Beast Machine (6 page)

“
Remember how Julius and I
were a part of that youth political movement? Dealing with
communism and other similar political ideals?”

“
Barely. Wendell was the
one that was involved, I just tagged along because he was happy
being involved. But what does that have to do with my husband?”
Tears shot down Caroline’s colorless eyes. “This better not be
another frivolous story of Ethel’s,” thought Caroline. Ethel has,
accidentally, made Caroline’s life hell because Ethel has a knack
for making mountains out of mole-hills the past few years: the time
with the homeless man ruining her stoop’s potted plants, the time
her son Michael had been in a fight, the time she spotted a rat in
her commode and the time Ethel had tragically been beaten out of
starring as Miranda in
The Tempest
at a local actors guild performance.
Everything
was horrible to
Ethel.

“
Well, the U.S. military
has found – more like assumed – that Julius is a spy for the
Soviets!” Ethel dumped the milk into her tea. Caroline wrinkled her
nose and wiped away fresh tears.

“
My word! What is he doing
for the Soviets?”

“
He’s not!” shouted Ethel.
“He’s not doing anything for those red devils! It’s just… He and I
happened to be important members of a Communist group – that youth
political movement group. We have never – ever! – wanted to
undermine or destroy this great country of ours. And why would we?
It’s given us incredible opportunities that only God could give
us!”

Caroline sniffled quietly.
“What is going to happen to Julius and what about Wendell? What
does he have to do with this spying business?”

Ethel closed her eyes and
breathed deeply. Tears started to form around her eyelids. “Julius
likely will be given the death penalty and…” The tears were let
loose. “Wendell is likely to be given the same fate. He and Julius
often sent letters to one another during the war and the topic
often was about Communism – you know how our men loved to debate
many topics, especially their ideals!

“
The ‘Great Joys of
Communism’ is how Julius described the context of the letters he
sent to Wendell. Julius had converted Wendell into a full-fledged
Communist, which is now apparently the same as calling someone a
nigger!

“
Ethel! Your mouth!”
screamed Caroline with heat to her voice. Caroline, black herself,
had an unimaginable disdain for the word nigger and found it an
exceptionally disparaging word. Slight rage filled Caroline’s sad
eyes but quickly fled once she realized the topic of the
conversation.

“
Sorry, dear, sorry! It was
a poor, poor comparison.” Ethel sipped her tea nervously. Ethel was
not known for having a silver tongue, more so she was cursed with a
lack of a filter. “They have both been detained in their respective
branches. They’re not with any prisoners of the war, though, Julius
wrote.”

Caroline swallowed her tea
loudly. This didn’t seem real to her. Wendell had never discussed
betraying his country, simply because it was something he would not
do. This had to be a nightmare. A nightmare that she will soon wake
up from. “This has to be a nightmare,” she thought! She even
laughed slightly then said, “I thought you said they weren’t dead?
That sounds like they’re dead to me. They’re going to get the death
penalty. They’ll be strung up and made to be laughed at out in the
streets and made examples of!”

Caroline wouldn’t be able
to handle that, she will not see her husband strung up like an
animal and have blurred faces laugh at his demise. She’d kill
herself if it happens. She’d slice her own throat.

“
I have yet to get to that
part, dear.” Ethel turned slightly and spotted a young Jozy
squatting under an end table in the kitchen hallway. “With the
government and military taking aim at the Soviets after the Axis
countries fall, they are looking to rid everyone associated with
communism. Everyone. It’s the new enemy of the military. It’s the
next step to keep the world in a perpetual state of
war.”

“
So are you in
danger?”

“
I am. You are. My children
are. Your children are. They will come for us all. When? I’m not
sure. But they’ll come.”

Caroline’s dull eyes
widened. “Why would they come for the rest of my family? We haven’t
done anything involving any political movements! We are a patriotic
family, through and through! We’d do anything to help our fellow
man, our fellow American!” Adrenaline began to pump into
Caroline.

“
I’m afraid… I’m afraid it
has to do with our families’ relationship.” Ethel looked down at
her lap. An entire family damned just through
friendship.

Caroline stood up and
tossed the dishrag into the sink. She positioned herself over the
sink and began to vomit violently. Stinging bile mostly spewed out
of the now broken woman. The quick adrenaline rush had faded down
the drain.

“
I’ll get your hair, dear,”
said Ethel as she ran to Caroline’s side. Caroline’s taut, curly
hair was once a powerful black color, but now was suddenly
sprouting hairs of desperate grays. Caroline’s vomit turned bloody
before she finally got it under control.

Caroline wiped her mouth
and slowly said, “I need to get my boys out of here. You’ve put
them in danger and we need to get them to safety.”

Ethel normally would have
been insulted by a claim like that but knew she and her husband had
caused this danger. “Yes, dear, I have a friend that can take them
to Ohio. Cleveland would be where they would stay.”

“
And they wouldn’t be
separated or forced into an orphanage?”

“
Never. I promise you this:
they will stay together. They will be safe. My children will be
accompanying them to the same home.”

Caroline sighed and sat
back in her chair. Her dull eyes and gray hairs were more apparent
than ever. Her life had come crashing down in mere minutes and her
soul was waning. Caroline’s eyes began to slowly sink back into her
head and her cheeks began to droop at a frightening pace. Even she
could not believe how quickly she had given up hope, but was there
even hope to begin with once Wendell was shipped off?

“
When will we be contacted
by the authorities? By the government? By anyone?”

“
I am not sure, dear, I
only know of Julius because of a letter he sent that the military
somehow let through.”

“
Is there any other
information I should know about, Ethel? Anything that may haunt my
boys after…,” Caroline paused. “After mine and Wendell’s
deaths?”

Ethel looked at her lap
once more as she took a seat. “Yes. Maybe. I think so.” Ethel kept
staring at her lap. “It happened four years ago. Before you and I
became friends, we were only acquaintances because of our
husbands.”

“
Please, tell me,” said
Caroline as she closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “What
will haunt my boys?”

“
Before Julius had been
sent off for the war he was contacted by a strange man, a man we’ve
never seen before. The man showed up at our house wearing peculiar
clothing. He called the trousers he was wearing ‘jeans’ and he had
a tattoo on his neck of a syringe. The syringe was ‘filled’ halfway
with a blue ink. I was impressed with his eyes; one was blue, while
the other was hazel. One was beautiful and deep, while the other
gleamed with evil. I had never seen a man with such beauty and such
evil in his eyes.” Ethel looked at her feet and rubbed the tears
from her eyes.

“
The man told us he was a
messenger of a very important group of people.”

“
So, Congress?” Caroline
asked. “What other group, outside of the military, could be made up
of very important people? Are you sure he wasn’t touched in the
head?”

“
No, a group that extends
beyond Americans. A group that, as he put it, ‘controls how quickly
humans are allowed to progress’ around the world and that they are
controlling humanity ‘so to keep the world’s population in check.’
Julius nearly shoved the man out of the door for such foolish
speak, but the man brandished a strange gun-like weapon that he
called a taser. Or it may have been laser? Now let me think about
it for one moment. It had a reddish light attached to it that
appeared wherever the man pointed the apparatus and electricity
spat from the front of it as he pointed it.”

“
Ethel! Just get to the
damn point,” sighed Caroline, slowly pulling her gray hairs out of
her head out of frustration and sadness. Wendell had always loved
her hair. She imagined him running his soft fingers through her
hair, like he always had done after they settled down for bed. She
had longed for the touch of her husband. It had been four long
years, four long years of loneliness.

“
Oh, right, right. After
the man brandished the weapon, he told us to ‘sit the fuck down and
listen’ or else we would be left as ‘ashes.’ Terribly frightened we
sat down and listened to the man. I kept blacking out throughout
the ordeal but I remember that the man wanted Julius to spy for the
Soviets during the war. He knew that Julius would be working
closely with military officials that had the inside track on
special projects – projects pertaining to weapons of mass
annihilation and mass control. The man mentioned a new-cue-leer
weapon and space equipment. I’m not sure what the new-cue-leer
thing would be, but how ridiculous does space equipment sound?
Humans will never touch the moon in our lifetime!”

“
Exceptionally ridiculous,”
said Caroline. Her hairs were graying the more Ethel spoke. She
wanted to run out of the kitchen and start packing her boys’
things, but she was afraid it may frighten them.

“
Julius was dumbfounded
because he had not been given his proper military assignment, yet
this peculiar, and rude mind you, man already knew? This man also
knew about these future weapons? Neither Julius nor I could quite
fully understand what was being explained to us at the time. I
thought we were both drugged and in a comatose state! And this
population nonsense? I had no idea what he was on about, but he
kept talking and talking.

“
The man said, if I
remember correctly, ‘In eighteen months you will be contacted – in
person – by a man named Po. He will be your liaison to the
Soviets,’ the man continued. ‘Do as Po tells you and you will live.
Report any of this to your superiors and you, and your family, will
die, painfully.’ I fainted at this point.”

Ethel was shaking, sweating
and wobbling side to side at this point. She dabbed her forehead
with the dishrag Caroline had previously used. There were remnants
of Caroline’s vomit on the dishrag.

“
I awoke right as the man
was leaving. He was telling Julius, ‘This is your only chance and
only warning, boy. If you refuse to relay information to the
Soviets on the Allied Powers, The Flagship will come for you, for
your wife, for your children, for your friends – everything you
love. You will be taken from this world painfully and
slowly.’

“
I couldn’t process what
was happening! Julius and I just sat there for hours in silence. We
were petrified – for our lives, for our children’s lives, for your
family’s lives.”

Caroline pursed her lips
together then bit down on her bottom lip. “Is this some sort of
joke, Ethel?” Caroline’s brow furrowed.

“
What… No! This is not a
joke!”

“
Why wouldn’t you contact
the police? The military? Julius surely had someone he could
contact about this nonsense?” questioned Caroline aggressively. Her
dull eyes began to regain a faint brown glimmer.

“
Julius told me the strange
man would be eyeing our moves and that not only is that group of
people – The Flagship, I believe he called it – supporting this
decision but important members of the U.S. government, the Soviet
government as well! Julius’s only option was to spy, but it didn’t
matter in the end. We were trapped, and now we’re
cooked.”

Ethel cried hysterically.
Caroline decided to not console her friend, the former-actress that
was mildly talented but could not come to grips with her mere
average talent. “Why did Wendell have to befriend Julius those
years ago? Why did this group have to select Julius? Who is this
group that is ruining lives?” Caroline’s thoughts were shooting
around her skull and sprouting more gray hairs on her
head.

“
What else did Julius tell
you? Was there anything else, Ethel?”

“
He mentioned a few names
before he left for the war,” said Ethel through a waterfall of
tears. Caroline’s vomit remnants from the washcloth had been
smeared on Ethel’s face in various places. “Names that I needed to
avoid at all costs! He also mentioned that your family and my
brother, David, were the only ones to trust.”

Caroline gulped loudly.
“What were the names? Wendell told me of a few names before he left
for the war too – names of people that I should keep myself and the
boys away from at all costs. I thought he had gambling debts or was
being heckled by wannabe mobsters again and wanted us to stay safe.
He never told me what the names meant and what these people had to
do with him, he refused to tell me.” The faint glimmer of brown had
died in her eyes for good. Her eyes never returned to their
wonderful brown.