Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

by Cameron Pierce

Chapter Fifteen

  One year before . . .

  Otto and I sat on one of the hills overlooking Umbrella Park, a mushroom-dotted area where kids often sit in a huge circle and pound on drums. Neither of us ever got the hang of drumming. My trumpet laid beside me, but I was too nervous to play. Frannie had been ignoring me for weeks. I planned to ask her about it tonight, after the drum circle ended and we met up for story time.

  Otto's face was buried in a book. I lit up a dandelion, took a puff, and snatched the book away from him.

  "Give it back, jerkface!" he said.

  The cover featured a pirate ship full of lemmings wearing eye patches and baggy plaid pants. They raised swords to a skull flag. “Lemming Pirates Versus Japan?" I asked. "What's Japan?"

  He took the book away from me. "Japan is a made-up place where kids enslave each other. The lemming pirates are going to Japan to rescue the slave children and turn Japan into a free world.”

  "That doesn't make any sense. No kid would ever want slaves."

  "Leave me alone. It's just a story. Anyway, Frannie recommended it to me."

  "Liar." I exhaled dandelion dust in his face.

  Otto closed the book in his lap. "It's true. She woke me up last night and gave it to me. She said I would appreciate it."

  "I would appreciate it too."

  "She said you wouldn't."

  I picked up my trumpet. "I guess we should be heading to the campfire. I want to talk to Frannie before story time starts."

  "Are you going to ask her out?"

  "What makes you think that?"

  "You've been talking about it forever. I don't think you should. She's annoying. Besides, she'll crush you like a bug. Remember how Leonard could never play board games after they went out last year? Leonard loved board games. He was a board game master," Otto said.

  "Leonard was afraid of Frannie 2. What happened to him doesn't count."

  The drums faded away as kids headed for story time. I blew a discordant melody into Otto's ear to let him know I was irritated. He covered one ear with the book. I started feeling bad and lowered the trumpet.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "It's just an all-around bad idea," he said.

  We shuffled down the hill.

  The dandelion crumbled and I pulled another from my pocket. I lit it and turned my gaze to the reddening sky. I thought that all the planets up there must be full of kids like us. Maybe Japan was one of those planets.

  When we made it to the center of Umbrella Park, the last drummers were packing up their instruments. They passed dandelions and gave each other high fives.

  "Great drumming," I said.

  A girl smiled at me and said, "Hey, it's Detuned Trumpet Boy!"

  A boy with long hair raised his hands and fingered an air trumpet. He made farting noises with his mouth. We laughed about it as we moseyed out of the park.

  Otto and I walked near the back. A few toddlers thanked us for the lesson on making carnival costumes that we taught in the schoolroom that morning. “Tomorrow, you’ll learn about scenery,” Otto told them.

  I was too preoccupied with Frannie and the planets to respond.

  The group dispersed. Half of the kids went to their tree houses, the other half to the campfire. Frannie climbed down the ladder of her tree house and ran to catch up with us. “Hey! How’s it going?” she said.

  Otto held up the book. “I’m halfway through,” he said.

  Frannie glanced at me and then stared at the ground. Her cheeks reddened. “Guess what? Frannie 2 and I are telling a new story tonight.”

  “That’s super awesome,” I said. The Frannies told the best make-believe stories. “It’s good we ran into you too. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Oh . . . well . . . Frannie 2 and I really need to set up props for our story. Can we talk later?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “See you around!” Frannie waved goodbye before running off.

  When she was out of sight, Otto said, “What do you like about her anyway?”

  “She’s the prettiest conjoined girl in Kidland.”

  “She’ll spit you out and swallow you.”

  “It’s none of your business what she does.”

  He touched the flesh that connected our hips. “Everything that happens to you affects me equally.”

  *

  After story time, the Frannies went off with the other storytellers. They vanished before I get the opportunity to tell them how much I enjoyed their tale. It was about a bird who met an alligator in Kidland’s swamp. They fell in love and lived happily ever after. I felt bad and rejected that Frannie didn’t even wait around to talk, but she was probably eager to celebrate with the other storytellers.

