Cameron Pierce: Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

I slide the nose over my bottom lip, forcing myself to swallow the cartilage without chewing, but I still taste some dead kid’s bittersweet boogers.

I feel 1000 separating from my ribs. I look to my left just long enough to see that he is finally unfrozen. He breaks free from Otto and I. We’re fortunate that the cider vats sit in the underground chamber beneath the mess hall. The rising heat makes it a lot hotter in here than outside.

I eat the face until only a strip of skin around the eye sockets remains. Whenever I get a face from the pile, I always leave this part for last. This way, I can make sure that I am not looking at anyone else while I eat. If you’re suspected of looking at another child, even if they’re thirty tables away, the ass goblins might accuse you of conspiring.

The band slams on their instruments. Over a discordant melody, they shout the mantra that hangs in neon over the main gate of Auschwitz. “Toys mean freedom! Toys mean freedom! Toys mean freedom!”

This means breakfast is over. It is time to work. It is time to build toys.

I tilt my mouth toward Otto’s right ear as we shuffle out of the mess hall. “What did you eat?” I ask. Black swastikles flutter to the ground.

Otto rarely says a word before breakfast or after work, so this transition period is my sole opportunity to speak with my brother. He’s silent, shedding pounds…

“The ass goblins forbid conversation between workers.”

…shrinking and shrinking… a five and a half foot dead baby.

“What did you eat, Otto?”

He says nothing and jerks away from me, but we’re attached. There’s no escape.

“C’mon, I’ll tell you what I ate if you tell me.”

“999, I will report all dissidents.”

“You wouldn’t report anyone, not your own brother. You would go down with me, don’t you forget that.”

We stand in line at the work assignment station and wait our turn. The line moves fast. Each child takes a card and reports to the Toy Division factory written on it, unless they are assigned to the surgery ward. The ass goblin dispensing the cards always gives Otto and I separate ones despite it being impossible for us to be in two places at once. Even Adolf made that mistake. Maybe it’s an oversight on their part. Maybe we’re the unknowing subject of an experiment, our every action observed and recorded until the day the doctors come for us. Most conjoined twins never sleep a night in the barracks. They go straight to the scalpel.

I hold the card right up to my eyes and squint at the scrawl. Today, I am supposed to report to the surgery ward. This has never happened to me. The surgeons are death doctors. Otto glances at his card and tugs me along. “Where are we going?” I ask.

He holds up his card. I strain my eyes, but it remains blurry. I can’t read it. “Tell me what it says.”

“The bicycle factory.”

“Shouldn’t we go to surgery? That’s what I pulled, and you know what the scientists do to kids who ditch out.”

“I must report to the bicycle factory and fulfill my duty as a worker. Go where you want.”

I sigh. Otto is like a robot these days. I’m worried about him, and worried what will happen when the ass goblins realize they’re missing me in surgery. They seem to find out every time. The kids who play hooky from surgery always disappear, but I know nothing more than rumors. Otto and I have never entered the surgery bay.

I wonder where Frannie got assigned, and if I’ll see her tonight. She used to sleep in the bunk below Otto and I, but her twin has insisted that they sleep in faraway beds for the last three nights, which isn’t fair at all. Frannie 2 is attached to Frannie’s bellybutton and is no bigger than a doll. She shouldn’t get to tell Frannie what to do. “I have to poop,” I say, trying to forget her, thinking about my body’s needs for once.

“Hold it,” Otto says.

Are my eyes are as red and bugged out as his? We’re both lice factories, that’s for sure.

The sun is up and scaly cockrats scurry from their hiding places to scavenge for polar snakes. I wish we could eat them, but the ass goblins feed the cockrats and other creatures so much radiation that consuming animals is suicide. An easy suicide, I remember.

To get to the bicycle factory, we return toward the barracks, passing the apple platter in Auschwitz Square and descending a stairwell between the doll factory and the music factory.

Rumor says the entire underground of Auschwitz is dedicated to bicycles. It’s supposed to be a maze of loops and tunnels and hills where ass goblins cycle, their favorite pastime. Frannie told me. She has no way of knowing, and she also told me that kids who survive long enough, well, they evolve beyond childhood and start looking like ass goblins. Frannie admitted she would have killed herself if she couldn’t make up stories in her head. These must be some of her stories.

Even before we reach the bottom of the stairs, egg-shaped fart bubbles stink up the air. I cough into my hand.

Otto presents his work card to the ass goblin at the door. The goblin waves both of us in and slurps from a cider mug. Most twins -- even non-conjoined twins -- vanish shortly after entering Auschwitz. The Frannies are the only other pair to work in Toy Division for so long. Maybe we survive because ass goblins are always drunk and liable to make a few mistakes despite thinking they are perfect, or maybe Adolf was saving us for a special project before he vanished. I hope it’s not the latter. I do not want to be special.

We find our place in a manufacturing line and set to work. Most children get assigned to the bicycle factory. A lot of bikes have to be built every day because they fall to pieces under the weight of the goblins’ asses.

Today, Otto and I blow children’s bladders into tubes and fit them into tires made of brains. Many brains go into each tire. Children near the beginning of the manufacturing line pull the brains from a vat and sculpt them into tires, making some fat and some skinny because ass goblins like a variety of bikes. I prefer making tires to filling and fitting tubes, but trading duties is forbidden.

I lean over the conveyor belt, careful not to brush up against the spinal frames, arm handlebars, or skull and foot seats that are beginning to pass by. I lift a bladder out of a barrel, feeling like my own bladder might explode any second. I blow air into a pre-slit end. After it’s tight with pressure, I remove a brain tire from a different barrel and fit the tube into the jellylike groove. I drop the tire onto the belt and repeat the process a second time. I repeat it again and again, hour after hour.

Sometimes, I think the ass goblins chant my name as they ride bicycles, but they are only laughing. I no longer know my real name.

Supervised by the eyeballs bulging out of goblin asses, we eat dinner in the bathroom, one floor below the barracks. “Asses down!” a goblin shouts.

Everyone drops their pants and plops down on a hollow tree stump that leads somewhere far below Auschwitz, maybe to the bicycle labyrinth. The ass goblins let us eat breakfast the child way, but they force us to eat dinner like them. With our asses. They flash yellow teeth at us, their grins widening to fill their entire faces. Watching so many children sit on toilet stumps makes them happy as heck. The band starts up with a detuned lullaby and all the goblins raise their quarts of cider, spilling everywhere. “Bring on the toads! Bring on the toads! Bring on the toads!” they chant. And they chug, chug, chug.

After breakfast and work, we end the day with toilet toads, creatures who live in the stumps and only emerge when summoned by the music of the ass goblins.