It's been a very long time since this was updated! Even though I'm at the happy farm now, they let me write and upload a chapter. This was written on a Dell from 2003 with Windows XP. It's like writing on a typewriter. :D This chapter had to be split in half. Next part will be uploaded in a week or so. Enjoy!
Thanks so much to Demented-Windmills for letting me use her character Talynn. :) I miss you, darlin'!
Hundreds and thousands of snowflakes were dancing about as they descended from the clouds. All of them had dressed for the occasion, sadly, although not two of the little ladies risked arriving at the ball wearing the same gown, there was no Christmas dance to be held at all. How sad! How unfortunate!
Christmas had not been celebrated in Opressia since the inauguration of the new sovereign and his government. Everything pertaining to the old government had been banned, including religious feasts and celebrations. Upon the anniversary of the coup of the new despot, however, everyone were supposed to garb themselves in the nations colors, as well as the perfunctory smile.
While the flakes didn't have a party to go to, they did find a place to gather; a window emanating the soft, yellow light of burning candles and a lit fireplace. The window displayed something so lovely, in fact, that some of the little white ladies became reckless in their attempts to come as close as possible, they crashed against the warm glass, leaving only small, diamond-like droplets of water as proof that they ever existed.
Miss Talynn sighed in contentment. "Thank you, sir," she muttered. "I can't remember the last time I was this warm and full... Or happy."
A part of Officer Ignatyus wished she had not said the last part, as he was directly to blame for the young lady's unhappiness. He opened his arms, and noticed how she hesitated to accept his tender invitation.
"I owe you more than this, I know," he said as he wrapped the soft blankets around the both of them.
"Why?" Talynn asked. "The chicken was perfect. The music, too, and the dessert." Her eyes sparkled with the same old rebellion Ignatyus had seen every day for almost six months. Only this time it didn't bother him. Not at all. "I may ask for seconds later, though."
"Then you shall have it." He replied. Talynn purred; the Officer's voice had never been warm or soft before.
He had forgotten how comforting a lady's company could be. She how wonderful it was to be loved by someone. For months now their minds and their voices had done the talking. Tonight it had been their bodies' turn. It had been a reminder of their fragile and vulnerable design as mortal beings; one that wasn't painful or sad. Their love gave the world warmth, and their cries of passion had made the air cleaner.
Talynn lay still for a moment and inhaled the scent of her new best friend's skin. It was warm and clean, like a washed sheet that has dried in the sun. Ignatyus was such a standoffish and blunt character behind his desk, and she had expected him to assume the same qualities in this particular piece of furniture - only to be surprised at how tender and considerate a lover he was. A wall had come down; an even greater wall than that which shut the nation off from the rest of the world
"Baryshnya*," he muttered into her hair. "I am seldom tactless, but I need to inform you that the board has asked me to make a decision on your behalf by the first day of spring."
Talynn sat across him on her knees and bent over to kiss him. "Sir, why do you call me that? You're only seven years older than me."
She prodded him, but not like he had prodded her with his interrogations and threats, but with tender words and excruciatingly lovely kisses. "Why are you still afraid of me?"
"I'm not afraid of you," he said, rather tactlessly, if you ask me. She allowed her friend to pause before speaking again. "I was afraid of you once," he said after a little while. "Afraid that you wouldn't... respond to my help. You didn't have a criminal record. You didn't resist arrest. Your only wish was wanting to help others. In the eyes of the government, however..."
"... I am a criminal, I know."
Ignatyus placed a finger over her lips. "Stay with me, and I will love you, I promise, but... In the eyes of love I will only ever be your captor. Not your man."
Talynn looked at him. Earlier that day he had worn his seemingly tailored uniform, his coat without a wrinkle, his boots without a smudge, and not one of his tall, green hairs were out of their place, not even after the little drizzle of rain during the day's march. Even his very conservative, black-rimmed glasses had been polished to perfection. No wonder everyone, including his so-called comrades feared him.
As he lay there, he looked nothing like an automaton she had confused him with for so long. His bangs were sweaty and now visible, and without his trademark brick red coat he looked thinner, smaller. Not to mention younger.
He looked like a person.
A person who was ecstatic because he had found love, but sad, because he would have to bid it farewell, once more, and once more too soon. She could see it. And because she returned his affection, she had to carry her share of the burden. She realized that because she wasn't alone in the world anymore, it wasn't a burden at all.
"I want you to be a man." She said tenderly. "I want you to be the you you've worked so hard to be."
Jerry leans over the couch to look at the illustration in Boo-Boo's favorite dimestore romance. She's reading it to us; what a rare, shank-less treat. "Dude, this dude looks just like you, dude!" He points at me, and in his excitement drops of his melting ice cream sandwich soil the pages.
"Watch where you drip, you drip!" Boo-Boo yelps. Angrily she wipes away the ice cream with a tissue while Jerry keeps smiling and eating, as always.
I look at the glossy, colorful illustration. The titular officer is holding a Koopa lady in a Koopa Shepherdess' outfit by the arm. Her eyes are mischievous, his are harsh, and his grip is like a vice. But I don't see any similarities.
"What happens next?" Goombella asks. "Do they elope and run away to America?"
"Of course not!" Topper, the Ice Bro wearing oven mitts scoffs. "It was a setup from the get-go! The chick ends up in a mental hospital and the Officer goose-steps all the way to the bank!"
Shelly, who is always the life of these gatherings, shoves him off the couch with her foot. "The Koopsacks didn't goose-step, retard."
We don't function well together, do we? But the rest of the meeting goes rather well.
"Dimentio in the Ministry Of Insane Laughter - ward has requested potting soil and some seeds. He has his own flowerpots, it seems. And his associate O'Chunks is supplying the fertilizer. Don't ask me how." I look at the others.
"Well, the crayons, pencils and invisible-bladed sharpeners he got us last month were good, but the paper I'm afraid didn't measure up to Sallow Gang criteria. It's worth..." Boo-Boo counts, she's good with numbers, "A five pound bag of potting soil and a bag of sunflower seeds. But he'll have to get us better paper by next week if he wants a trowel." The others nod at Koops' assessment.
I toss the note Goombella has stenoed into a nearby warp pipe.
"Now, over to more pressing issues. Boom Boom of the ICUP - ward says that if we don't pay up for the sumi-e equipment he got us for Rugeley's birthday asses with get kicked."
"Already taken care of," I say to Topper.
"How?" He asks. I wink at him.
"You're a sick, disgusting bastard, Iggy. I can't believe you did that. Again!"
"Yes, I know what I am. Luckily me being a sick, disgusting bastard is what pays the bills around here. Maybe if you got your hands dirty once in a while mine wouldn't have to spend as much time in places where the sun don't shine."
Topper grabs me by the collar and flings me up on the table, intent on strangling me, it seems. Before the staff can exit the nurse's station I sink my teeth into the intolerant Ice Bro's upper arm in an angle that allows me to really clamp down. Ohh, it's so long since I've bitten someone. This must be what it feels like for others when they sink their teeth into a juicy, steamy burger.
Topper lets go of my neck, but I don't let go of his arm. Koopaling spit is venomous. Though not deadly, it does cause an inflammation if it comes in contact with a wound, such as the one on Topper's arm now, which hurts like hell. It's also a potent anti-coagulant. I'm guessing that my more primitive ancestors did have deadly venom in their bite, and after attacking prey, would rather wait in the shadows for it to lose consciousness or bleed out, rather than risk being crushed by their prey or having to ro-sham-bo with a competing predator. The smell of blood would keep them informed as to where their feast could be found at all times. Evolution has taken that away from me and my kin, but in return made us fully bipedal. Koopas are the only testudines in the entire universe that are intelligent, sentient, and bipedal.
But my fangs and their joyous reunion with fleshy arms buys me, an innocent bystander, 96 hours in Whiteroom; my strictest sentence yet. Jacket, spike caps and a biteguard this time. No solid food which would require removal of the silicone railing on my teeth. No solid foods; my nutrition is parenteral. That means a tube down my throat. It sounds horrific, I know, but you get used to it, and the staff here always makes sure you have total privacy when you're put on MakeSure, and they are so good at what they do that you don't feel a thing. As soon as Nurse Pianta finishes squeezing MakeSure - slurry down my gullet, I hear someone entering the Whiteroom ward. I think it's Rugeley who comes to help clean up after my meals. It's Dr. Wolfie. He hates it when people call him that, but I can't help it. It suits him and his fluffy, almost feminine mane of ice blue hair well. I can see that his coiffure, as Ludwig calls it, is not coincidental. I smell hair spray, and I see that the hair has been very carefully combed. As opposed to humans, who shed their manes as they age, that of Koopas become more compact and matted over the years. Wolfgang takes care of his appearance. We Koopas are a vain species...
"Ignatius," he says. People only call me that when I'm about to be praised or get in a lot of trouble. "Ich vould like to speak with you, Mann to Mann for un Moment."
His voice is not ominous. His English appears to be better now than the last time we talked, before my great escape two months ago.
He sits next to me, but not too close, and opens my chart. There's a coffee ring on it.
