Is it mad to trust to hope? When everything you've ever experienced has left you empty and used, a shell of your former self, is it insanity to hope that your future will hold something different? That bend in the hallway, will there be something soft around it? Or will it kill me? I hope that I'm still alive somewhere, but that hope is just a glimmer of light in the depths of this dark hell.
Sometimes I wonder why I ever thought to escape, whether through death or stealing away in the night, both seem impossible, I will never escape him. I feel his hands burning on my soul like a brand, erasing who I used to be. I feel his hands beating on my flesh, making me into something new. I don't want to be changed.
It's been so long since I just tried to speak out loud I've discovered my voice is just a shred of what it used to be. Ha, I say "what it used to be" but, I don't remember it ever being different. It's so hard to think of the past now, he has changed things so much, the past is too beautifully painful to think about. Like staring into the sun. That heavenly light shies away from what we've become; I haven't felt it on my skin in the eternity I've been trapped in this house with the monster.
I should start at the beginning, before the Gilead changed. I was just a girl when it happened, it's been so long, but I don't exactly know how old I am. That's one of the things we lost, birthdays, speech, literature, names, clothing, the right to be human. Yes, I don't even know my own name. I have a title, certainly, all women do now, and mine is one of terror, Ofnathan.
When I was a girl, Gilead was a faulty system. Women still had slight freedoms, the Wives and Econowives still had names. They had identities, even the Handmaids could escape if they were careful about it. We had heard the stories about their hushed and daring flights to freedom all the time. In a world that women had to be turned into chattel just to keep the human race alive, things were still better than they are now. Even the scientists had started to discover why women couldn't conceive or carry to term, but then he came, Nathan, my nightmare.
We were so close, so close to destroying Gilead. As young as I was, I can barely remember how I could walk down the street in plain clothing, foregoing the plain white habits that Daughters were supposed to wear. The Daughters, those like me who had been the miracles of Gilead's captive breeding program, wanted to bring back the old world. We soaked up stories from the Wives in their gentle blue robes and stolen bits of wisdom snuck away from the women who had actually birthed us, the Handmaids, dressed in fiery passionate scarlet. Freedom seemed within our grasp, youth and naivety and perceived immortality. We were stupid.
The "religious" fervor that influenced everything in Gilead was as plastic as the smiles of the Wives when the Commanders came home. Oh yes, Commanders, God's gift to the dusty little speck of dirt we called home, now we can't even call it that. A woman's only Commandment to play the broodmare to her precious Commander or risk being shipped off to die in nuclear waste. When Nathan came, even the Commanders disappeared, giving way to the Masters. The incendiary religion he brought with him caught everything on fire, but in his eyes, the Commanders didn't burn hot enough, so he replaced them. He swept in on a cloud of brimstone and souls, seemingly from nowhere, and turned Gilead upside down.
It started with the market speeches. While it was unusual to see anyone preaching outside of the house, no one stopped him. He had the air of a higher up, someone close to the root of Gilead, and he was a man. His "lessons" as he called them, were fire and sin and death, but they moved people. These rousing orations burned the youngest men with religious fervor. It began at the bottom, with the guards and the poor men and rapidly burned through the ranks. Nathan became God.
Very quickly, things changed. Commanders were falling from grace as fast as Masters came to replace them. The Masters were far worse than any Commander; the punishments they meted out were done in perverse, wild-eyed joy. The Wall filled up quickly with the dead and the dying, public executions were a thing of the past. As barbaric as it sounds, I wish that we still had them. In those horrible displays of violence and death, the victims at least died quickly. Now we don't even wait for them to die before they get strung up or even crucified.
Oh, certainly, Nathan brought crucifixion with him in his tide of horror. To get the sinners closer to God through sharing his suffering, surely these misbegotten souls would be admitted into heaven. There is no heaven and there is no God, but Nathan is single minded. We, the whores of Babylon, took the brunt of this new world. We were poor wretched scape-goats, singed by Nathan's caustic piety. The deterioration of the human race had been placed on our shoulders, and almost overnight, every woman in Gilead became a Handmaiden.
Our rules changed. Handmaids can never leave their compound, Handmaids can never own clothing of any kind in the fear that we might become attached to those shreds of ruby cloth that made Handmaids what they were, and Handmaids must be kept in their "Holy Temple" in order to be closer to God in their times of reflection. Being locked in a colossal frozen pit does not encourage faith and being kept naked does not remind me to think about Original Sin.