  Otto and I tramped through the woods. We were a little too clumsy for rope ladders, so we installed a pulley system that lifted us into our tree house.

  We burned candles and smoked a few dandelions. I rubbed their feathery ashes into my palms while Otto played a spooky bedtime song on his pumpkin piano.

  “Play your trumpet,” he said.

  I shrugged and picked up my trumpet.

  Before I blew into the horn, spheres of light exploded in the sky, splitting the night at its seams.

  We stood and rushed to the doorway. Out by the swamplands, flames washed over the forest. Otto and I looked at each other, both of us hoping the other would make some call to action.

  “We should stay inside,” Otto finally said.

  So we pinned a blanket over the doorway, blew out the candles, and cowered in the dark. We were frightened and couldn’t help but cry a little as kids screamed outside, in the burning darkness.

  “What do you think it is?” I said.

  “I think Kidland is being invaded,” Otto whispered. “Those were spaceships crashing down.”

  “What’s invaded mean?” I lowered my voice as well.

  He shushed me and took my hand.

  Invaded must have been something he read about. It sounded really awful, judging by the nightmare sounds outside. And crazy too. Spaceships only existed in make-believe stories. I buried my head in his shoulder and broke down. “I don’t want to be invaded,” I sobbed. “I don’t want spaceships to be real. All I want I Frannie.”

  He wiped snot from my nose. He pressed his slick hand over my mouth. The scariest laughter echoed across Kidland. He cried his head off, and the next few days passed in a blur of panic and whispered rumors.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I hang from a barbed hook in a large cell with the spider, my brother. He broods in a corner. Headless Frannie is there, and also a girl who looks identical to the old version of Frannie. It must be Frannie’s twin, all grown up into a regular child. “Hey,” I say, “can someone slide this hook out of my ass? I want down from here.”

  The cell looks cleaner and more comfortable than the barracks. Windows occupy most of one wall. Ass goblins stare in. I guess we’ll be under constant surveillance.

  “The White Angel told us not to take you down,” Frannie says. She’s completely naked. From the waist up, she’s nothing more than a huge pair of lips with two arms hanging from the sides.

  “Why not?” I say.

  “He’ll come for you when he’s ready,” she says.

  “Is my nose still broken?”

  “You don’t have a nose anymore.”

  “No nose?” At least I can breathe fine, I guess. “How’s Otto doing?”

  Frannie purses her giant lips. “He won’t speak to me.”

  I stretch my hands behind my back, straining to reach the hook tearing my butt a new one. My right hand finds a thin, leathery thing. “What’s this?” I say.

  “Your wings,” the Frannie look-alike says. “Don’t you know you have wings?”

  “Wings? Ass goblin wings?”

  “Well, they’re pink. And a lot bigger than ass goblin wings.”

  I pull my right hand away, repulsed. “Frannie, is it true? Do I have pink win
gs?”

  Her mouth body frowns. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We’re all in this together, and at least you don’t cough up goblin asses.”

  “What do you mean together?” I point at Frannie 2. “Where are her awful modifications? Why doesn’t the White Angel give her pink wings?”

  Frannie 2 gets off the floor and walks over to me. She stands below my hanging form. She bends over and spread her cheeks for me, as if I’m an ass goblin taking roll.

  “Stop!” I shout. “Don't do that!”

  She wiggles her bottom and the tip of a tongue pokes out. Another few inches of the tongue worms from her buttocks as she gyrates. More and more tongue appears until the tip reaches the floor. A belch from inside of her. No, not a belch. A croak. The croak of a toilet toad.

  Frannie 2 nearly splits in half as a toilet toad leaps out of her ass. She drops and convulses on the floor, drooling. A puddle forms around her head like a halo.

  The toilet toad stands on its hind legs and waves at me, tongue floating through the air toward my exposed behind. “No! Somebody help!”

  “Don’t fight the toad,” Frannie says. “Your ass needs to be fed. Otherwise it’ll get hungry and eat you.”

