Rachel Howard, "Four Stages of Cruelty"
My name's Nero, but you probably already knew that. According to the tags, you'd say I was Tom Nero, but don't be so easily misled. Tom's just a name given to those generic creatures of lower class; just like a letter, a number.
Did they bring you here to look into my eyes? Did they bring you here so that you can look upon me in shame and horror? So that you'll submit? I'm a morality tale from skull to tags, from grim jaw to sunken eyes, and if you knew my story- well, the end of it, anyway- you'd give in. Just follow the doctors' orders and I'm sure you'll be fine. Just face the facts and look me in the eyes as I deliver my final sentence.
By the time they asked me, I was ready. I had been wandering the streets ever since they'd released me from that holding cell, worrying my pockets every time I checked them for rations cards, worrying rats every time I looked down into the gutter and felt my stomach tighten. It was my wandering that worried Them, as well; made Them nervous. Most of the time it was the other way around: They'd approach you with their polished boots and pressed shirts that shone with a thousand badges of merit and you'd straighten up, whimper, do anything so long as They left you alone. They weren't used to seeing someone who had no aim left, I guess, not anyone outside of the holding cells and barbed wire, anyway.
Yet there I was, penniless, without an occupation- The factories could always take me back but I knew just how restless I'd become, feeling myself becoming more and more thoughtless like the machines I'd be working with, with the processed people I'd be working with. They said a month on assembly could do that to you. I didn't want that. I'd always been full of thoughts.
So for a week after they brought me back to the city, after I'd gotten some form of clothing back but none of my social dignity, I wandered. I suppose They took notice, after all, knowing and seeing everything was Their job. I must have wandered the same streets continuously, in circles, shuffling with pavement under my feet and only seeing the broken pieces. I'm surprised They didn't arrest me again, throw me back into Their idea of a correctional facility. They didn't notice, though, or they didn't intervene until I had almost worn through the coverings on my feet that passed as shoes in the quantity economy. I was so worn, then: my thoughts so tightly obscuring the tiring visions of rations lines and correctional punishment that occurred so often around me, my hands shaking from having nothing to hold in them.
I didn't realize how far a year in the holding cell had eroded me until one of Them laid a hand on my shoulder. How tireless and strong! What leaden weight, as if he was an assembly machine, himself. Is this what Germany was mass-producing these days?
Several of his companions gathered near us, and together They stared at me. The one holding me in place ordered my attention, and when my attention was being led astray by how hungry even They seemed- wanting to do something with their hands, longing to strike me with some instrument of their uniforms, he crushed my jaw in one of his glorious hands and asked if I was listening.
Oh, I was. He had my attention. They all had my attention, and I could feel all of them laughing as they smiled at my abysmal eyes, my dark, dark hair. They were laughing, all of them. They were made of beautifully-carved marble, and they knew how far above me They stood. They knew I had seen the horrors in store for those under Them even as my sunken eyes swept over Their gold-spun hair, even as my knees threatened to tremble, and we all knew how to turn brown hair white.
In clipped phrases, Their leader called over his shoulder to his companions, even as he turned my head this way and that under his empty gaze. He inquired as to some detail with the other two and together They gleefully answered: Yes, he's the one, he's the one.
Well, then- he brought his face down to where his polite words still looked fabricated as they moved past his white metal teeth and out of his mouth- would you like a job, little one?
Would I-? Would I like-?
I found my vision catching on the corners of his teeth. They all had corners, even as the corners of his mouth turned up. There was a cold quality about it. I blinked and found myself dizzy, swaying only because the hand at my jawline kept me upright. I wondered how long it had been since they had eaten; how long it would be until they fed me if I went with them, if I sad 'yes'.
Yes-? And if I said 'no'?
I met his eyes, still holding my arm and I knew he knew. He knew everything just as They were supposed to in this well-greased Reich. I stood up straight so that I'd have some control as I was led to another one of their slaughters: first my freedom, then my personal pride-
To Hell with it; I thought of my shoes, my worn pockets, and violent hands. They had food. Yes, I'd take it, I take the job.
With sharpened smiles and wordless but weighted glances They led me away.
