Story: Sympathy for the Torturer (part five)

Sympathy for the Torturer

(part five)

Down the coast. That must be the expression.

Herward used it, and Herward came from there. Down the coast they had sat on the daybed in Anton’s room, he with the sisters, talking.

“Oh, poor Anton. You’re so easy. You’ve never had anything.” Jovie, teasing him. Or not teasing…making a joke of him, sharing it in front of him with Vonnie.

Their eyes and their smiles.

“Toughen up. The two things that matter to everyone are food and heat. Unless it’s summer, then they’ll short us on air-conditioning and water. Think. When has there not been a surplus of food? Wasted, thrown away, why is dumpster diving a crime, always talked about. Well, where does food come from? The same farmland that hasn’t changed, except it’s not private any longer.”

Unfolding their future. How they were calling this game. Look for the G.R.A. to try this play. Will the Jocelynists make a comeback? No chance and not real contenders, but keep your eye on…

Infighting, among the Alliance. Spoils, even though there aren’t supposed to be spoils.

A shadow fell.

When Anton stared up dumbly, the officer banged her stick against the metal rail. He should not have stopped to rest here, on the concrete steps of a condemned building…a discothèque, the word spelled out in bolt holes.

“What is that in your hand?”

He lifted his hand, and peeled off the plastic.

“What were you planning to do with it?”

“But…? Take it home. I’m going home.”

“I want you to put it in that trash bin over there.”

Anton obeyed. He stood over the bin, shoulders hunched, waiting. After minutes passed with no instruction, he turned and found the officer gone.

He rounded a corner; lost, in fact. Here was a place to wait for a bus. He didn’t want a bus, but could not get outside the crowd. He would soon be arrested again, because he was not, for another three months, to leave A-Sector, Orange. The destination on the screen was D-Sector, Purple, Avenue Blackbird.

He doubted he would know his grandmother’s apartment house, even find it standing. He wouldn’t find the offices of Palma’s old newspaper, where she had let him sit watching. Never buying his poems, never assigning him a story.

Only foot errands.

For the new people, brought in to make the population of each quadrant equal, nothing in D had ever been named.

5

Sympathy

Sympathy for the Torturer (part one)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)