by Joel Arnold
Glasses were a sign of an educated man.
The welts and scars on his hands were fresh, probably inflicted by Pran himself to make him appear like a simple farmer from the hills. A farmer, a peasant, a friend of Angka would have no need of glasses, no need for smooth, soft hands. And Angka had no need for educated men.
Angka — the Central Party of the Khmer Rouge.
They wanted the farmers, men from the hills, whose minds were free of education, whose minds were blank slates that could easily be filled.
“You will write your confession now, Pran.”
Iron manacles, big enough for oxen, restrained Pran’s legs. His hands were tied behind him with wire, and a heavy chain connected them to the manacles. “Who is Angka?”
Samnang flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Angka is your new family.” He squatted in front of Pran, lifted his head up by the hair so that he could look into his eyes. “Angka is your mother and father. Angka is all you need.” He let go of Pran’s hair and brought his right fist quickly forward, connecting with Pran’s nose in one dizzying instant. Samnang felt the small bones break, felt a fresh burst of blood on his knuckles. He stepped back and flung it off his fingers.
Pran breathed heavily through his mouth as he looked up at Samnang, eyes squinting, jaw quivering with pain.
“Angka doesn’t have time for your games,” Samnang said. “You will give your confession now.”
Another man sat in a chair in the corner, poised over a pad of paper, ready to capture Pran’s words and regurgitate them in ink.
“Why should I trust you?” Pran strained to get the words out. “How do I know what I tell you is what gets written?”
“You think too much.” Samnang lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew a cloud of bluish smoke in Pran’s face. “Now,” he said. He brought the glowing end of the cigarette close to Pran’s left eye.
Pran’s eyelid fluttered. Tiny pink bubbles formed on his lips as he panted. “Please. Okay. My confession. Here is my confession. You write it down like I say, yes? Then I confess.”
Samnang backed away and took another long drag from the cigarette. He nodded. “Of course.”
Pran rubbed his cheeks against his shoulders as best he could to wipe away some of the sweat and tears.
“I am a teacher,” Pran said. “A teacher of history. Why is that so dangerous?”
Samnang said nothing. He waited patiently. The man taking notes looked up eagerly from his pad.
Pran looked down at the floor and ran his tongue gingerly over his swollen lips. “You say there is no family but Angka. You say there is no love but the love of Angka. But an idea cannot be a family. A set of principles cannot be love.” Pran looked up. “I love life. That is my crime in your eyes.”
Samnang flexed his fingers again. Curled them into a tight ball. He took a step toward Pran and raised his fist to strike.
Pran winced. “At least if I no longer breathe, if my body stops functioning, there is hope of something more.”
Samnang waited.
“There is hope that I will find my sisters, my brother, my mother and father, my two sons. That we will rejoin and live again in another existence.” Pran swallowed. “But if I choose your death, the death you are all living, then there is no hope.”
Samnang stood still. He felt a trickle of sweat flow from his forehead, down his cheek, and stop on his chin where it hung and would not fall. “That is your confession?”
“That is my confession.” Pran swallowed. “Please kill me so that I may hope to live again in peace.”
Samnang wanted so badly to reach up and wipe that drop of sweat away. He wanted so badly to scratch his chin where the sweat clung. But he remained calm and smiled at Pran. He turned to the note-taker. Held out his hand. The note-taker handed him the piece of paper. Samnang looked it over as if studying a grocery list. He held it under Pran’s nose. Blood dripped on it.
“This is not a confession,” Samnang said. He frowned. “This is a direct attack on Angka.” He folded it in half. Then in half again.
He put it in his pocket.
Pran whispered, “That’s all I have to say.”
“You want to die, then? That’s what you wish?”
Pran’s words were labored and slurred. “This is not a place for the living.”
Samnang ran his hand along the welts on Pran’s shoulders. “It is a place for the guilty. The traitors.”
“You say I’m guilty. You say everyone who resides here is guilty. Why then must I confess?”
Samnang stood in front of Pran, his hand stroking the back of Pran’s head like a lover. “We want the names of others. Where they hide. Who is helping them. We want names.”
Fresh blood began to seep from beneath the crust on Pran’s lips. He leaned forward as much as his shackles allowed so that it would drip on the floor instead of his chest. He quietly spit out a tooth as if it were a watermelon seed.
“All my friends, all my family — everyone I know is dead. I have no names for you.”
People like to believe there are always those who defy the system, who will stand up in defiance no matter what the cost. They relish the stories of heroes and martyrs who don’t give in to evil.
But not at S-21.
It didn’t matter how strong they were — how willful.
Here, they all gave in eventually.
Twenty-five years later, Samnang located Pran’s official confession within a gray metal file cabinet and carried the bulky drawer that held it to a table set up for scholars and researchers.
He remembered leading Pran along with five others to what used to be a playground. Where once the shouts of children at play could be heard, was now filled with the sounds of heavy clubs landing on flesh and breaking bones, the subtle thud of emaciated and beaten bodies landing on hard-packed earth. Bullets were considered too expensive to waste on the executions.
Pran died like the rest. Body broken. Soul crushed.
He’d given a new confession outlining the lies the Central Party wanted to hear.