It was to the old asylum that They led me, and at the sight of its high windowed walls, all of the glass panes watching, every shrunken fiber in my being froze and my legs began an unsteady retreat. Their leader laughed and grabbed me roughly by the back of the neck, throwing me back in front of him, towards the gates, towards the entrance. Before I knew what I was doing, I was begging Their leader, pleading, nervously crushing the creases in his uniform with my anxious hands- they already felt better with the ruined material in their desperate grasp. I had nothing to bargain with: not my lineage, not my respective social status, and certainly not my oath of mental stability- Yet I persisted, everything short of weeping, afraid to only see the inside of an empty room with the slow march of sunshine for the next year. Oh please, oh please God, please don't.
With that same systematic smile on his face, Their leader was unimpressed, though his tone reflected a sort of rich satisfaction. He made a show of being gentle, prying my fingers from buttons and medals of rank- What's wrong, little one? Don't you want a job?
My eyes strained back towards the building, already wildly searching for escape routes that led outside of its proud walls.
I walked before Them and let the doors swallow us. White walls and an assortment of nurses with whiter smiles welcomed us. One nurse went so far as to treat my threadbare jacket to a coat-rack, but Their leader tore it from her grasp, pressing the jacket back into my possession, and snarled something about the order of things in the facility. The nurses broke into factions and floated out into the adjoining rooms without a word.
You're not like them- Their leader urged me onward.
The Order of Things sat behind a desk of considerable size and smiled to rival the glitter of the merits over his heart when he rose to meet me, to take my hand and press it unflinchingly. Nero, was it? he asked, motioning for me to sit, motioning for Them to leave.
I have heard much about you, he smiled.
But I didn't need to be reminded of my sins. I met his gaze levelly, feeling his eyes drop slightly to take in my hollow cheeks, my pale lips. When the horror had crept into his eyes, we both felt the ghost of my stare against his, and he knew.
My God, he stared, the camps-
“Yes, the camps.”
Oh, but the things I had done in the camps! That was what he wanted to talk about. He summoned one of Them from somewhere and They brought me a warm dish.
Consider it an overdue apology, he smiled behind folded hands.
I sliced into the thick slab of meat, my hands unaccustomed to its physical actuality. Around the knife, my hands stopped shaking and guided the blade as if it were part of some obscene art. The side dishes I could have cared less about, but I ate them anyway, though with less relish as I listened to him launch into his lofty praise of my conduct in the camps. Of course, he reminded me, I wouldn't have made it out of there had They not seen my potential for The Program. The metallic sting of blood in each bite was so real I wanted to laugh, instead I just continued to carve my way through what had been laid before me, from time-to-time catching sight of my gray reflection in the knife's used blade. I felt the bitter undertones seep onto the back of my tongue, felt the warmth spread down into my empty stomach, and felt alive for the first time in a long while.
What was The Program? He thought I wanted to know and spread his arms wide to accommodate his smile. Why, it was going to heal this country- Cure Germany! You see, they had the answers for what was wrong: Blood impurities! Unemployment! He pounded a heavy fist onto the desk's surface, and then lifted it gracefully- Would they have hired me if they didn't think they were helping Germany? These people are suffering, Nero, they beg us to end their misery.
Blood impurities- I had heard that phrase every day in the camp; one man sat in the corner of the dark close bunk room, rocking back-and-forth, repeating it to himself like it was his last hope. He had been blonde, light eyes like most of Them. He would've been a great asset to Germany, if he had only worked a little harder.
Just as we have helped you Nero- Just as we will clothe you, feed you, you can help these suffering masses. You can end their misery, with just your hands!
All that was left on the plate was a rust-colored stain where the meat had been. The knife had found its way to my tongue, and I sat sucking on its danger, wistfully. When I looked up, his hands were extended towards me, imploringly. My own hands had started shaking again.
What do you say, Nero? Will you help cure Germany?
I chewed around the knife thoughtfully. The bitter taste that had started coming from my own tongue just didn't satisfy.
I said, 'yes'- I was still hungry.
I can remember learning that it was normal to be born into the world with both a mother and a father, and I can remember the day when I realized that I didn't remember having either. I can remember lots of other boys learning the same, but though they were all cheated out of this societal norm like me, they thrived in the sun outside of the church's darkened halls.
I can remember finding the churchyard behind the church; the stillness and silence it offered. I can remember the day I realized that this stillness only existed because there was no one else there. Everyone else was dead.
I can remember how easily the first fly had died between my fingers, then the second, the third. How it had crashed up against my fingers that had formed a cage to trap it. How its electric drone died down, how easy its wings were to remove, how ugly and delicate it was, wingless in the soil before I spread its body between my hands.
I remember realizing that the only way to find peace was through death.
I had almost laughed at Their leader when he had tentatively crept behind me to remind me of my exact position. I continued to wash my hands, pulling on procedure as gloves, vaguely aware of Their leader's flat eyes reflecting upon my own in the mirror. I watched the soap foam, the little bubbles multiplying up from the grime that had clung to my hands since returning to the city, and the water wash it all away so easily. I reminded him of my conduct at the camp; I was well aware of my duties. Meeting his impassive gaze though the glass, I turned to cure my first patient.
Beyond the white paper bearing the three marks against the patient's continued existence, beyond the heavy white door, and across the endless white tiles and white tangled sheets the afflicted lay, his eyes seeing nothing, his stare bearing nothing. Smiling, I offered him my assistance, I offered him my hands and the cure within them.
Five minutes later, his stare was just as vacant, his veins laced with the medicine of sleep; the medicine of silence.
I had patients who were mad, patients who were paralyzed, patients who were contagious, patients who were victims of breeding, patients who would have fared better from different breeding, patients who were old, patients who were young, patients who were faded, patients who tried to smile, patients who already looked dead, patients who looked like glass-spun dolls.
But they all had x's next to their printed names, they all had something terminal, something that was a cancer to Germany. The patients were all ignorant of their chosen fates on one point or another, and They were all wind-up soldiers. I was cured, however, and my hands only shook when days were slow or the Program's morgue workers couldn't work fast enough.
For once, I was favored for my willingness. I worked faster than the hospital's quota called for, faster than Germany's other factories' assembly lines could demand so that in my eagerness I sometimes found myself in the dark of the basement, trying to charm those I had already cured.
The Order of Things was especially impressed with my in-hospital ethics and invited others of ranked command to come inspect his branch of the Project and to observe one of my miracles.
That day, it was a little girl. Her eyes were bright when I entered the room, her smile rivaling my own, and she asked if I was the gentleman who could cure her. Sitting by her on the bed, taking one of her little hands in mine, I asserted that I was him. I told her the cure would only hurt for a moment, and the sight of the syringe convinced her to lie back while I administered it, but her smile soon returned and she began to tell me all about the sickness within her that needed such treatment. It was in her bones, she said, it was in her bones and the way she was born. I just listened, nodding, smiling ever sweeter as I watched her colors fade and pale, her eyelids grow heavier as her eyes grew more wild. I watched as her small body tensed, listened as her delicate voice shattered into a struggle between breath and silence, and waited with a widening smile as she fell still upon the hospital bed, her small mouth a grimace of disappointment against the magical cure she had sought and the logical cure she had found.
Outside of the room, I was stopped by one of Them. His uniform shone with a silver death head, but his gray eyes didn't take me in like another patient for the Program. He had been watching from the doorway.
“Nero?”
His lips seemed to twist at the sight of me, and an odd wave of contempt for him washed over me before I realized why.
Back before the program, before the camp, when I was making the world peaceful with a trail of broken shells and smaller corpses, thad been a boy who I had known better than the other orphans only because he hated me more than the others. He had been no better than me, really. He was just as bad as me in a lot of ways, yet he viewed himself as a source of unfailing justice. He'd go and tell Sister this or Sister that where to find the rat without eyes, or to explain why doves had been hung in the belfry. Never did Tom take care to explain to the Sisters that a heated needle did just fine in causing eyes to burst or that a dove's own weight and the inability to continuously flap its wings would result in its own lynching.
I'm not sure the Sisters would have cared anyway.
