or pushing carts.

  After five straight years of drought, practically anything green within a thousand miles was a fantasy. Mining became a year round gig until the last chunk of coal was finally picked clean from the hills. After that they switched us to infrastructure stuff, like road work.

  Despite the plentiful slave labor, the State couldn’t even afford to keep that up, and lately we hadn’t had any regular work. Clearing rocks from a hundred acres of dirt in the blazing heat is about as much fun as it sounds, but not having any work has it’s downside.

  For one thing, all of us inmates milling around the camp all day increased the guards’ workload and, in turn, made life for us more miserable. Beatings and general abuse increased every day we were stuck behind the wire.

  I also found that the life of a prisoner is much worse with nothing to fill your day. The labor forced on us was brutal most of the time, but at least we were doing something. At the end of the day I’d collapse in my rack with exhaustion.

  I turned at some commotion coming from the other side of the yard. Two guards beat an inmate with clubs while he curled into the fetal position in the dirt. After a few blows, the guards stopped to argue with each other, but I couldn’t make out what the disagreement was about. The inmate lay still, no doubt hoping they would forget about him and move on. After a few seconds one of the guards pulled out his service pistol and shot the inmate in the head before storming off.

  I turned back around. Ezra didn’t have to, since he never moved a muscle, just stared off into the distance beyond the wire.

  “The big ‘E’ word,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Yeah.” It was all I could think to say.

  +

  New inmates always stick out. Carrying bright orange signs proclaiming NEW INMATE would be more subtle than the spotless jumpsuit and freshly shaven head. If that weren’t enough to tip you off, the general look of being well-fed and healthy said it all. The latter wasn’t quite so prominent as it used to be. We never
heard much about what was going on in the outside world, but over the last few years it seemed the civilians weren’t doing much better than us.

  I watched as a small group of dazed newcomers wandered about the yard. Most of them were probably arrested on flimsy charges they still couldn’t wrap their heads around. I could tell by the look in their eyes that it hadn’t sunk in yet. Somehow, the charges would be dropped. Cooler heads would prevail. Justice would be served. The look in their eyes could be summed up in one word. Hope. Poor bastards.

  It doesn’t really matter why I got arrested, but you’re probably curious. I wish I could say I got caught stealing food for my family so they wouldn’t starve. Or maybe I committed a crime of passion, standing up for my beliefs and doing what was right, no matter the consequences. The truth is far less romantic.

  One day after work I came home and slammed the door harder than usual behind me. I was pissed off about something. I don’t remember about what, but I was generally pissed off about something all the time back then. I hated my job, I drank every minute when I wasn’t on duty, and I was generally a miserable son of a bitch. Ask my poor wife Kim, who was six months pregnant at the time.

  The flimsy nail holding up a portrait of the Father gave way, thanks to one too many slammed doors. The picture fell, and the sound of breaking glass didn’t exactly improve my mood.

  It fell in just the right way to break the frame as well, making it a complete loss. Kim, wanting to keep the peace and spare herself from my ranting and raving, took the picture and told me not to worry. The wedding photo hanging in our bedroom was the same size, so after dinner she’d swap the frames. We’d go to bed that night with an empty space above the dresser, but our fearless leader would take his place back on the living room wall.

  She set the picture on the kitchen table to tend to after we ate, right in the line of fire of my clumsiness. I’d been sitting at the table for less than a minute when my elbow knocked over a full glass of juice, dousing the photo of the Father and destroying it for good.

  That was the proverbial last straw. All I wanted was to eat my dinner and collapse on the couch, but now I had unexpected errands to run. Not only was it illegal not to have a portrait of the Father prominently displayed in every home, but the State was very specific when it came to disposing of them. I’d have to take the juice-soaked picture to city hall where it would be disposed of properly and I’d have to fill out a report on the accident. Most people owned the same portraits of the Father their entire lives, passed down through generations, so the State made sure you had a damn good reason for throwing one away.

  I was livid and made the rash decision I’ve been paying for ever since. I tossed the photo into the trash bin, case closed. With the curtains shut tight and no company expected that evening, we’d squeak by with a portrait-free home that night and Kim could buy one first thing in the morning. Lord knows they weren’t hard to come by. She was a nervous wreck, but she didn’t fight me on it. We finished eating, I took out the trash, and spent the night staring at the television as always.

  They arrested me a few hours after my shift started the next day. They never told me how they found out, but I had a pretty good guess. Kim and I didn’t live in the best of neighborhoods and the homeless in the area relied on dumpster diving as a way of making a living. Some bum probably rifled through our garbage can that night looking for something salvageable and found the Father amongst the trash. He reported finding it in the garbage can assigned to our apartment, sealing our fate. Simple as that. I was charged with treason against the United Federation of Nations and sentenced to serve an undetermined length of time at Rehabilitation Camp 24.

