End-Stopped {a chorus}

End-Stopped {a chorus}
Jack Galmitz Violette-Rose Jones Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams

Impress
New York, New York, U.S.A. 2013

End-Stopped {a chorus}
Collection copyright 2013 Impress. Individual stories copyright of the authors. All rights reserved.

Impress (copyright of Jack Galmitz)

,
I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think. Sigmund Freud

The crowd grew larger, as the Sonderzge was late. It was winter and everyone wore their heaviest coats, scarves, gloves, hats. Old couples held hands. Children hugged their parents. They had been taken from their homes, some woken from sleep, told by the black uniformed soldiers that they were being evacuated to the east. Everyone had their money in their hands, as they had to pay for the trip to Auschwitz. Children were only charged half-fare. It was understood that they would be going to labor camps to serve the nation. There wasnt a whisper. The soldiers, with their oiled gun holsters and the rifles and machine guns slung over some of their shoulders silenced them. It was night. A night without stars, as if Kristallnacht had knocked all the stars from the sky forever. Then the lights of the cattle cars shone on the track curve and approached the station. When it screeched to a halt, the guards began to load the people in. 50 to 150 per car. Not enough room to move or squat. The trip took several days and no water or food was provided. There was one bucket latrine for each car. The small barred windows did not allow sufficient ventilation. As the guards would not be traveling with the deportees, some of them placed wagers with one another as to which would be set to work and which would be isolated off. They also made wagers as to how long each passenger would survive. They could always verify these results with comrades at the camp. Once alighted at Auschwitz, the old, the sick, children, the infirm were moved to the left, where they were to be gassed to death in vans. Those healthy enough were lined up to the right for work assignments. Families were separated. They could not speak out, say proper farewells.

It could be said that if not for the mass railroad system in Poland, the Final Solution could not have been carried out. In the morning, the workers would be accompanied out by the Womans Band of Auschwitz.

Dear Blue: to live a life of sadness. to breathe sadness in and out of the mouth and nose. to see it in someone else s beloved eyes, in most events, shining in the midst of an ordinary scene. only the perpetually sad fully understand what it is to be in this state. others feel sorry for us and wish we could be happy, but i like the way i am. once in montana i sat on a low rock and watched a cloud shadow pass over a mountain, and i understood my limitations. i press this memory like a flower under glass or an

autumn leaf between pages of a favorite book.

come on with me. look in my house, filled with useless documents, photographs, sacred texts called poems, childhood toys, two leaping dogs, cabinets and drawers where things are waiting, becoming increasingly irrelevant. Sadness in creases, on rims, deep inside pockets.

sadness rising on dust motes in the air. they swirled about my fathers face when the rescue squad opened the door and he waited to be carried out on the gurney

but this was years ago.

sometimes i long for a more austere existence, no rugs, just a wooden floor that is easy to sweep.

S brander, ohio, usa 2 november 2012

Blue:

speaking as one quiet person to another.

i can t fully disclose how much the loud ones make me cringe. if i did, you d ill of me. if i did, you d think me unkind. i m nothing if not kind, but, blue, i ve about had enough of the loud ones. i ve had sufficient exposure to their noise, and now i m through.

so sure of themselves. i

sleep. they enter my dreams. they turn into roosters on their bottom half. what tails. what drumsticks for legs. above the waist they re mostly human. they wear a general s coat, all done up in braids and epaulettes. how they strut. How they jump upon stumps in the great forest, ever on the lookout, shaking waddles and comb. they rule from the perch. many do their bidding.

they frightened me once. now they make me laugh. i will stuff their feathers in my mattress. my mother

wrung the necks of such in the old days, i remember. and then we ate them for supper.