The Martha's, the black women who did the cooking and cleaning remained virtually unchanged except for one small thing, their tongues were removed. Nathan said it was to keep the Word of God from deserting them by being mistakenly spoken.
It became quite clear to everyone that Nathan was mad, but it was too late to do anything about it, he had grown too strong. Anyone who tried to do anything found themselves facing the Wall and death. He sat in his throne of souls with absolute certainty in his power and we Handmaids simply held him there, helpless to do anything else.
Now it is our duty to serve the Masters and Nathan. Every Handmaid in Gilead is down here in this hole and others like it around the country. Some of the older Handmaids tell me it was left over from the old world and that it leads to the sewers, but they say any exit there used to be has been collapsed. So we simply sit in this suffocating dark, waiting for our turn to reach the surface light.
I'm the only one with a name. And I am cursed. Why, when we are all crushed like beetles beneath his boot, am I singled out to be hated? Nathan chose me as his Handmaid, but I am the only Handmaid that belongs to one Master. The other Masters share the Handmaids, a sick and twisted system, but four Handmaids are pregnant, so maybe they know what they're doing. Meanwhile, only Nathan is allowed to touch me. I do not understand it, but during a Ceremony, he once he called me Orleanna. I first thought that I reminded him of a woman he once loved, but then the beatings started and I quickly lost that notion.
The other Handmaids shun me when I am tossed back into the pit, bruised and raw. They receive me with curses and hard hands. I am loathed more than those Handmaids cursed with offspring, the Mothers, the reason our lives continue. So I retreat to the small corner I share with a middle-aged Handmaid with no tongue and pale eyes.
No one really knows who she is, but Nathan has a fast fist whenever he sees her and her face is almost as battered as mine. Sometimes I think she may be this Orleanna he mistook me for, if she is, I hate her for foisting this burden onto me, but we stay together because we have no choice. In this freezing pit, we must share heat or die. Many Handmaids have escaped this way, screaming and clawing a space around them to speed along their deaths.
That's really all I can think of about what happened to Gilead, Gilead-Babylon to Nathan and the Masters. I honestly don't remember much from before and now thinking about my past is painful, I can tell the night is almost over and the morning will bring with it the continuation of this dreadful existence I suffer through. I can only try to plan some sort of escape. Whether that lay in death or life outside of Gilead I don't know yet, but I want to feel the sun on my face before I die and I won't get that down in this frozen hell.
It starts with the whispers. Our days break vibrating with the shivery sound of words hissed between teeth dancing against each other. In that blurry, surreal moment between sleep and consciousness, you can almost mistake the harsh, quiet, shrieking clatter for the sound of wintry trees. In this peerless dark ice almost anything seems possible, but the meaty coughs of sick Handmaids and the jittery rattle of bone on bone shatters the illusion of darkness before dawn. All we are left with is the yawning unseen chasm that surrounds us.
It is in this moment that we are all allies, when the pitch black and the cavernous empty space closes in to crush us, we take comfort in the physical there-ness of each other's bodies, that tangible proof that the obscurity of black hasn't swallowed all but the dim sparks of lifeless memory that flash in thousands of invisible eyes. Of course that delusion shatters just as quickly when the tongue-less Marthas come to select the few choice Handmaids for the morning Ceremony. As one of the preferred, I am chosen every morning and my brief spurt of solidarity with my fellow Handmaids shrivels and dies before it can live. Sometimes I hate them for it, but how can I blame them? I reach the surface every day while some still haven't even seen more than a dim light in years.
Only the popularity of my company, so to speak, sets me apart, for I am still fed the same colorless, odorless, tasteless, and texture-less paste as the rest of the Handmaids. In one of Nathan's violent outbreaks of religion, chefs found their way to the bloody Wall as enablers of sinful pleasure and vice through smell and taste, the "vulgar act of cooking" an extension of the sexual depravity Nathan saw in everything except his own actions. Scientists quickly replaced food with nutritious gruel, then they were hung for creating "Godless abominations" that Nathan then exploited to further suppress the world.
From rooms away I could hate him with a passion that boiled my vision red. I suffered through the administrations of the Marthas, making me presentable for the beast. I'm kept in filth but I must be clean, a "holy vessel" as if anyone still believes that. From there I'm simply strapped to the table. The clinical nature of the Ceremony makes it hard to remind myself that I am, or was, human.
The table is simply a "Y" shaped bench. Handmaids must lay face-down, each leg strapped to the arms of the "Y", our arms above our heads and tied to the bench. It's degrading and demeaning, but the chance to see real light, smell anything other than the frozen cesspit, feel warmth… I never quite realized what depths anyone would sink to in order to just have these small comforts… it's not like I have much choice in the matter, but I know what I would be doing if I did, and that alone makes me hate Nathan even more.
It's this fury that accompanies me while I wait, exposed. The Martha's hands are gentle, it's the only way they can show compassion, I can't see their faces. The binding on my arms makes my fingers go numb. Flexing them does nothing but make the bindings saw tighter against the scars on my wrists. The silence in the room is interrupted only by my breathing and the beating of my heart.
I turn my face to the side, the table cloying with the smell of antiseptic and despair. The walls are just a plain white and it makes the whole room feel surgical. Don't worry, it's just standard procedure, we're waiting until you feel the fear clawing at the reserves of your courage. You know, that reckless will to endure brought about by your anger, we're waiting for it to disappear, it's too human a feeling for you. You are just a slab of meat. You are just a means to an end. Standard procedure.
The dull thump of booted feet echo down the hall and I squeeze my eyes shut. My anger and humiliation desert me, washing away from the top of my head to my toes and fear pricked behind my eyes. Fear's soft whisper shushed my low moan and tightened my muscles. The ropey scars on my back knotted over my skin stung, a simple memory of sharp pain zinging down my spine.
The boots doubled, the sound of male voices reaching me:
"Sir, the number of Handmaids is dwindling across the country. Every Temple is suffering. Just yesterday Master Marcus said that the Marthas removed three dead Handmaids from our own Temple. They're freezing to death."
"They're committing suicide." Nathan's voice locked my muscles. I was paralyzed, my breath came in shallow pants. "You make it sound as if they're innocent Master Brad, I assure you quite the opposite. They can survive down there. They have all they need, take my Handmaid as an example: Ofnathan is one of the few original Daughters left. She is a prime illustration of repentance; as one of the Daughters of Gilead-Babylon, her sluttish ways have been willingly given up, she's one of the last of her kind, alive only because she's given her mind and soul to God. Cast upon his mercy like driftwood, he has given her peace. The others should follow her lead, but they are steeped in evil, I only hope to save their souls from the devil before they are cast to hell."
Listening to him made me sick, but there was always something hypnotic about his voice, like the gaze of a snake before it kills its prey.
"Yes Sir," the other Master coughed, "but what if we at least gave them blankets? They could-
"NO." Nathan stopped, his last step rung through the silent hallway. "Don't you understand Master Brad? Giving them anything with which to cover their shame will only create greed and vice, the very things we are striving to destroy. They will begin to fight amongst themselves and we will create Cain and Able over again. Never give a sinner the power of murder, it makes them too sure of themselves and their souls will flee the more blood they spill. I want none of that. If they die, they die by the will of God alone, not the hand of their fellow Handmaid."
"Yes Master Nathan," Master Brad scraped and bowed, "you are wise in all things. I will share your council with the others."
Master Brad's boots faded, but Nathan remained motionless. My legs began to tremble and I cursed them. His footsteps slowly resumed. I struggled to regulate my breathing. When the door quietly opened, my whole body strained against the bindings, my back arching off of the table. My toes dug into the soft cloth, my fingers clawed above my head. I couldn't breathe through the fear and tears flowed freely.
"Out."
His quiet command sent the Marthas from the room, heads bowed, eyes averted, their hands clasped demurely in front of them. For a second, I marveled at their ebony wrists, unmarred, delicate as the day they were born. I'd never seen that before. I hated them for it.
"And the Lord Spake, 'And the multitude must rise up together against the creators of lust: and the magistrates shall rent their clothes, and command their master to beat them. 20 lashes against their flesh unless in a matter of adultery, for then they shall receive 40.' Acts 16:29. So must I wield the rod against ye woman and absolve you of this sin." Nathan's voice was sonorous, placing icy worms across the bared, scarred flesh of my back.
