Variant Exchange Page 28

  “Why?!” Patrick sniffed, “Why would you? What do you want?”

  “I want a great many things. Most importantly, I want to make you wriggle around like the worm you are...but I think the Honorable Lord Piggy already did that for me.”

  “I knew it was you!” Patrick screamed, “I knew you were behind that!”

  “Of course, I was. You’re a sick little boy—you deserve to be punished.”

  “I know I’m sick!” he wailed at her from inside his own head, cursing her existence. Patrick had suffered for his urges since the first day he started having them. He hated himself...worse than hated himself. I’ve wished my own death thousands of times. But I can’t stop, and you know god-damned well that there’s nowhere for me to turn!”

  “But misunderstand me, this isn’t about you sleeping with men.” Dragon Lady sneered. “Why would I care who or what you sleep with? I fuck women, and do you see me whining about it?”

  “You...you...”

  “You’re into what you’re into, pussycat. It’s not that big of a deal. So, you’re into men. I’m into women and...” she paused for effect before continuing, “...I’m into watching you squirm.”

  “Why do you hate me so much?!” Patrick bawled.

  “Because I hate everything, pussycat. I hate this country, I hate the HVA, I hate the Wall, I hate the Soviets, and I hate you. I’m also bored. I’m bored with everything, just the same as I hate it. Nothing behind our Wall stimulates me. It’s all simple things for simple minds, and the pointless little people living their pointless little lives. I can’t abide it…but whether or not I can, I still have to. Like you, I have no choice in the matter. We’re all stuck here in this prison of concrete and concertina-wire, abiding the stupidity of our beloved ‘countrymen’, in our ‘Grand Socialist Experiment!”

  She spoke the last sentence sarcastically in a loud, deep voice, waving her hands about her as if presenting the concept to a great throng of lookers-on. Then, she changed to an acid-laden snarl, with a razor-sharp stare that bored right through to the back of Patrick’s skull.

  “One thing I refuse to abide, however, is weakness and insecurity. And you, Patrick, are the very essence of weakness and insecurity. I could handle the fact that you are boring and simple, but your pathetic secrets, and your weak attempts at intrigue, and your trying to scrape together a hidden little world like a cocoon of shit…that’s why I hate you so much.”

  With that, Dragon Lady stepped forward with a lazy, hip-rolling stroll that would have enticed any other man. Patrick felt the heat of her body closing in on him. He attempted to step backward, but soon her arms were around him. Gazing (well, glaring really) into his eyes, she began stroking the back of his head, moving as close as his clothing would allow the two.

  Her body felt warm, and soft—the way any other woman’s did—but he was revolted by her touch. By instinct, he became aware of how much of her skin was rubbing off onto his. He imagined a layer of individual skin cells as if they were living sacs, gleefully burrowing into him like tics. Skin, moist like lotion, moistened his own in a chemical swapping of ownership. It was as if her body was permeating right through his clothing, soaking her essence into his in a way that even scrubbing with lye wouldn’t fix. He could smell her—an overpowering scent far too sweet and foreign for his liking. She was becoming a part of him now. Soon, his clothes would be off and she would be sweating with effort. At that point, a shower would be useless to ward off anything she did to him. Her skin would be against his, rubbing and pressing her liquids into him, forcing her woman essence onto his own body. He was losing control.

  “Please...d-don’t,” he started, trying to resist the urgency building between their bodies.

  “I’m going to,” she said, as her lips brushed his across his jaw and neck, “and you aren’t going to stop me.”

  “P-please...” he said breathlessly, “I don’t...”

  “How many of your female informants have you tried to cure yourself with?” she asked in a low voice as her tongue traveled along the sensitive skin of his ear, “How many have you had success with? Do you ever finish?”

  “F-fuck you...” he stuttered, closing his eyes to try and make her go away. He could feel more and more of her on him every second, and it made him want to retch.

  “You’ll finish with me, pussycat. I’m going to make damn sure you do, and we’re going to be here all night until you do. Because from now on, every time you try to cure yourself and be ‘normal’, I want you to remember my flesh against yours, and I want you to remember that it was me you finished inside of.”