S brander, ohio, usa 3 november 2012

He can smell the bourbon as soon as he opens the door. There is vomit on the hall away floor, half soaked into the hall rug; he dodges it. The house is in early darkness. A pile of books has fallen over in the hall. Camelia is sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by empty bottles. She is slumped over, the table the only thing holding her up. Her eyes are open but dull. He deliberately and loudly drops his bag. Camelia startles. "You're fucking drunk again!" "And you're a fucking bastard Camelia reaches out and takes a swing at him but passes out. _________________________________________________ Rocking is the next thing Camelia is aware of and grunting. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she recognizes she is in a bed but there is a weight on her. She opens her eyes, she realizes she is naked and he is between her legs. "No! NO! Get off me!" She frantically tries to push him off but he's too heavy. "Shut up and let me finish..." he grunts, pauses a moment, then rolls off her. Camelia scrambles off the bed. "You are an arsehole!" She pulls on her panties. That may be true but you are a drunken whore. He smiles like a snake. "Happy Bloody Anniversary!"

She picks up a glass paperweight and throws it at him; it bounces off the wall. He laughs.

The telephone rang at around 12:00 AM, but it was his wifes pull on his arm that woke him. He had taken a large dose of anti-psychotics to sleep. She handed him the phone, while he whined in annoyance for being disturbed. The voice on the line was a womans, from the EMS of the Fire Department. She said they were trying to revive his father, but had been unsuccessful. If he wanted to see his father one more time, hed best come over. He said he would, although he had already been there this morning, to watch over his father while his mother was hospitalized. During the day, he realized his fathers delirium had progressed; his father did not know who he was. It was the first time his father recognized there was something wrong with him. Now, after nearly 90 years and the amputation of a leg, he was dead. It was a long time to live and his son wasnt visibly moved. It felt to him like he would never die and the routine would go on forever like a bad situation comedy. But, the time had come. His wife called a taxi and they were soon on their way. It was raining as if heaven was crying, but it always feels like that when someone dies. At the house, there were three policeman and two EMS workers. The woman he had spoken to offered her condolences. We did all we could, she said. He perfunctorily thanked her for her help and caring, went over to his mother, who was slumped in a chair whimpering in an unconvincing way, and pecked her cheek. He did not like her. He walked to the bedroom to see his father. He touched him. The body was cold, the face rigid. So, its just like that, huh, dad? He kissed his forehead although it was without love, dutifully. He returned to the living room and stroked his mothers arm, to quiet her; it worked and the

police took notice. To calm the situation, they noticed the coffee coasters with famous race horses on them and discussed horse-racing with his mother. It worked. It was something she cared about, as had his father. Thats about all they really shared. A belief in luck and a no fat diet. When the coroners came, he noticed their black clothes and the fact that the young apprentice had whitish green skin, from working at nights indoors every day. They prepared his fathers body, put a tag around his toe, and slowly took it down the stairs on a gurney. He went downstairs to have a cigarette and two of the policemen were down there. He mentioned to them the unusual ferocity of the storm and said it always seemed to rain when someone died. They both looked at him as if he was a patient in an asylum and he turned and smoked the cigarette. He was falling asleep from the medicine he had earlier taken earlier. He stayed a while and then told his mother he had to go back to sleep. He had his wife call a taxi.

Blue: manifesto-2 1. you have had a good life. 2. a good life, like good art, can never be read just one way. we construct our lives out of real and bogus memories. we memorialize ourselves in collections of toys, of pictures, of shells, of rocks, of favorite books, of diaries, of letters, of notes, of receipts, of coins, of rings, of charms, of suits, of gowns, of hats, of shirts, of food, of gadgets of every sort.

when i was a little girl, i asked for a baton and white boots with red tassles for

christmas. with them, I pretended to be head majorette. the baton was blue and sparkled in the sun. day after day, i marched over the yard. we lived in a rural part of the world. no one could see me. i twirled until i had blisters.

the crowd thought, she s wonderful. the crowd thought, we love her. the crowd thought, she s regal and she s perfect.

it didnt matter to me that there was no crowd. it doesn t matter to me now. the crowd existed in my thoughts. therefore, i missed none of the joys and pleasures of that

experience.

3. making stories is as important as recording memories. you real childhood is dead anyway, and impossible to understand.

S brander, ohio, usa

Nadia: These people are scum. Theyve spread a rumor that Im gay and once something like that happens theres no undoing it. I can see it in their smirks when I approach about a work assignment. They actually whisper to each other right in my face and sometimes when I pass they titter with laughter. Im beginning to feel paranoia. I cant work under these circumstances. Yet, I cant complain to the bosses, because its so humiliating. These underlings know that and take advantage of it. The other day that fing shit from Bedford Stuyvesant made a comment about Claudia while I was there and his pals were around. He said as bad as he felt she made him feel good. It was really directed at me-a ghetto way of attacking on the sly, so if you counter youve incriminated yourself. Low lives have their cunning. That shaved head bastard who does the billing actually told me a story about a friend of his who bought homes in Florida and sold them to gays- a growing market- and then laughed aloud, as if homosexuality was an amusement. If only any of these ignorant shits knew that the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychologists Association had both removed homosexuality from their lists of mental/emotional illnesses about thirty years ago. They still think from the street, from the rocking brimstone bible church with its knowledge of human nature developed in the Bronze Age.

He is standing with his wife near the barbeque with a group of his business associates pretending to be involved in a conversation. All the while he is watching Camelia across the garden. She is engrossed in conversation with a group of men he sort of recognises. He is imagining her already on their bed, naked, wet and waiting for him; his gut churns and his face reddens. His wife touches his arm and he momentarily redirects back into the conversation. When he turns back to watch Camelia, she is gone. The party drags. His wife develops a migraine and takes a cab home early. Before midnight, the wives are gone and a group of escorts arrives and the men begin to pair off with them. None appeal to him and he is bored, thinking of leaving till one of his friends tells him that some woman is putting on a show in a bedroom. As he approaches he hears a familiar laugh. There is a crowd of men cheering and whooping; he can barely get in the door. In the centre of the crowd is a bed and on it, Camelia stark naked and being screwed by one of the men she was talking to earlier. Others are waiting their turn. You dirty fucking whore! he screams and lunges through the crowd. He punches the man having sex with Camelia in the head and pushes him off. Grabbing her by the hair, he drags her off the bed; a clump of hair comes off in his hands. The crowd scatters. He flings her to the floor; she scrambles to collect up her clothes, sobbing. He kicks her in the stomach hard and walks away without looking back.

His stepson walked past him in his underwear without acknowledging him, like a little boy who didnt want to wear clothes. He was just about to go into the kitchen himself, but now hed wait, as he didnt like being in the same room with him. In fact, he didnt like him, period. He was in there a long time and his stepfather was angrily wondering what could possibly take so long. Even if he was cooking something, it shouldnt take that long. Finally, he got off the couch during a commercial and looked in. The boy had sprayed a roach with poison and rather than be satisfied that he had accomplished what he set out to do, he was closely examining the dying of the insect. He felt exasperated with him. He was like a forty-five year old boy who liked to still pull the wings off insects. He gave a grunt and the stepson laughed weakly, like it was a small pleasure. He had told his wife, the boys mother, many times he wanted him out of the house. She said she couldnt. He would kill her if she did. And he imagined it was possible. He was from Mainland China with only a Junior High School education and the emotional development of a five year old. He had actually thrown physical tantrums on the floor, kicking and all, screaming, when he didnt get what he wanted. His stepfather imagined him using a butchers knife on his mother in the street, if he was forcibly removed. He had come fourteen years before and it was apparent he was never going to leave. He did nothing around the house; never fed the cats, never cleaned the dishes, never cleaned up around the house. No

girlfriend in New York. He would find girlfriends on the internet and intermittently make visits back home to meet them. So far he had gone through five, all of them ending without a marriage. They had all asked for a lot of money; something he held on to as tightly as his mother. God, how his stepfather loathed him. He finally exited the kitchen and his stepfather went in to get something to eat.

