The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker by Ken Brosky Read Free Book Online Page B

could fit in. But I never fit in, because I
wasn’t a Christian or a Muslim, and no matter how much time the government
spent forcing everyone to get along, the Jews were always the scapegoats.
      “Tell us the
truth,” he says, “and we can let you go. My word is gold.”
    “This is the truth,” I say. “I swear! It’s the truth!”
    The general watches me. I don’t want to look at his eyes so I
watch the cherry of the cigarette slowly burn away the last of the tobacco.
When the ash snake flakes off, the general nods to the guard over my shoulder.
Violent arms wrap around my armpits and I let them drag me out of the room. No
point in kicking or screaming anymore. No point in assuming there’s a method to
this. None of this makes any sense and I’m pretty sure the general knows it.
    They take me into a very clean-smelling room but don’t remove
my hood this time. Their hands grope me madly across my body, tearing off my
pants and cutting through my shirt and taking my socks, pulling me and turning
me around and holding my arms up. Something hard covers each arm, like a long
cardboard tube. My hands are covered with a thick fabric glove and then
strapped loosely and held up. They do the same with my legs, lifting my body
off the floor. Then they slip a pair of tight-fitting black goggles over my
eyes, slowly and awkwardly sliding the hood out from underneath so I never have
even a millisecond of an opportunity to see what’s happening. They cover my
ears with thick earmuffs and my mouth with sticky, heavy tape. Something sharp
plunges into my skin on my right arm and for a moment I can feel something cold
sliding into my vein. I feel a plastic mask wrap around my nose and mouth, a
breathing mask of some kind. The scent of body odor and cleaning solution that
had previously permeated the room disappear.
    There is nothing. I don’t hear anyone leave. I don’t smell
anything, don’t hear anything. I can’t feel the ground, can’t feel my hands.
I’m suspended in the air like a slab of meat. Pins and needles dull my fingers
and toes, moving up into my arms and legs before infecting my groin, sliding
upward until my entire body disappears.
    Inhale.
    Exhale.
    Inhale.
    Exhale.
    Inhale.
    Exhale.
    Does it matter?
    Darkness. My ears ring in the silence. Even that disappears
over time but I’m not sure how much time. It feels like hours have passed. I
count my breaths and reach one thousand, two hundred and fifty-two and then
lose count.
    I can’t feel my body, can’t move it. I have no body. What’s
happening?
    I can’t remember how I got here, what happened, what will
happen next. I’m a spectrum of consciousness without a vessel to carry me. This
must be death, I think, and I feel something thumping quickly like a drum but I
can’t be sure what it is and pretty soon that too disappears.
    If this is an afterlife then I don’t want any part in it. The
darkness suffocates, and even though I’m sure (am I?) that I’m breathing, I
can’t feel it. I can’t stop imagining my body laying somewhere, decomposing.
I’m no longer alive. I will my arms to move but I can’t feel them move. I wish
I could throw up, or feel myself defecating so I could at the very least know
my body is still functioning. Maybe I have thrown up. Maybe I have defecated
and never even noticed it. I don’t know who I am. I need something I need
something anything any stimulus to remind my brain that this is not death not
nonexistence not Hell something to awaken just one sense that will prove that
my body still exists and something is still encasing my brain dear god just one
sign just one smell just one peek into the real world again please this is Hell and there is no God
because no God would allow someone to
go through this PLEASE JUST ONE SIGN THAT
I’M STILL ALIVE EVEN IF IT’S PAIN ANYTHING TO REMIND ME THAT I’M NOT DEAD AND
ROTTING AWAY SOMEWHERE WHILE MY CONSCIOUSNESS SLIPS INTO DARKNESS FOREVER.
    And then I feel it: a