  “W-why can’t you j-just leave me alone?!” Patrick cried openly now as his body betrayed him.

  “Cry for me, little pussycat,” she said triumphantly. “Or don’t. This is the real world. No one here cares what’s happening to you.”

  Wilderness of Mirrors

  Lena turned on the light in her apartment. She took a moment to take it all in: the kitchen, the living room, the couches, and the scent of it all. It had only been a few days since last she was here; yet it felt less and less like home every time she returned. Sure, she slept here. But it was more a place to rest her head than the home it used to be. She rarely spent any time here past sleeping, and more often than not, she was out doing other things during the days and nights. It may have been working for Patrick, or hanging out at Little John, sure; but really, she just didn’t want to be here.

  “I like it,” Vivika said honestly. “It’s a great place.”

  “It’s nothing special,” Lena rolled her eyes.

  “No really, I mean it. It looks like a family lives here…my place just looks empty.”

  It was true, after all. Vivika lived alone, if not occasionally with her current man-friend. Her apartment was filled with piles of clothing, random instruments, a few sparsely-populated bookshelves and nothing else. And yet, Lena actually would have preferred it that way. Vivika’s apartment was hers and hers alone. Here, in Lena’s apartment, everything seemed like it was waiting for someone else…guests, perhaps. Lena didn’t like guests before her life had been turned upside down . Now the thought of guests actually scared her—excluding Vivika, of course. Yet, despite the fact that Vivika was more-or-less now welcome here, there were still aspects of the apartment that Lena wasn’t all that jazzed about her discovering.

  “Young Lena?!” a weak voice called from the other room, “Young Lena, is that you?”

  “Yes Mother, it’s me!”

  “Oh, I’m so happy you are home! Come here and tell me about your trip!”

  This was one change that Lena found hard to believe. When Lena had been in the Stasi prison, she had worried about her mother, wondering if she was well and if someone was taking care of her. Goodness, what her poor mother must have thought when the Stasi came charging in to bug the place...Lena tried not to think about it. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that her mother had merely dropped dead of a heart attack, assuming that the Stasi officers were Soviet soldiers charging in to accost her.

  The reality was quite the opposite, however. Lena had arrived to find that her mother seemed altogether cured of her many mental afflictions, as if nothing had ever been wrong. No more night terrors, no more delusions, no more mistaking Lena for Soviet rapists, and no more taking swings at her. She seemed cheerful now. In actuality, she seemed extremely cheerful. She was still weak, and required care, yet she could walk about the house unaided now, could make her own food from time to time, could use the bathroom herself, and seemed to get on just fine with regular check-ins and grocery deliveries. Perhaps best of all, she no longer wet the bed.

  Lena had arrived home after prison to find everything quite in order. Neighbors checked in on her regularly, delivered her food, and helped with the laundry. Occasionally, they would dust the place, or help clean the dishes. But for the most part, Lena’s mother was le
ft to her own devices, “Oh, I’m just fine, dear!” she would say with a slightly manic smile, “Don’t you worry about me!!! I’m doing just fine here!! How was prison?!”

  It was this that worried Lena most about Vivika meeting her. Before, she need only explain her mother off as a habitual invalid—a liberal conglomerate of every affliction she could possibly coax out of the moment. But now, she was cheerful. Very, very cheerful. Sickeningly cheerful, in fact. The kind of cheerful that a hostage held at hidden gunpoint manifests when he or she really wants you to leave, or else. There wasn’t an ‘or else’, of course; yet something had clearly rattled Lena’s mother beyond belief.

  Lena had nightmares about Red-hat or Dragon Lady rifling through her mother’s things as she wet herself in fear. Maybe they were making fun of her, or simply egging her on as she soiled herself in a wordless plea for mercy. Dragon Lady was certainly capable of it…hell, Lena wouldn’t have put it past either of them to dress like Soviet soldiers just to see if they could truly terrify her. As much of an inconvenience as Lena was to them, her mother was a grave inconvenience to everyone. The implications of this spelled out various possibilities, of which none were good, to say the least. Still (and this thought was something Lena felt very bad about thinking), whatever they had done had worked—her Mother was more manageable now.

