Alison Littman - Radio Underground

“Well, well, well, we found you.” Dmitry smirked and walked toward me.

I wondered what I looked like, covered in blood and still crying. I didn’t care, really. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

“You think that we didn’t know that? How stupid could you be?” Dmitry lifted his gun and pointed it at me.

“What happened to the others? His friends?”

“We took care of them,” Dmitry laughed.

“Then it’s time for someone to take care of you,” I said. I felt weightless, like I was floating in a lake on a warm summer day. My mind drifted away from my body. I watched the scene unfold from outside myself, as if I was in the corner of the basement, like that dead deer. I, too, felt nothing—not fear, not sadness, not a burst of adrenaline. I only witnessed the motions of someone following a clear, calculated trajectory.

I saw her unlock the safety on her gun. I saw her stop crying. I saw a flash of wild determination go off in her eyes. I saw her knuckles turn white. I heard a loud, horrifying crack. I watched the soldier fall forward, dead. She didn’t even look at him.

She turned the gun on Boldiszar, pointing it at his head. She took a deep breath, muttered something to herself, and fired again.

She didn’t think. She ran.

She ran until her feet carried her, of all places, home.

Dear Uncle Lanci,

To explain all that happened in recent is immense. I will try, so read strong. First, I awoke on rigorous concrete—the bottommost floor of a room so bright it erased seeing from my eyes. I reminisced that someone had stepped on my head, sat on it, potentially shit on it, and then conceded, Oh, why not? and thrust the nearest rock at my skeleton.

The room in front of me appeared to be in the Ministry of Interior. I knew because I had cleansed it before. You can just speculate how enormous my fury blew when I learned that I somehow had landed myself at work . And, Uncle Lanci, this room was filled with police!

I instantaneously asked a policeman in the upmost proximity to me what was occurring. These were the first words that spewed from my mouth (after some un-premeditated spewing of other contents).

He went on his knee so our eyes conjoined, took both my arms, and thrust me upward. He managed, by some force of God, to sling me onto a chair.

“You,” he said. “You are in trouble. You are at the police station.”

A police station inside the ministry. I did not know. How did I end up there, I wondered, which you coincidentally may be pondering as well? I asked the police just that, and he informed me I should snuff it and sit down. They were still calculating the sum of the accusatories against me. I know, Uncle Lanci. I was upmost confused too. I reinstated to him that I did not do one lick of a bad thing when he beckoned his comrade over, Moris. Moris appeared with a petite slice of smile on the outskirts of his mouth.

Usurping me to the proceeding room, Moris never abandoned that petite smile on his face. I realized all of the sudden I had entered the exact room I cleansed as my profession at night time. Naturally, as the leading expert on this very room, I felt compelled to inform Moris of its most compelling components. I enlightened him concerning the delectable cigars perched under the desk beside us. As I gave him some tips, Moris loosened his clamp on my arm. Tenderously, Moris led me into the back door of the room—the one that had always been locked admist my cleaning.

That’s when it overcame me that I had aggravated the government, and now they were punishing me for it. So, there I existed, Uncle Lanci, like a petite baby or something that is one hundred percent helpless. We (me and Moris) went down a staircase until we stared at a row of jail capsules. My heart swallowed me, Uncle Lanci. I fostered zero notion of the existence of a prison below where I cleansed. I was utterly jolted by this. Do you reminisce when I described to you the sound from below? The one that projected Andras and I outward from the building in one hundred percent fear? I think I discovered from which those sounds came… it was this prison basement. But, I thought those fat bureaucrats looked outside of the city for prisons after the revolution. Hurrying my brain through these realizations was ushering me toward insanity. My thoughts revolved at an expedient rate, and I couldn’t put a hitch in them. I was a hamster.

Moris and I trumped through the premises, and each tiny capsule constrained someone either whimpering in a corner, flunged on a bed, or producing a massive shit on the petite toilet. I was shitting inside myself, really, enormous lumps of fear. Without saying one single phrase to me, Moris pointed to my future habitat, a capsule at the end, the size of a singular bed.

The capsule bore the appearance of the fairytale prisons. It donned zero windows. I heard a cockroach skidding along the floor. I screeched into Moris’ petite ear and begged him why I was in jail, but Moris elected silence. He made that he was drinking alcohol.

I would be one hundred percent baboonish if I didn’t admit I drank too far last night. I just harbored nothing as to what I committed that would force me to jail. Have you ever undergone a night like that, Uncle Lanci? Moris smacked closed the metal door of my capsule and left me.

Firstly and naturally, I plumped on my toilet so as to consider the transpiring of events from the night previous. I mustered up some concurrences. I reminisced about encountering a becoming woman named Anika. Oh, Uncle Lanci, she resembled the most delectable palacsinta ever consumed. Her height matched that of mine (okay, not so tall) and her voice never existed above an almost-whisper. So I had to bend forth toward her to listen. I desired to become aware of what I uttered to this Anika. Or, best, what she uttered back at me.

Reminiscing atop last night felt like yanking Adrienne’s hair out of the drain, with the floods of shampoo kissing it. The more I pulled up, the more ferocious the severity of the situation appeared. I started to realize what I had committed went deeper maybe than I could ever untangle. What could it be, Uncle Lanci?

I plumped onto the ground, the thud happening louder than I predicted. Soreness engulfed certain respectable areas of my body, and I’m ascertaining that one of the ignoble policemen graced me with these pains. The darkness of the capsule sucked on to my eyes, and it took a handful of time to perceive what was transpiring before me.

What I did end down seeing, Uncle Lanci, was more capsules standing across from where I sat. And then, sitting right behind those, more capsules. Did your parents ever institute a half mirror in their bathroom, next to the big, wide mirror? When I was a child, I would sit on the counter and glimpse into the half mirror. If I put the mirrors at the perfect angle, it would result in millions of me. I just continued on and on and on. It was glorious. That sensation usurped me in those cells. I proceeded to envision the millions of unlucky prisoners stationed here before me, who glanced outward and felt as I felt at that junction. They would reside in these capsules for the duration of their existences.

That is the junction when I heard a strange muttering in the stall adjoining to mine. Someone was uttering something along these stanzas:

“They’ll do it to you. They did it to me. No trial, nothing. Just stranded here and stranded there.”

I said, “Um, hello” (trying to maintain the highest amount of humility). I asked the voice questions about its origins, peppering it with “who are you,” etc. We proceeded to enter into a forthright conversation, which I will try to recreate for you here, Uncle Lanci, with my presiding commentary: