Saturday, February 16, 2008

• Crespus

        Magdus thanked the lord every day that he wasn't born one of them. They made him sick to his stomach, and he couldn't help himself but to stare at them through a crack in the window blinds as they passed by, hobbling on crooked limbs, some on crutches, some in wheelchairs. Their spines, grotesquely bent, rendered most of them permanently hunched toward the earth. Their grayish skin was thin and tore easily, and some of them had flesh grafts where their vertebrae had broken the bonds of their bodies. Their faces were those of tortured animals, melted and deformed beyond the semblance of humanity. But they had come from human mothers.

     Magdus had no friends besides Crespus. Having spent most of his life indoors, he was pale, and his gut hung in front of his frame like a useless appendage. His arms were thin and covered with black hairs. He would wake up around noon and assemble a sandwich of white bread and bologna. If he were planning on going out that night, he would pull a fifth of bootleg vodka down from the cupboard and take several shots of the fiery liquid. "Long live the Republic" he would say with bitterness. Then he would light a cigarette and walk back and forth, fixing a hard gaze at nothing in particular. It was very dangerous, what he did.

  Crespus was the opposite of Magdus. He was tall and dapper, a good dresser and a quiet personality. When Magdus would drink too much and scream at the despot on the television, Crespus would sit calmly, smiling the timid smile of a saint and fixing his gaze on the crumbling plaster wall behind the antennae. He was the elder of the pair, but he appeared much younger than Magdus. They had gone to school together, they had sat in the back of the class together, and when the draft was reinstated, they had both tried to kill themselves in the school bathroom together. Another student, one of the more privileged kids that had made their lives hell, had delivered them the ultimate insult by finding their bleeding bodies in the end stall and dragging them, one by one, into the hallway. They had been rushed to the hospital, revived, and declared unfit for combat.  They were the only boys in their class to survive the conflict. Most of their recovery was spent in the asylum with the deformed people.

   

  Crespus would write and print the paper; Magdus would distribute it to the loyal subscribers and spend hours attempting to strike up conversations in speakeasies and feel out new customers. It contained the information that the people craved; news from the front, along with words of encouragement, words of hope, and most of all, words of dissent. "For purposes of secrecy," Crespus would write, "it is impossible for us to name our sources of information, but I assure our readers that these sources are legitimate and accurate." The paper was utter bullshit. Crespus would write it all without standing up from his typewriter, a cigarette dangling from his lips as they moved soundlessly, dreaming up stories that sounded like they could be true. It didn't matter. All the news that was ever on television was that the Republic was winning the conflict, and it wouldn't be long until all the brave soldiers could come home. Half the able bodied males were drafted as soon as they turned seventeen. The paper paid the bills.

   

   

  Copyright 2008, Gabriel S. New

  If anyone has any questions about this piece, please ask me.

  • 3:15 AM
  • 6 eprops
  • 9 comments