"Herr Koopa. You have gained one and a half Kilo and the Eisen levels in your Blut is finally adequate. Which is sehr good, yes." He closes the folder. "But you are not responding to Medikamente, and not therapy either. Your mood, behavior and state of mind are all too unstable. Dr. Greenkoop has allowed me to oversee your treatment for a while."
He puts on a pair of gloves. "Ich fill now remove your spike caps and Zahnschloss. But the Zwangsjacke will have to stay on."
My teeth are dry from having been virtually encased in rubbery silicone. I lunge forwards at Dr. Wolfie. He doesn't fear my teeth, and I don't fear the fast-acting sedative in his syringe. He's a patient Koopa, but if one of his patients become violent, he sedates them immediately. It almost feels sneaky, because his injections are so quick and painless you wouldn't notice it at all, and suddenly just lie there like a lump.
"Don't you barbarians know that saliva fights cavities? I need my saliva!"
Wolfgang is strong, and he forces me into the mattressed floor, and keeps me there, resting his knee on my shell. I'm incapacitated, but it doesn't hurt. I release something into my padded cocoon that makes me feel rather ashamed of myself.
"Iggy, you know the rules. Vee agreed that biting puts you in Hier. You decided to bite, I decide to take you out of the common space for a time." He removes his knee and helps me turn over on my side. "But the Zahnschloss was overkill, Ich agree."
Walking on a hard floor after four days of isolation makes me dizzy. I vomit on Wolfgang's labcoat. You'd think that a person would be angered by a stream of half-digested, bubblegum pink slurry which reeks of bile and artificial strawberries splashing all over your recently dry-cleaned labcoat, but Dr. Wolfie just takes my arm to support my wobbling body, careful not to soil me with the vomit on his clothes.
"Oh, Iggy, Ich am so sorry." He clicks his pager. "Ich should have gotten you a chair instead."
I feel better when I can sit down. Dr. von Bachstein takes me to his office, where he measures my heart rate, after putting his dirty coat into a yellow bag with a scary, black symbol on it. Ludwig also puts his lab coats and doorags into these bags. Biohazard bags. Biohazard means "everything that has had bodily fluids on it, especially blood".
"Herr Koopa." Wolfgang attempts to continue where we vomited off. "You have taken Silentium for eight months now. Ich cannot see improvement of importance in your behavior, nor your condition. Therefore Ich would like to suggest that vee try a different approach."
He retrieves a booklet from his desk, which is rather thick, and helps me navigate.
"Electro-convulsive treatment is Eine harmless approach to treating severe Depression und mood disorders," Wolfgang explains. "It does not hurt, and it has virtually no side effects.
My jaw drops. "You're gonna fry my brain?!"
"Bestimmt nicht, Iggy; dat is eine urban legend. The voltage used in ECT is about the same amount as in a Taschenlampe or a remote control."
"Will my body jar and thrash around?"
"Not at all. "Your right foot or hand may twitch for eine Sekund. But you fill be given a Sedativ that fill make you fall fast asleep. If you Aufwachen feeling nauseous, Ich haben eine pill that makes you feel better in an instant."
I look at the picture of the equipment used in this grisly-sounding bloodbath of a treatment. "No," I say. "I won't do it. I won't!" Tears well up in my throat, which is still swollen and sore with bile. "Please don't make me!"
"Iggy," Dr. von Bachstein interrupts. I have never really noticed how caring he is. But now I hear the warmth in his voice and see the thank you - drawings from his many little clients as I retreat into my good old hiding place under his desk. Some are framed. Some have colorful backing board as well.
"Ich cannot force you to do this. Before Ich can even consider this Behandlung, ich need your Konsens and signature."
After ensuring that there's nothing under the desk I can harm myself with, he allows me to curl up under there, he takes a fresh labcoat out of his locker and puts it on before putting the pamphlets back where they belong. The linoleum is cold and rubbery, and also smells rubbery. I sit up.
"Will that electric thing make me happy again?" I ask.
Dr. Wolfie is writing. On a typewriter, to be exact. Who does that anymore?
"It doesn't work like that, Herr Koopa." I hear him use a stamp. "In the beginning of the course it is normal to feel a little disoriented, but shortly after you fill experience feeling more relaxed. In time, if we are successful, you will feel more motivation. The goal is to make Sie more Responsiv to Terapi."
He helps me on my feet and to sit down in his office chair, which is more comfortable and supportive than the exam bench.
"Iggy, you are shaking. You are Überspannt and need your rest."
Dr. Wolfie himself helps me to bed, which is routine after an extended Whiteroom stay, and helps me brush my teeth. His fingers are never near my mouth, yet all sides of all my teeth get squeaky clean. He gives me a chewable fluoride tablet. He's a pediatrician, after all.