Tom was the only one brave enough to rat me out, his bravery being fueled entirely by extra sweet bread at dinner and fewer Hail Mary's for his own sins. When they finally found me, asleep in the churchyard with my hands folded tightly around the neck of a kitten, Tom laughed so hard I thought the sisters would have heard him as they led me away. They didn't, though, and so I alone saw him rock back and forth on his heels next to the cemetery's walls, stabbing his god fingers at a fresh sketch of a hangman's gallows and the hanged with the four letters of my name next to the dangling legs.
He'd gone on to be raised within a German orphanage, having been given a forged lineage for his good deeds with all of the other boys who had been within the Church's keep. He'd gone on to to attend the Hitler Youth and to rise in rank to what he was today.
Tom didn't want me working here. He was amazed to see me in such a high position considering my background- free from the forgery of the Church- but he thought I deserved something special for my contribution to the Program. I deserved a place to sleep, pressed uniforms, gourmet nourishment, actual wages- He told this to the Order of Things.
Nero deserves more, he was saying, much to my surprise. If he's such a good worker why isn't he being fed properly? If he's such an honorary part of the program why doesn't Germany honor him?
The Order of Things tried to look affronted and against it, but the more he looked into my deep-sunk eyes, the more he saw the camp reflected and came to the agreement that I deserved more than I was getting within the Program. It was thanks to my part that the Program had gotten this far in the past few months, he said, and who was he to keep me from reaping my rewards? With a forced laugh and a salute, he sent me off in Tom's care.
My hands had begun to shake as soon as I had crossed the asylum's threshold. They trembled at first, just enough to make me clench my hands into controlled fists. Why would Tom want to be my savior? The thought plagued me as I was escorted into the sleek awaiting vehicle. Why would I leave the prestige that the Program had afforded me for the pomp of Tom's life? Was I so easily entranced by warmth and comfort? And yet I knew that I was going because all of Them had wanted so badly to go, and even Their leader had gripped my shoulder and told me to go. You'd be a fool Little One, Their leader had said, notto go.
Still, it was odd to think that Tom would want to provide me with any relief, but I tried to shake the lingering feeling of his laughter in the churchyard as the car pulled away.
The house the car pulled up in front of was magnificent with its multiple floors and sweeping staircases. Its lawns were neat and its gates were high. Pausing before removing the barrier of the door from between the me and the mansion, I turned to Tom,
“Who are we visiting? Who lives here?”
He laughed, his lips curling, his eyes dismissing me as simple, “I do, Nero.”
He got out. I followed a moment later.
My eyes hesitated over the scenery- the brick walls, the clipped hedges. Tom was walking towards the front doors where he was met by a manservant. As if in a daze, I followed, aware that his back was retreating all the time. The interior was lavish with carved wooden furniture, silken pillows, and heavily-framed pastoral scenes. My mouth had become dry and the tremor in my hands had become more noticeable. Tom still hadn't stopped walking.
I followed along after him, almost like a helpless child, tempted to reach out along the walls to keep from getting lost. Oblivious to me, he passed into a room that had been set up like an office and he immediately began to pour over the papers on the desk's top. I didn't dare pass into the room through the doorway.
“Pardon me-,” he looked up as if he had just remembered he had taken me from the Program, “When can we discuss my new job? What am I going to be doing?”
Anything. Anything so long as my hands stopped shaking.
I hid them behind my back.
Tom genuinely laughed. He looked charitable, nurturing- Brother this or Brother that, “No wonder they call you 'Little One'. You'll be working for me, Nero; here.”
The uniform was just a label, the buttons were just ornamental. There would be no change in rank, there would be no further cure for Germany from my hands; no death head on my shoulder. I looked up from the folded symbol of purpose and stared levelly at Tom.
“This is a step up from the Program?”
He sneered, his teeth the same awful mechanical mess Their leader had stretched before me; but I realized now that they were powerful, proud, “Look, I know you're sick. Your hands shake. You've always been sick, Nero; you've always had to kill. Your blood's impure, and if they knew, you'd be inthe Program. I'm keeping you safe.”
“Just because the Church fabricated your ancestry-”
“I am superior!” His hand cut me off, and his voice was sharper than the taste of metal in my mouth. Then he hissed close to my ear, his teeth sliding over one another is disgust, “Outside of the system, you're just a murderer. You should be thankful.”