  “Fair warning...” Lena muttered quietly at Vivika, “My mother is crazy.”

  Oh, I’m sure she’s just a dear!” Vivika gushed back with that look all young people give each other when discussing parents. Lena knew what that meant, and there was nothing she could expect otherwise.

  The two walked into her mother’s bedroom to find her sitting up in bed, nervously knitting a small kerchief. Her fingers were wrapped in bandages from numerous pokes and prods, and the yarn was kinked and coiled from numerous windings and un-windings. Lena had asked her mother once before if she would like some more yarn from the store, but she would have nothing of it as she sat knitting and un-knitting the same kerchief over and over and over.

  Oh, you brought a friend!” Lena’s mother exclaimed happily. “Oh that’s wonderful! Just…wonderful!”

  “Mother, this is Vivika.”

  “Oh, Vivika is it? Oh, how wonderful...what a beautiful name! Just a wonderful name!”

  “It’s an…um, pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Schindler,” Vivika smiled, awkwardly.

  “Oh, the pleasure is all mine, of course!” she exclaimed, with wide eyes and a wider smile. “Just a pleasure! A wonderful pleasure! Have you two eaten? Why don’t you let me fix you some food? Or…or I could straighten up the apartment for you. Everything should be clean for our guests!”

  She attempted to struggle her way out of the bed, still holding the knitting needles and kerchief in her hands. Awkwardly, Lena attempted to bar her path while assuaging her with various protests of, “No Mom,” and “We’re fine, Mom,”. The frail woman continued unabated, however.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble! No trouble at all…I was just about to fix myself some food anyway! Really, I would love to!”

  “Mother…Mother!” Lena exclaimed as gently as her annoyance would allow. “It’s fine…Vivika and I just ate. Really, we’re fine!”

  “Oh, nonsense! You two look like you could use another meal! I’ll whip something up right now! It’ll be perfect, don’t you worry!”

  The poor woman struggled so hard to lift herself while still holding on to her knitting needles, Lena was afraid she would break something. Instead, in her haste to get up and fix the two another dinner, Lena’s mother managed to stab herself in one of her hands with a needle and began howling. Well, this simply wouldn’t do.

  “Oh, Mother! You’ve cut yourself!” Lena cried out in alarm as blood began to flow freely from the hole in her mother’s hand.

  “No, it’s fine! I’m just fine…really!” she exclaimed as she roughly tried to wrap a bedsheet around her injured hand. “It’s so great to see you two! I’m just…I’m going to sit here and knit! Really…you two…it’s so nice to see you!”

  “Ma’am,” Vivika interjected. “Let us wrap that in a bandage.”

  “No, don’t you worry!!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. “It’s just fine! Really! So wonderful to meet you!”

  “Ma’am...” Vivika attempted again.

  “NO!” Lena’s mother screamed, “I’m fine. Really. Wonderful. Perfect, even. You two…so wonderful! Just leave me to my knitting. Please! Just leave me!”

  “Mother…”

  “No. Go!” she insisted, wide-eyed, “Go, go, go, go. Just go. You’ve been wonderful. Go!”

  As the two stepped out of the room and shut the door, both managed a side-long glance at each other. This was that other look that young people give each other after meeting parents. Yet Vivika seemed just a tad more impressed than she might have been with someone else’s mother, perhaps. She remained silent of course; yet the thoughts were written all over her face in the colors of embarrassment and the tightness of concern. As they walked away, Lena could hear the muffled sounds of her mother shouting, “I didn’t say anything! Like I promised! I…I don’t know anything!”

  As the two walked into Lena’s bedroom, both seemed to breathe a sigh of relief from the awkwardness. The room was just as Lena always remembered—bed, dresser, piles of mismatched clothing, and a smattering of punkish fare across every wall and flat surface. Oddly, the Stasi hadn’t seen fit to remove one square inch of it, and she had no idea why. Either they really wanted her to think they hadn’t bugged her room (which was ludicrous), or they left her items intact because she now worked for them. More probable was that they had decided to leave everything as dirt to use against her at the first sign of betrayal. She figured it was likely the latter reason.

  Towards this end, she had figured that burning the lot of it would be the best course of action. But as she prepared to unceremoniously stuff her Sex Pistols album in a trash bag…well, she figured the Stasi would have taken pictures of her room anyway, so she might as well just count on that fact and keep her room the way it was. Perhaps this album and the ideas it represented were something worth taking the risk for.

  “Oh my God, I love it!” Vivika gushed, “Your room is so…you!”

  “Thank you.” Lena laughed awkwardly. “I like it.”

  “No really, I mean it. This is exactly how I figured your room would look.”

  Lena gave her the grand tour, starting at one wall and ending at the other. At first, she felt that the time would be wasted explaining bands that Vivika already knew, and telling stories that she was probably already familiar with. But not only did Vivika drink up most of the information, she seemed rather delighted with the lot of it. It also appeared that while Vivika had a lot to learn about certain subjects, she had a lot to teach Lena about others. Each rapid-fire lesson seemed to come with an adjoined story of lecherous and hedonistic atrocities so spiked and leather-clad, they could only be described as ‘band related’.

  “He did what?!” Vivika squealed.

  “Yeah! While crowd-surfing…it smelled sooooo bad!”

  “In a Church, too?!”

  Vivika especially gushed over her copy of Nevermind the Bullocks, paying it the exact same homage that Lena did. She rightfully recognized the importance of this album. Like many in the punk scene, the song ‘Holidays in the Sun’ had been a major turning point for her development as a youth. It seemed so strange that in a world of telephones, fax machines, and televisions that connected everything, the world seemed to fit in a box. And yet the Wall—only a physical barrier in reality—had still managed to separate them so completely from the outside world. Yet the fact that artists the world over not only had the same thoughts about the same things, but communicated in much the same languages—passing on styles, ideas and directions across closed borders to bloom like flowers, or incubate and fester like viruses—it brought such deep meaning an
d purpose to an otherwise bland and colorless existence inside the GDR.

  “You mean everyone hates the Wall??” Vivika gasped.

  “Everyone!” Lena laughed.

  “In West Germany or just West Berlin?”

  “Not even close,” Lena laughed harder. “The entire world. Trust me, everyone knows about it. It’s one of the most talked about things in existence.”

  “How many artists care?”

  “Literally all of them. To most artists—painters, musicians, you name it—not just the Wall, but the Stasi, the Spitzel, the Soviets, and the entire damn USSR are seen by pretty much every artist in the world as the most perfect metaphor for struggle.”

  “That’s...that’s amazing.”

  Vivika knew most of the musical zines, as most in the punk scene did. However, Lena’s copies of Shönheit (the feminist rag from the West) seemed to strike a major chord with her. Like many women, Vivika longed to be her own sovereign person. She wanted to go where she pleased, and do what she wanted to do. She felt a responsibility to her loved ones, sure; yet she didn’t want to be forcefully beholden to anyone or anything—least of all to a culture she didn’t even attest to. There were so many things that already stripped her of forward momentum—like poverty, the Eastern diet, the State, the Stasi, the Wall—that the last thing she needed was to have even more momentum stripped away simply because she had a vagina.

  Oh sure, she could forcefully accomplish something through sheer will if she really felt like beating her head up against the concrete slab of reality. But she didn’t feel like that was anything realistic. Perhaps it was something that other women in some other country got to experience—one of the really rich countries, perhaps—but here in the GDR, it just wasn’t anything possible. Maybe that’s why women like her and Lena loved the punk scene so much. In punk, all suffered stripes for their studs. Not just the women. Yet here was the proof! Not only were there strong, empowered women doing strong empowered things outside of the Wall, heck, it appeared that some moving and shaking was taking place inside of it!