Cameron Pierce: Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

The morning siren screams and the barracks come alive.

Otto and I crabwalk to the foot of the bunk and step onto the cold floor. Around us, children leap from their wooden beds. Since mine and Otto’s ribcages are attached, sharing a bed is nothing new to us. Sleeping together is not what makes Auschwitz a living heck.

Smothered by other children, we swarm out the door and enter the icicled hallway. Blisters on my feet pop and freeze with every step.

At the end of the hall, light filters down from above. By now, Otto and I are adept enough at climbing the disintegrating staircase that connects our barracks with the rest of Auschwitz. We also know better than to be the first children outside. Everyone knows better, but every single day, someone gets marked for sacrifice. Today it’s a toddler named Willow. She has been coughing and fainting all week.

The hazy glow of the rising sun creeps over me. I close my eyes. Somewhere to my right, Willow cries until the crackle of her legs splitting in a game of chicken bone smothers everything. Every morning, two ass goblins tear apart the first kid out of the bunkers. I learned not to look a long time ago.

An ass goblins shouts, “Apple!”

Everyone hustles to find their place in line so that we can march onto the Marble Apple in perfect formation. With thousands of children imprisoned in Auschwitz, this is just one impossible task we face every morning as we brush off the nightmares and vermin.

“Apple!”

Adolf used to conduct roll call, but he disappeared after my first week. Now the ass goblins seem to assign each other duties based on who loses in their nightly games of gambling. Without a staunch ruler, the order of Auschwitz is decaying. These days, the ass goblins only want to drink and make us build toys.

“Apple!”

Although Otto and I are conjoined twins, the ass goblins assigned us numbers 999 and 1001 when they stamped us into the camp records. I am 999, 1000 is a skeletal mute, and Otto is 1001. I never call him by his number, although he calls me by mine. He rarely speaks these days.

We spot 1000 and push through the crowd until we reach him. Fortunately, the flesh covering our ribs has receded so much that 1000 fits into the joint hollow of our bodies like a baby bird.

“Apple!”

The now-orderly line snakes between surgery quarters, gunnery towers, and Toy Division. Finally we arrive at the Marble Apple in the center of Auschwitz Square.

We step onto the apple by the stem. In a few hours, we will exit through the bottom. We serpent-march until all prisoners are in place, unless the ass goblins grow impatient and go S.S. on us. S.S. is short for Shit Slaughter. Shit Slaughter is the worst sort of punishment.

Otto, 1000, and I stand somewhere near the center of the platter. From the apple’s bottom, an ass goblin calls, “Attention! Pants down, asses up!”

We drop our red camp trousers at the same time as all the other children, raising our butts toward the sun.

For many of us, this is the most dangerous part of the day. If you survive roll call, you notch it off as another day survived. New children might be at highest risk. Living by the rhythm of your own death sentence is a difficult thing to learn.

In an outer row of the spiral, a child blubbers his final words. Toys mean freedom , then the spluttering of slit vocal cords. The idiot. He was picked out of the litter to be today’s apple. Did he really think spouting a goblin slogan would get him off the hook?

After the initial sacrifice, the apple is usually the second victim of the day. He or she is added to the cider vat, where they will ferment with the apples of previous days. Nobody knows how the ass goblins select the apple, but we suspect it has something to do with the ripeness of our assholes.

Frost lines my rectum by the time the roll call guard reaches us. I hold my breath and bite my tongue as a fat finger carves a swastika into the scar tissue of my left butt cheek.

The finger rockets up my dark zero. I bite deeper into my tongue. I seal my lips together, fighting the pain, ignoring the finger, and trying my best to remember that I am lucky because I am alive. Blood fills my mouth and drains down my throat, but I mustn’t cough. The slightest peep means execution.

Plop! The finger pulls out. The ass goblin marks my number on the roll call sheet. He moves on to 1000, gives him the same treatment.

The pain of my tongue and ass prevent me from passing out. I exhale and gasp for air after the guard inspects another twenty rectums. The elephant ears of ass goblins allow them to hear from a long ways off, but through trial and observation I am beginning to determine their auditory range. Poor 1000 shivers against Otto and I. We are relatively safe for now. Bloody frost cakes my butt.

The ass goblin reaches the center of the spiral. Only the apple died during today’s roll call, a rarity.

“Pants up! Eat breakfast!”

I pull my pants to my waist. Everyone else does the same thing. We disperse for breakfast only to discover that 1000 is frozen to our ribs. Otto and I shove at him, but he’s stuck. Unwilling to be separated from the herd, we drag him toward the mess hall in the snow as naturally as temporary triplets can manage.

At the far end of the mess hall, ass goblins stand onstage strumming stringed instruments and pounding on drums. These instruments are made of child bones and innards. I may have crafted one of them in Toy Division.

A painting of Adolf collects dust on the wall above the stage. Adolf looks almost identical to all the other ass goblins. He wears the same brown uniform, swastika armband adorning each sleeve, pimpled, plague-ridden ass sagging over his thighs. His ass is the biggest part of his body, no different than the ass of any other ass goblin.

His mustache sets him apart. His mustache is twice the size of his skull. Whereas normal ass goblins have a mouth that takes up their entire face, Hitler’s mustache takes up his.

And Adolf walks backwards.

And dresses backwards.

He stands backwards in the painting.

No goblins have noses, which is how they fart up the earth without ever noticing. Their eyes hang from long, scaled stalks that jut out of their butt cheeks. In the painting, a cloud of yellow perspiration floats around Adolf’s mossy skin. Other ass goblins consider him the purest and most perfect being on the planet. At least, they did until he disappeared.

Our trio mechanically gravitates to the nearest available table. We sit down and dig into the hill of dried skin piled in front of us. I reach for a face and the girl beside me slaps my hand. I punch her and tear the face from its boneless, meatless husk before she can react. I hold the face up to my own, peering through the eyeholes. I sink my teeth into the crusty lips. The lingering salt stings my tongue. Dried saliva liquefies in my mouth. Saliva drops are tasty, but I waste no time sucking them down. I’m starved, and we won’t eat again until nightfall. Plus, there’s a slight chance that the girl will risk attracting the guards’ attention and try to steal this face from me. Faces are the most digestible part of a child.