Mark Doten - The Infernal

Chunks of his skull fall away, and they, and he, and all of that, hit the ground.

The birds go mad, my crakes, my nightjar and falcon. Pulverized cave wall and bone fragments and brain speckle the Jewboy’s dark curls. Blanket to chin, hands tucked under, in a wash of lamplight and shadow, the Jewboy grins.

The seconds that followed the boy’s death are, in all truth, something of a haze.

The lieutenants fell all over themselves, wailing and cursing the Jew.

I demanded silence, order, but my voice was lost.

The third lieutenant drew his knife and rushed for the Zionist, grabbing his curls and exposing his pig neck.

I put a bullet in that lieutenant’s spine.

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shrieked like a gutted falcon, then fell in a heap of limbs.

This is how I remember it. But as I sit on my cushions, nostrils twitching at the admixture of gunpowder and avian excrement stirred up by our commotion, I am uncertain. There is the sweat, too, the sweat of the lieutenants and boys, the former a rot, the latter a light sweet rot, and blood going bad in my veins. All of these in my nose, all at once.

“Back to order!” I shout.

“It’s the singing! The singing of the Zionist!” they cry.

“The singing,” I say. “You blame this incident on the singing?”

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I black out.

Using a pair of rifles as canes, I make my way to the elevator boy. “You must be strong,” I whisper. “You know the consequence if you don’t remain at your post. All the others look up to you. It’s at times like these that we need boys like you — boys like you now more than ever. You live the ideal. In all honesty,” I say, “I understand why you may be afraid — afraid of outshining the other boys. Of being too good. Of facing the disapprobation heaped upon those who are too good. Perhaps you even fear violent reprisals. And violent reprisals are by no means out of the question. I cannot name names, but several of the boys here have been guilty of the most heinous crimes. These boys are among the worst, dirty little boys who value nothing more than filthy jokes and violent reprisals.” I lean in closer. “These boys,” I say, “may need to be taken care of. Just between the two of us, understand — we may need to take decisive action. Not a word about this — I need to know that I can trust you. But I already know that, don’t I? The imperative thing for now is that you stay at your post. Wipe your dead friend from your mind. Wipe him away — you hear? It’s no good wasting another moment’s thought on him! I know that you were very close. I remember the two of you clambering over the walls of the town, back when towns were still possible. Playing tiger, the card game that was a craze among the children one long-ago summer, and that was subsequently abandoned by children everywhere, but not by you, you never abandoned it, so that for years, as I set up my puppet show, then again as I took it down, and yes, even during the show itself, I would observe the dealing out of cards under the awning of the general store, a pair of boys staring at their hands with unbelievable intensity until at last the dinner bell rang. You must forget all that! From here forward we will live for God alone, for God’s future. We must not relen POZX+PHHQ1EOBV H1RRPQT FB2FJEW 4 E B.C0NE0KA O87OR0

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gently pressing the tips of my fingers to his lower back, “and in that capacity, my mind has been made up for some days. I might as well tell you now that you are going to be my honorary deputy. Of course, you’ll have to keep this top secret. Nevertheless, one of these nights — perhaps tonight — I’ll make you a star out of cardboard and aluminum foil. Honorary deputy , that’s what it’s going to say. Don’t you know that all good little helpers get a star? You’ll like that, won’t you?”

With a grunt, two of the lieutenants take up the dead lieutenant by the ends of the white sheet they’ve wrapped him in — but their grip is clumsy, and the pin that gathers the sheet at the nose tears through the flesh and cartilage, and the corpse rolls out. Meanwhile, the fourth lieutenant — or rather, the third — shuffles past them, dragging four dead boys, two sheets in each fist, long red streaks opening on the floor behind him.

“Don’t move them!” I say. “Idiots! We need to understand it! To understand what has happened here today!”

“Four dead boys?’ I ask. “Could that be right?”

“You are hungry, you are not thinking clearly — or you are thinking clearly, but in too narrow a circuit. Range the bodies in the middle, then forget them. Double rations — tonight only, double rations of rice and peas.”

He has made his escape — he is in these walls.

He (the casualty) could change the pattern, but he doesn’t do this, not yet.

And why not say he’s already made the change, made it many times? Simply to advance the pattern, he thinks, where ot4RQ^EW!E@RE.>E?/

could have chosen to deviate — that itself could rightly be considered change — continuous, near-infinite change.

The pattern, then: twelve-count, and left, twelve more, and right, another twelve then straight. And again.

Somewhere back there they killed a boy, maybe.

In these walls: this cannot be accurate at all times. He knows this from the registers. A fourteen-by-six-inch wrought iron register every twelve tunnel segments. Sometimes a wall register (midroom, at the floor), sometimes a ceiling or floor register (midroom, at the wall).

Thus: in these walls , but also between floor and ceiling or between ceiling and roof or between floor and solid ground —if indeed the fortress is built on solid ground.

And what else would the fortress be built on, but solid ground?

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There is the tank and the man underwater — the boy they killed, but also the submerged man, every 1,416 segments he sees the submerged man.

These tunnels can’t be level, in spite of the evidence of his admittedly attenuated senses.

He (the casualty) is a young man, he came here a young man.