Back to the camp. Back to hiding in the churchyard ringed with ripped wings and red.
I was just a servant. Just a number.
With this mindset it only made sense that I went back to the camp in my own mind as well. My hands shook every day unless I preoccupied them. Even between driving Tom from place to place, and maintaining the vehicle my hands were still restless. I always worked the hardest to drive as carefully as I could, to keep the car as shiny as I could, to make sure its engine ran quietly enough- and while all of these things seemed to be enough to appease Tom, the eyes of his fellow party members conveyed the idea that They were unmoved by any of it, much less impressed. Images of Their eyes as they watched on at the camp returned to me often, and it only prompted me to work harder. But when I found myself alone, having fulfilled all I had been expected to do, my hands would tremble until I couldn't stand it any longer.
Anything would do: a beetle, a worm, a mouse. Just as long as I could hold the creature between my fingers until its life gave out, and my fingers were strengthened by the creature's death. Then I would feel peaceful and I would breath in the silence that followed as if inhaling the creature's very own simple soul. At least, that's the way I thought it would have worked. It always had in the past, but then-
But then, I hadn't had a job with the Program.
These creatures were simple: they lacked strength, and communication abilities, and voices of their own. I had been spoiled by the Program's fodder. I needed something bigger, I needed something more important.
I killed the dog.
He'd been looking at me for weeks the same way, the same way They looked at me, the same way Tom looked at me, except the dog took it further. Tom had told me upon my arrival that the dog could smell the impure blood in individuals and it had seemed that the dog really could for all of Tom's boasting to keep me in some sort of lower station. It would growl and snarl when I looked its way or crossed its path; treating it like a pet was out of the question.
On that day I had been walking around near the courtyard at the back of the house. It had been sunny and I had been breathing in the blue sky like medication when the dog slunk around the corner of the house. Upon seeing me, it lowered its head and bared its teeth before barking madly and lunging at me, barreling across the yard with the pre-programmed order to kill glinting in its eyes. I stumbled back, nearly tripping, and turned to sprint towards the car with the beast at my heels. I barely had time to haul open the door and shut it before the dog threw itself at the side of the car, its slobbering face bashing up against the glass, its teeth making horrible sounds against the door.
I waited for some matter of minutes in the cool of the vehicle, feeling my own heart, swallowing my lungs back down waiting for the German shepherd to get bored. I considered starting the car and driving around the house a few times to discourage the beast, but upon searching my pockets for the key I realized it was inside. I tried not to panic. Surely someone would see me. Surely someone would call the dog off. Tom's office faced the back; he was in there.
Surely-
The dog continued its assault upon the window, its eyes ever locked on mine and I felt myself shiver. The chill entered my hands and wouldn't stop, traveling down to the very fingertips and I knew the only way to stop shaking would be to grab the door handle.
I did, and threw it open as the dog leapt for the window, smashing it against the dog's skull.
It yelped and I shut the door, but it attacked again and so did I.
Again, and again, and again, until upon trying to shut the door so that I could hit the dog again, the German shepherd wedged its bleeding face between the door and the inside of the car and snarled at me, its eyes exact replicas of Their eyes. There was a horrifying resemblance to a human expression in its feral grimace, and, terrified, I kicked it, knocking its head sideways against the glass. It fell silent and I let go of the door, spilling out of the car with the dog and its blood to the grass.
My head was pounding. Blood impurities, murdererMy head spun with visions of Their horrible teeth, sunken eyes, hostile words, bruises and memories of them. My hands wove across the bloodied grass, trying on its stains as if they were spring blooms.
The dog was dead. I knew it was but a part of me still wanted to take a rock and pound its face in, wanted to kick its still limbs, wanted to retrieve the keys even now so that I could run it over again and again and again- A shadow fell over everything and I looked up to find Tom. I suddenly found the implication of what I had just done in his staring eyes,
“I'm sorry- I'm so sorry, but he, he just-,” my own stare fell to my hands, which were restful beneath the bloodstains. I saw hope in them, and I looked back up at Tom in hopes that he'd see the hope, too, “Maybe this is all I'm good at. Maybe you were right. I should go back- May I? May I go back to the Program, sir?”