I couldn't see him pick up the whip, I couldn't hear him pick up the whip, but I felt it, that slight disturbance in the air as if the walls have taken a breath, waiting to be splashed with my blood. And so goes my life, every morning a thick leather bar against the broken scabs and scars from the many days before. Nathan breathed. The whip whistled through the air. My back split. I fell unconscious before the pain hit me.
It's the only way I know to escape, to flee into the color of my subconscious. I don't remember colors, but I know they exist in my dreams. I do remember red, how can I not? When I wake up its in pools beneath the table, spattered over the white walls. It's beautiful as long as I don't believe it's mine. Still, I can live somewhere else until he has finished and gone. I've gotten good at not having to suffer.
I know he's left when I wake. The Marthas are rubbing my back with salt. Another punishment for having been the object of lust. At this point I cannot feel it; I cannot feel anything through the pulpy bleeding mass of scar tissue. They still haven't untied me from the table. They aren't supposed to.
The duty of a Handmaid to bear children is such that she must remain available throughout the day. So, on the table I stay. Eventually they will untie me so I can move around, use the bathroom, vomit, be force fed paste, and tied down again. At least I have a restroom to use while I'm up here; the other hundred Handmaids still in the pit have only a corner. Maybe there is some sort of benefit to being the favorite, another reason for the others to hate me.
I hear female voices down the hall, laughing, high-pitched and lovely, and I groan inwardly. It's the Mothers, those Handmaids that are pregnant or have given birth to multiple children. They're given free-reign of the compound. Their "service" to Gilead is being rewarded, so they get to be people for a while. Eventually, when they become too old to give birth, they will just be another Handmaid in the pit, sentenced to die there like a child's broken toy. For now at least, they can rub their success in the faces of Handmaids like me, strapped to the table every day and still not pregnant.
"Oh is this their room?" one Mother asks, her voice fluttery with nerves. She's obviously never done this before.
"Most definitely. See that shape? It's called an 'N' so this is definitely Master Nathan's Handmaid room." I recognize her voice. It's a voice that haunts my nightmares, Mother Four, but I'm too tired to feel fear.
"Shh! Let's just go in before anyone sees us." The rookie obviously doesn't know how this goes. No one is going to stop the Mothers, it's their right to abuse the Handmaids. We're the infidels, deserving of neither protection nor pity. They are the "reformed" vessels carrying the miracles of God.
The Marthas have already moved to the back corner of the room, the folds of their green robes rustling. They're going to pretend to be invisible, staying as silent as the grave. They aren't safe from the Mothers' petty violence either and the grave is often where they find themselves.
The door opens, admitting the soft patter of bare feet. The first woman through the door is resplendent. Her skin aglow, belly softly rounded, her skin bearing many signs of motherhood. Her stripy stretch marks denoting her as the bearer of many children. Four children to be exact, hence her hard won title of Mother Four. She's the one I watch. The other woman is pale and sickly green, a new Mother. Her limbs are gangly from malnutrition, her stomach heavy with child. Immediately I can tell that one of them, the child or mother, will not survive this pregnancy. The Mother just looks too delicate, too fragile to survive the difficult and dangerous act of childbirth. I feel only a twinge of pity, an emotion I quickly grind out.
Four smiles her teeth crooked, "How long has it been Ofnathan? Did he just leave you?"
I don't answer, but I turn my face away from her.
"Look at me when I speak to you whore."
Once again, I say nothing. A clawed hand grips my hair, yanking my head back until my neck screams with pain and tears leak, unbidden, from the corners of my eyes. Her face looms above mine, her brackish eyes wide and wild, mouth twisted into a cruel sneer.
"You know why you're barren don't you? Why after years and years your womb is just a shriveled empty bag?" She pulls my head a little farther back, "You're too pretty. God curses the vain, but I can help you. I can destroy your pretty. Little. Face." She wrenches my head back and forth, emphasizing each word.
The pale Mother shifts nervously from foot to foot, "Come on Mother Four, just punish her and get it over with."
"Oh no, no" Four strokes my cheek softly with her free hand, "this one is special, she deserves a little more than what the others get. She has a name that belongs only to her. She has her own Master. Ofnathan isn't a normal Handmaid is she?"