  “No, that’s not true. Help me.”

  “The White Angel gave us explicit instructions. I trust him. Even if he mutilated our bodies, he rescued us from Toy Division. He promised that we’ll never go back. We’re test subjects now.”

  “I don’t want to be a test subjahhhhh!!!” The toad uses its tongue like a retracting pulley and rises into the air, entering me.

  Frannie 2 regains consciousness, her face slick with drool. “The toad saves,” she says. “The toad saves.”

  The White Angel barges in. Otto hisses. Everyone else goes silent. Even the toilet toad inside me stops croaking and squirming. A second ass goblin enters the cell long enough to place a stepladder beneath me. The White Angel stands on the top step and grabs hold of me. He yanks my ass off the hook, tearing my flesh and spilling my blubber.

  The White Angel sets me on the ground and kicks Frannie 2 across the room. "My toad!" she says. "Give me my toad!"

  "Enough about toads," the White Angel says.

  "But you said toilet toads are necessary. You told us 999 needed to be cleansed and fed," Frannie 2 says.

  The White Angel's eyes extend on their stalks and stretch over to Otto's corner. "Is the spider not getting on with his mates? I thought the four of you were friends. You're two pairs, after all."

  Otto raises his front legs as if to attack. He hisses, pressing farther into the corner.

  "All in due time," the White Angel says.

  I huff and puff, my mouth against the floor. Unlike ass goblins, I have maintained my child eyes, so not all is lost. "What do you want with us?" I ask.

  The White Angel retracts his eyes from Otto and smiles. "You're my perfect army."

  "Army against who?" Frannie says.

  "Darling, don't you know? Adolf can't be gone forever."

  An idea congeals in my brain. I assume it sat there for a while before I noticed it. "You did away with Adolf, didn't you? He didn't vanish into thin air."

  "We live in a rational universe. Nobody vanishes into thin air. Adolf is interested in two things. He loves ass dolls and wants to rid the earth of children. We all love the dolls, and we're bitter about being born old, with all the miseries and disappointments that age imposes. He wants a childhood. We all do. We've been cheated out of happiness. “Adolf thinks ass backwards. He refuses to believe that science can deliver childhood to our race. Our golden age will dawn not when children die out, but when we take what we want from children. While Adolf has been away on his sex odyssey, I have made the decision to seize control of Auschwitz. After the four of you destroy him, I can synthesize a childhood serum. Your deaths will give rise to a glorious empire of happy ass goblins.”

  "What makes you think children are so happy?" Frannie says.

  "In your natural habitat, you children live far away from death, in a land of magic."

  “Then what gives you the right to make us suffer?” Frannie 2 says.

  "You are hybrids. Children will hate you now, and ass goblins have always hated you. Killing Adolf and lending me your childhood are your sole remaining purposes."

  "I won't fight for any ass goblin," Frannie 2 says, shaking a fist at the White Angel.

  The White Angel kicks her in the tummy and marches out of our cell.

  The toilet toad inside me stirs again, tonguing my insides. It doesn't reach for vital organs as it would have in the past. The tonguing actually feels cleansing, like it's gobbling up toxins and other harmful agents. The toad croaks and vomits in my rectum. The puke must be recycled, purified nourishment. It rejuvenates me. Now I see why the ass goblins eat dinner this way, even if it doesn't work with child butts. Toilet toads are the most brilliant solution to starvation and waste management ever. Not that starving was ever a problem when kids were in charge.

  “What is a sex odyssey?” I ask.

  Frannie and her twin open their mouths, but before they say a word, an ass goblin unlocks the door and wheels in a metal cart piled with cider jugs and a mound of kidskin.

  *

  “You're a cannibal,” Frannie says. She glares at me through the eyeholes of a greasy face.

  I take another swig from a cider jug and shudder as the alcohol leaks into my belly. She pokes her tongue out of the kidskin mouth. “And a Judas,” she says.

  “You’re the one eating the skin of children,” I say.

  “That’s because I have to,” she says.

  “How is it any different?”