With another disgusted glance at the dog, Tom smiled down at me and helped me to my feet. With my breathing still ragged from fighting the dog, I kept mindlessly asking for permission to go back, surprised to find one of Tom's arms around me, supporting me.
Tom agreed that it was a wonderful idea for me to go back, and to never mind the dog, it wasn't good for very much anyways. He suggested that I spend the rest of the evening resting, though, and that I needn't worry about driving him anywhere or fulfilling any more of my duties. I would go back in the morning.
Thanking him, I was led into the house to lay down.
Ann was her name, and she was Tom's housemaid. Tom must have thought I was sick, for, when I awoke from a fitful nap, she was there by the bed, touching a damp cloth to my forehead. I thanked her, admiring her warm face. She whispered in low tones that she thought it was kind of funny- well, not funny, she said- but kind of odd that I would kill the dog as she had only dreamed of it since she had arrived to work at the house. Well, she admitted, not in such a graphic sense, but, yes. The dog was dead, and this was good, she said, as it had always barked at her.
Ann was pretty with her expressive eyes and kind hands. I told her that I would be leaving in the morning, and when she learned that I was going back to the Program her eyes became a bit dim and she looked kind of sad. She asked me to excuse her and she got up, with some difficulty, being a few months pregnant, and left the room so I could rest.
I had heard some of Tom's peers whispering to him in his office about Ann in the past weeks. There had been a lot about her being of 'impure blood', and about how he shouldn't have her working for him in his house. I had heard him get very angry about it more often than not, and when I brought it up once after hearing it through his doors, I asked him why he couldn't just take her to the asylum to be cured. At first I had thought he would hit me again, but he sighed and said that they didn't take her kind. He had sounded kind of sad about it, too, as if he wished they they did, as if it would be easier. He said they'd only take her in at the camps.
I wouldn't have wished the camps on anyone, especially not Ann, and as I laid there in the darkening room and thought about it, I realized that she would meet her fate after I left, and that it probably would be to the camps. Her baby would go with her.
My hands began to shake again.
The next ten minutes were a blur, and the next thing I recall was Tom screaming in my ear, asking me what I'd done, ripping me to my feet and tearing the misshapen fetus from my arms. I remembered red, lots of red, and Ann's warm eyes as I'd first struck her; her tangled screams painted me like the floor of the room had been painted. I remembered the sound of tearing fabric and my own glee upon seeing the red seep out of her warm skin. I remember smiling and laughing, and telling her that this was the cure. I remember finally seeing her dead and breathing in her soul. I remember slitting her open further, then, to show the child what a tormented world it was missing out on.
Then I held it, cooing, and sang a lullaby.
But they would never see the camps- no, no. Ann and her child would never have to face the stares of a thousand Them as they were marched across packed earth, behind barbed wire. They would never have to know hunger or thirst, hate or despair.
I laughed as Tom cursed me, hit me, tore at me, as he stood over the scene. He pulled at my hair, clawed my face, asked again and again what I had done.
I turned my face up to his and asked if he could take me back to the Program.
He said that was exactly where he was taking me, and dragged me by the arm, by the hair, by the shirt out to the car that his manservant had waiting for him.
Even as I begged, They had slid the hypodermic needle under the skin of my forearm. I remember writhing on the table, looking around at all of the faces above me, even Their leader, holding me down with mechanical limbs. It was so dark there, in the basement, and whatever They had put in my veins was burning away the horrid sensation that something awful and irreversible was about to happen.
Tom stood at the end of the table, grim with a scalpel in his hand.
I tried to cry out, but They quieted me, and someone called me, 'Little One,' and I felt the scalpel make the traditional t-cut across my naked torso. The pain was duller than I thought it would have been, but I cried out to reassure myself that I was still there. I was vaguely aware that pieces of me, parts of me were being put aside, pulled up and out so that I could see them. I tried calling Tom's name but he didn't hear me, or maybe he didn't want to answer.
I was vaguely aware that my hands had started to shake again, worse than ever before in my life, and I knew it wasn't because I was eager to get the autopsy on with, but because I knew that they wouldn't stop until my life was silenced.
The last thing I remember was realizing that I would only find peace when my breath had been extinguished.