Mother Four and I had a history, girls together in the Gilead Before, forced into Handmaids together, as much of friends as you could have in the pit. But then I was chosen and she was left behind every day. It took years for her to have her first child, a time long enough to grow a hatred of me so profound, she had nearly killed me twice before.
She slammed my face back of the table and walked away, "Do you think you are more special than the rest of us Ofnathan? Are you really worthy to serve Him? You're nothing but a broken slut!" My eyes watered as blood gushed from my broken nose.
"Let's just see what toys Master Nathan has for his special Handmaid shall we? Ooh, this looks interesting." Metal clinked.
Something cold was pressed against my leg, when it lifted, I could feel something hot and wet run over my skin, followed by stinging pain.
"Wow, this is really sharp isn't it Ofnathan? Does he use this one on you often?"
She grabbed my hair again and leered at me, "I figured he was one of those Masters. He enjoys punishing you, doesn't he? Does he pray for your soul while he whips you?"
Four slashed the shining knife across my cheek, laughing as the blood dripped onto the white table. She gouged the point into my skin and began to carve. I clenched my teeth against the screams lodged in my throat. Screaming would do nothing, no one would pay any mind to the screams of a Handmaid, they heard them too often. Four moved from my cheek to my lips, cutting them to tatters.
I heard retching from the corner. Either the sickly Mother couldn't handle the gore, or one of the Marthas couldn't. Four only laughed, wielding her fury across my body. I couldn't move, and my wrists and ankles were raw and bloody from fighting against the ties.
"Go ahead whore, scream," Four hissed, slamming the knife into my arm, "beg me to stop, cry out for your precious Master."
I couldn't help it, the shriek raged from my battered mouth, exploding against the red table. Four leapt from my back, cursing, leaving her knife still pinning my arm to the table. My scream filled the room, saturating the walls with my pain. They thrummed with satisfaction, they'd had their fill with the physical and visual evidence of my pain, now they could hear it echo through the halls.
"Let's leave! Oh please God," the rookie Mother was crying, snot running from her nose, "why did you do that? Oh God, oh God, let's go, please!" Mother Four nodded, smiling beatifically, and they turned for the door.
The wood slammed open as they reached it and Nathan stormed through. He only spared me a glance, mutilated, cries pulling me from the table with every breath. "Shut her up." The Marthas scrambled to shush me, their hands fluttering uselessly about my ragged lips, butterflies tasting my blood.
Another Master barged into the room. He saw me and gagged, covering his mouth, "Dear God! Master Nathan, what's going on?"
"Take Mother Four and Mother Genesis to the Stable, make sure they can no longer leave." Nathan turned to the two Mothers, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, Mathew 19:19."
Mother Four paled, "N-no, p-please."
Nathan's eyes narrowed, "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, Exodus 21:23-25."
Mother Four looked at the horror she had visited upon my flesh and began to sob, "I'm with child! You cannot do that to me!"
"Indeed," Nathan nodded, Mother Four sighed in relief, "Which is why it will be returned upon you thrice-fold after the child's birth."
"No!" Four's wail was inhuman, a mad, shrill sound, an animal cornered, "I am Chosen! God has blessed me with many children! I am good!"
Faster than my weary eyes could follow, Nathan had Four by the throat, cutting her voice off at an indignant squawk. "Blessed you?" he hissed, "He has blessed us with the fruit of your sin. You are replaceable."
He threw her away from the table and she hit the wall with a cry of fear. He turned to the other Master, "Take them away."
The Master grabbed the arms of the two Mothers and dragged them weeping from the room. Mother Four screamed as she was pulled away, "I am good! I am good! I am Chosen!" Her voice faded in the long seconds she was projecting her madness into the empty ether.
The room was quite apart from the steady drip of blood and my labored breathing. My heart beat a sluggish rhythm in my chest, my vision blurred, and I began to shake with chills. I struggled to lift my head and see his face. The face of the man who answered my scream with a twisted justice that I was thankful for.
Nathan's vague silhouette approached the table and stood over me. He flickered in and out of visibility.
"Help… me…" My hoarse whisper whistled through my mangled mouth.
"Your life is in God's hands." He turned away, "But your soul is in mine. Take care of her."
The Marthas, who had backed away as he approached, surged back, bringing with them a sweet smell and the end of my eyes. Darkness descended.