Samnang now hovered over this confession. Blood marred it, bloody thumb and fingerprints, tiny neat drops spilled in random patterns. It attested to Pran’s treason and guilt. The words of a dead man.
Give me back my soul.
With his back to the lone guard standing watch over the room, Samnang pulled the other piece of paper from his pocket.
Is this what you want? Will this let you rest?
He replaced the official confession with Pran’s original confession. Folded up the official one and placed that in his shirt pocket. All too easy. He hefted the file drawer back into place and nodded at the guard. “I’m finished.” He wiped away the seedlings of tears in his eyes.
Now perhaps I can sleep at night.
Too easy.
Would this truly let him sleep?
He walked quickly down the corridors past cells once used for education, then again for re-education. He exited into the courtyard in the center of the compound and heard the laughter and cries of children. The sun was high and hot. The children were dressed in black shirts and red scarves.
Some of them looked up as he neared them. One caught a ball and held it against his chest. He motioned for Samnang to join them. They all stood watching Samnang, waiting. Samnang smiled at them. How long had it been since he played kickball?
The one with the ball drew back and rolled the ball to Samnang. It rolled unevenly over the close-cropped grass. There was hair on the ball, and tan flesh-like protrusions.
Ears, a nose, lips, eyes.
It stopped at Samnang’s feet. He did not kick it. He stood and stared.
Here. Here is Pran. This is Pran.
Pran’s lips contorted into a smile.
As Samnang stared, gasping, he sensed the children walking slowly toward him. They whispered one word over and over.
Confess.
A chorus of whispers.
Confess.
Confess.
> Each of them pulled a plastic bag from their pockets.
Confess.
Whispers that rose up into the wind.
One after the other, they opened their bags.
Confess.
They surrounded him.
“Please.” Samnang held up Pran’s head. “I came here for him. That is all.”
A young boy came up to him. “Confess!” The boy pulled the bag over Samnang’s head.
A girl ran up to him. “Confess!” She put her bag over his head.
In quick succession, one after the other pulled their bags over Samnang’s head. As his vision faded, it looked as if the playground opened up. He felt bony hands reach up and grab him, pulling.
* * *
There is a story that the children visiting the Tuol Sleng museum that day now tell their friends and family. They say a man picked up a soccer ball and held it in front of him. They say the man cried and talked to the ball and kissed it.
They also say that the man turned blue, and that he fell to the ground tearing off the skin of his own face.
The children are often asked, “But what happened to the man? Did you help him?”
The children look away. How can they explain the pleasure, the rightness they felt as they each took turns kicking the old man’s body, beating it into the hard-packed soil? Or the museum guards who stood silently as they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, their eyes black and dead like those in the photographs that lined the museum walls?
About the Author
Joel Arnold’s work has appeared in over five-dozen publications, ranging from Weird Tales and Gothic.Net to American Road Magazine and Cat Fancy. He’s the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board 2010 Artists Initiative Grant, and has participated in the Carol Connolly Speculations reading series. He lives in the aptly named Savage, Minnesota with his wife and two kids. He’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. You can check out his blog at http://joelarnold.livejournal.com.
If you enjoyed the stories in this collection, please check out his novel Evelyn’s Drum, a psychological thriller.
Bait and Other Stories
Copyright 2010 Joel Arnold
The Kindness of Strangers originally appeared in Twilight Showcase
Bait originally appeared in the anthology Stones
Some Things Don’t Wash Off originally appeared in Weird Tales
The Starlite originally appeared in Dark Recesses Magazine
Soft Notes From a Hard Guitar originally appeared in Chimaera Serials
Scorched Earth originally appeared in the anthology Gods & Monsters
Groundskeeper Hank originally appeared in Bloody Muse
The Canoe originally appeared in Ruthless Peoples Magazine
Swallowed originally appeared in Horrorfind
Sitting Ducks originally appeared in Crimson
Mississippi Pearl originally appeared on Oceanview Publishing’s website
October Blizzard originally appeared in Doorways
A Healthy Glow originally appeared in Switch Blade
The Nurturer originally appeared in Nocturnal Ooze
The Apple Tree Man originally appeared in Gothic.Net
Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse
Copyright 2009 Joel Arnold
Mr. Blue originally appeared in Redsine
Narcissus in Links originally appeared in Late Late Show.net
Branding Day originally appeared in Dred
Night of the Cold Caller originally appeared in Flash Me Magazine
Burrow originally appeared in Burning Sky
Harvey’s Favorite Color originally appeared in The Minnesota Daily
Fetal Position and Other Stories
Copyright 2010 Joel Arnold
Turista originally appeared in Crimson
Fetal Position originally appeared in Wicked Hollow
Shift originally appeared in Sinister Element
Telephone originally appeared in Dark Recesses Magazine
Turn Signal originally appeared in the anthology Hauntings
My Fear of Escalators originally appeared in Sinister Element
Cowboy Cthulhu originally appeared in Black Ink Horror
Director’s Cut originally appeared in Bloody Muse
Wicked Wire originally appeared in Strange, Weird & Wonderful
Confidence originally appeared in Meat Grinder Press
Two-Minute Warning originally appeared in Dead Letters
Rhythm of the Dead originally appeared in The Dark Krypt
Seller’s Market originally appeared in ChiZine
Pran’s Confession originally appeared in Gothic.Net
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