  “Eating skin isn’t bad because it’s necessary for survival. Drinking cider makes you a traitor. It’s cannibalism.”

  I point at Otto. “He’s drinking cider too.”

  “Otto is part spider. He probably doesn’t know any better.”

  The Frannies munch on kidskin in one corner while Otto and I chug cider in our own corners of the room. Frannie 2 doesn’t eat any of the fresh skin. She waits for chunks to fall from the lips of her sister, then sucks on the mushy flesh.

  I want to explain to Frannie that mine and Otto’s goblin genes must be responsible for our need of cider, but she’s all open mouth and closed ears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Days sink into other days. Irrelevant in Toy Division, time in the surgery ward melts down to a few minute alterations: when ass goblin sentries change shifts with other ass goblins, skin and cider feasts, the White Angel’s visits, and how the four of us adjust to our various mutations.

  Otto does pushups around the clock. He gets more buff every hour. Frannie 2 learns to fire the toilet toad out of her ass. It only shoots about halfway across the room, but she practices and improves daily. I am learning to flap my wings, hovering a foot or two in the air. I can also morph into partial S.S. mode, but I’m still overcoming a handicap that purebred ass goblins never encounter: I have eyes on my face. Frannie is worse off than the rest of us. She coughs up goblin asses on the one bed in the room. She boots them away, miserable and disgusted. This is how we pass the time.

  I continue to practice Shit Slaughter, learning to widen my mouth and turn my head into a chainsaw of destruction. I am getting better, visualizing ass goblins for some mental target practice. When not doing pushups, Otto broods in his corner.

  Twice daily, an ass goblin wheels in a cart of kidskin and cider. The White Angel visits once per day. Of course, I am still a hypocrite and a Judas to Frannie. In her eyes, Otto is now a perfect being, incapable of error.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The White Angel does not visit us today. For strange reasons I could never explain, I start to miss the barracks, the horrid alarm of morning. Frannie speaks to Otto and her sister, who mutters to herself. No one else speaks to anybody else. The sentries monitor us day in and day out. None of us know morning from night, not without habitual tortures and humiliations to remind us. Something is
happening in Auschwitz. I don’t know what. Maybe it’s the separation from my usual role. The White Angel does not visit us today. That’s all I know, for better or for worse.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A siren screams across the ceiling.

  I bury my head in my corner of the room and do my damnedest to ignore its piercing cry, but the tone escalates to pitches that resemble hammers against steel drums. Fogged by exhaustion, I assure myself this must be an error of some type. This screaming must be an error.

  The screaming never stops. I stand and stumble over to the viewing window, cupping my ears. I'm ready to fart on the glass or whatever else it takes to convince them to shut off the siren.

  No sentries stare in from their quarters. A red light flashes on a white panel bolted above the door leading in and out of the guardroom. Above and below the panel, a luminescent engraving spells F-I-R-E. "Wake up," I yell, unable to hear myself. "Wake up."

  But Otto has already stirred from restless sleep and Frannie 2 has poked her head out of Frannie's mouth. They did not have to flatten against the viewing window to see F-I-R-E. They saw it from far away. My vision always makes a fool of me.

  “We need to get out of here,” I shout. I sense they are shouting the same thing.

  I scurry to Otto’s corner and unwrap the filthy yellow bandages from his head, seeing why the White Angel forbid us from removing them. Gangrene has spread beneath the rubber mask grafted to his face. The screaming dies a little.

  “It must be an air raid,” I yell.

  He shakes his head to disagree, kind of sad and sickening to look at. The siren dies a little more.

  “This is our shot to escape!” I say. I drop some egg-farts.

  “Frannie,” Frannie mumbles, “can you blast your toilet toad through these walls?”

  Frannie 2 shrugs. “I can give it a try.”

  “Give it a shot.”

  Frannie 2 crawls all the way out of Frannie’s mouth. She sits on her knees, lowers her elbows to the ground for leverage, and raises her ass so that her back arches at a perfect forty five degree angle. “Count down for me,” she says, drooling green saliva.