  That morning before I left for work was the last time I saw Kim, over eight years ago. I know she was arrested and sent to another camp, but I don’t know if she’s still alive or what happened to our baby. I don’t know if it was a boy or girl, or if she lived long enough to deliver it. Don’t know what Kim named it or if it even survived birth. We get no health care in the camps and any woman unlucky to find herself pregnant as an inmate has to give birth on her own. Hopefully, she found a friend or two that could help. As you might imagine, the infant survival rate in the camps isn’t too impressive.

  Ezra moaned next to me and bent forward holding his stomach, snapping me out of my haze of self-pity. He got to his feet without a word and jogged for the latrines. Poor guy had been suffering with what we guessed was dysentery for over two weeks and had been spending more and more time in the shitters.

  I turned my attention back to the new people, two men and three women. They probably had arrived that morning and felt the need to stick together since they didn’t know what else to do. It’s pretty common. I hung around with a couple of guys myself when I first arrived before I found out that Ezra was in the same camp. One of them died from pneumonia our first winter, the other executed for stealing food.

  One of the women stood out and I couldn’t really put my finger on why. She was plain looking, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s hard for me to explain other than she had an odd look to her. Like she was waiting for the punchline of a joke or had a secret she was just dying to tell somebody. She kept a pace or two behind the others and if you plucked her out of this miserable place and plopped her in a park, she’d fit right in strolling along a path.

  I got to my feet on an impulse and walked over to the group. A flash of unease and fear washed over their faces as I approached, which was understandable. I hadn’t looked at my reflection for quite some time, but I had a pretty good idea of what I looked like based on the other men in camp. Sunken eyes and ratty beard. A head full of shaggy and filthy hair. A stained and tattered jumpsuit that hung off my emaciated frame.

  They all looked nervous except the girl. Her expression of slight amusement didn’t falter as she watched me. One of the guys stepped forward and swallowed. “We don’t want any trouble, Brother.”

  I pointed to the corner of the yard. “How about you go and don’t want any trouble over there? I want to talk to her.” I nodded at the girl.

  The men exchanged nervous glances.

  “Look,” I sighed. “I’m harmless, ask around. It’s not me you have to worry about, it’s the guards, okay?” I held up my hands.

  “It’s okay, guys,” the girl said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  As the group walked off, I caught a whiff of ‘fresh meat’ smell, that pungent astringent they doused over the new inmate’s heads after shaving them.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Melanie. How about you?”

  “Jack.”

  “Nice to meet you, Brother. I wish it was under more pleasant circumstances.”

  “That makes two of us.” I kicked the dirt under my feet, realizing I’d run out of things to say already. I couldn’t even explain why I had jumped up and came over to talk to her. She looked me dead in the eyes, the little smile on her face never faltering. If she felt uncomfortable by the silence, it didn’t show. I was about to resort to commenting on the weather when she saved me.

  “I guess it’s rude to ask somebody why they’re here, right?” she asked.

  I laughed and rubbed the back of my neck. For the first time, her smile wavered, changing into a look of confusion.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t come across somebody worried about being rude in a long time. Nobody really asks, because it doesn’t matter. It’s sort of one of the unwritten rules around here.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Gotcha.”

  Another moment of uncomfortable silenced passed. Uncomfortable for me, anyway.

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to your friends. If you need anything let me know, Sister.” As soon as it left my lips, I realized what an idiotic thing it was to say. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help anybody.

  “Will do, Jack.” She smiled and touched my arm for just a second. It felt like I stuck my finger in a light socket. I stood there in a daze with my heart ra
cing as I watched her saunter off.

  +

  I’ve always been a light sleeper, so the door to the barracks opening in the middle of the night was enough to wake me. We weren’t allowed to leave the barracks under any circumstances, so there could only be one reason for the door opening.

  The single light bulb on the ceiling switched on followed by the stern voice of one of the guards. “Inmate 399462, front and center!”

  I blinked, certain I’d heard wrong. My bunkmate next to me lifted his head for a second, farted, and rolled over on the bare plywood platform serving as our bed.

  “Inmate 399462!”

  A round of murmurs, coughs, and grumbling, spread through the crowded room of forty-eight inmates. I finally tossed aside my blanket and crawled out into the walkway. Two guards stood by the open door, glaring at me. A handful of curious inmates stuck their heads out of their bunks to see who it was. I glanced down at the patch sewn to the breast of my jumpsuit, hoping by some miracle different digits were there besides the six I’d known by heart for the last eight years.

  +

  The last time I was beaten was around two months ago. We were in line for roll call one morning and I’d been nursing a cold for a couple of weeks. Overall, it wasn’t all that bad of a cold, but I had an annoying and lingering cough.

  That morning my cough was worse than ever and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep quiet as we lined up. Considering the miserable close quarter conditions, at least half the camp population was sick at any given time. Coughing during roll call wasn’t uncommon.

  Despite that, a particularly nasty guard had taken offense with my hacking that morning and got in my face. I just couldn’t contain the coughing as he barked at me, and it didn’t take long for him to lose his patience. He jabbed me once in the stomach with his baton and when I fell to the dirt he cracked one of my ribs. The next morning the entire right side of my body was black and blue.