Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

This one died easily. And here — she hung herself with her trousers. And this one — and here — taken out to Choeung Ek. The killing fields. And this boy here begged for his mother.

So many of them crowding around him. How could he remember them all?

Over 17,000 prisoners.

Only seven survived.

He felt once again for the paper folded neatly in his pocket. He searched for Pran’s face among the photographs on the walls.

So many. So many. The light from their eyes lost as they stare at the camera, their wills smashed. It’s as if they are already dead.

Why this obsession with documentation? Duch was meticulous about keeping records. His red-inked notations peppered many of the confessions. It was as if the Khmer Rouge wanted to leave behind proof of their cruelty.

Another room full of pictures.

More familiar faces.

Samnang remembered how dazed they were, their blindfolds freshly removed, beatings freshly stopped, his own diatribes halted as he asked them to look at the camera lens. Duch would tell them to smile. He’d laugh at his own joke, his tongue waving behind ghost white teeth.

But the prisoners never smiled.

How long ago had it been? Twenty-five years?

His index finger twitched at the phantom memory of taking Pran’s photograph—

—placid face, darkly tanned, his prisoner number — 10572 — stitched on his tattered shirt.

Pran squinted. Poor eyesight. Owl-like circles of light skin where the frames of glasses once sat.

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.