"Have you ever had a cavity?" He asks. It's more an invitation to a soothing conversation than a medical checkup.
"Of course not," I say. We Koopas take dental care very seriously. It's the first thing the Koopa ladies look at. Healthy teeth, and shiny toe nails. So all you Koopa guys out there, if you file and buff your toe claws and put some clear polish on them, the ladies will swoon. The gentlekoopas too, if that's more your thing.
The restraints are not used tonight. Dr. Wolfgang never uses them. They remain tucked away under the mattress, and he allows me a half hour of reading before lights out. Boo-Boo has been generous enough to let me borrow "The Dark-Eyed Beauty" for a while. I missed some chapters before the one that was read during the last Sallow Gang meeting. I start at the beginning and flip until the content no longer looks familiar.
The ghostly, Opressian fog. Every native artist has written at least one poem about it, whether they be writers or not. It rested heavily around the pine trees of the lush hills surrounding the Family Reassignment Office. Talynn had also written a poem about the fog as a little Koopa. As she marched with her fellow inmates to the laundry house, she tried to remember how it went.
"Fog, the garment... The garment of solace. Hides... Gold?"
"Keep walking, baryshnya Koopóva," Officer Ignatyus said in his cold, blunt voice. Talynn jumped, even though he hadn't barked at her. He never spoke too loudly or marched too fast. His life seemed to be all about efficiency and thoroughness. And frugality. While his comrades got their supplies from the border; corn, apples, roast chicken, chocolate, even brandy which made Talynn's mouth water, Ignatyus ate the same food as the inmates; the vegetable stew and often singed crisp bread, even drank the same tea, which was always strong and hot, but had a very characteristic, metallic aftertaste.
Talynn had snuck in some of her own clothes into her share of the laundry heap. It was hard to understand why they forced the Koopa ladies to wear aprons if they had to stay spotless all the time. A dirty apron could cost you your bedsheets. Not wearing one at all would buy you two days in the stockade while the Officer asked you annoying and invasive questions.
"What did the capitalists promise you, baryshnya? Did they let you name you reward for selling out your native soil?"
It didn't take a genius to understand that they were not actual questions, but rhetorical ones, meant to strengthen ones' patriotism. Talynn had always loved her country and her fellow Koopas, but the new government could take their laws and fascist regime and shove it, as far as she was concerned. She didn't then and she never would swear an oath to them, which made her a lifer at the Office. But not if she could help it. She had made a promise to herself, that if she survived this fall's flu season, she would escape.
The hot, soapy water got her apron clean in minutes, and the laundry press squeezed the excess water out, but it was still moist as she tied it back in place. She would blame the humid fog.
As she stood on a step-stool and stirred the giant laundry vat with a long shaft, she watched as an Airship landed above the roof of the mass hall. A suitor from the Mushroom Kingdom, Talynn thought to herself.
"Wonder who the lucky one is," Sherry Koopa, an illegal immigrant said as she lit herself a very forbidden cigarette. The sharp smell made Talynn feel nauseous.
"'Lucky one'?" Another girl with green skin and pink hair scoffed. "You so funny, devushka. She will come back to us in three months, bruised, bloody and with less teeth than before."
Many of the women had cuts, black eyes and missing teeth from the rough treatment they received, either from their spouses or the Politsiya. As much as Talynn despised Officer Ignatyus, she knew she was lucky to be here rather than the women's prison, as he never drank on the job or brutalized the inmates, unlike the guards there. He had said during one of his never-ending interrogations, that frightened people worked too slow. She wasn't sure if that was the whole reason.
After hanging the day's laundry to dry, Talynn returned to the vat to empty out the dirty water. The valve was almost frozen in place, and concentrated on getting it loose, she was once again startled when finally noticing Ignatuys' presence. He didn't raise his eyebrow this time, just made a short nod when her gaze met his.
"If you use a bucket and pour some water from the vat onto the valve, the ice will melt away. Just a thought."
He oversaw the execution of this hypothesis, and after the vat was empty he gave Talynn another nod of approval. "Go into the barrack and wash yourself, then get some rest before resuming the afternoon's tasks. The same goes for you other Zhenskoy as well."
The book is so soothing to read that I fall asleep. I don't know if Talynn made it out or not. Closing my eyes, I think about tomorrow, when I will sign Dr. Wolfgang's papers and let him make a new Koopa out of me.
*Baryshnya: A Russian term which means "young lady". If used in the wrong circumstances it can be perceived by the adressee as quite patronizing.