He arrives to see his laptop come flying out the top floor window. It lands square on his windshield, crashing through and scattering the front seats with broken glass. He runs up the stairs. He can hear Camelia screaming. The neighbours are standing in the hall. They are glare at him as he enters. The glass in the flats door light is shattered and the door is ajar. Obscenities are stream out. She is in the lounge room raging. She kicks a hole in the wall as he enters. How could you take HER?! She picks up a book and throws it at his head. It clips his ear as it wizzes past. You stupid bitch! She is my wife! Did you think I would take you?! A vase shatters at his feet. He lunges for her and grabs her wrists. She struggles and screams in his face. His grip will bruise. I pay for this

place and the damage you do to it, so shut up and learn your place! Are you going to stop acting like an animal? Camelia nods. He releases her hands and she collapses into tears on the couch. She pulls a small bottle out of the couch and takes a swig. Thats it, take another fucking drink, thats just what you need! He snatches the bottle out of her hands and puts is on the mantle. He shakes his head. Youre no better than an animal. I dont know why I put up with you shit Because you like the way I suck you dick He smiles; Camelia does not but stands up and approaches him, pouting slightly. He takes her in his arms and they kiss. Afterwards he pulls out his phone and calls the contractors.

I fling my month old son head first to the floor, his skull smashing on contact with the kitchen tiles. The idea first occurred to me on his third day of life, persisted, niggling, then insisting itself, what if I killed him? Now it is done, there is not even a cry, just blood pooling. I am frozen stone inside; dead but my milk starts leaking anyway, seeping through my red shirt making dark smears, like the blood on the floor. The front door slams; a dead flower shatters dropping all its petals. I hear my husband put down his briefcase and there is screaming, no, no, no, but I am long way off now, gone and away from my body but he is shaking me, pointless really. Sometime later there are sirens and I think I see someone picking up bits of my sons brain but I am so deep inside I can no longer smell the copper of his blood then I a feel a prick in my arm, movement but I am really a long way from this and I dont think I am coming back

Youre so far away from me now Camelia whimpers. Mascara is running down her face in black tear trails. Im not but I told you things might change when she got pregnant He stares straight ahead. A truck goes past, kicking up a spray onto the car and for a moment, drowning out the high street sound. The windshield is fogged and the car far too hot but they keep the window closed. I havent seen you in six weeks. SIX! Weve never been apart this long. Her voice rising. Are you giving me up? Am I too much trouble now I said the words! A woman walking past looks into the car. Keep your bloody voice down! You want the whole fucking town knowing our business? Camelias face reddens but her voice is steadies to an unpleasant calm Oh that would just cut you wouldnt it? That father in law of yours might cut the money off, hey?

Dont threaten me! This wont end better for you if were outed At that moment there is a screeching, crashing thud and crunching noises. they are thrown violently forward, Camelias head hits the steering wheel. That back window showers them with glass. A crowd gathers. He is fine but blood is pouring down Camelias face.

He was driving home from Belmont Race Track at a leisurely pace. He didnt know if he had won or lost money. He was a small-time gambler, just a dollar or two exactas usually. It was midday and blue sky with a hint of gray. He was listening to the radio, to jazz. As he drove, all of a sudden like a lightning strike, an old beat up car cut him off; there was no question about it; it was as if purposely done the car came so close to his front end. He was from the old school and an incident like that called for something, a symbolic reprisal, at least. He stepped on the gas and caught up to the other driver. When they were alongside each other, he looked into the other drivers window and got his attention. He gave him the finger to let him know he didnt appreciate what he had done.

He was Hispanic and perhaps he had lost a lot of money at the track. Or, perhaps it was a macho thing for him, but for whatever reason instead of interpreting the gesture as fair warning, as a moment of payback, he took it upon himself to challenge him. His car sped ahead and then he got in his lane and slowed down to a crawl, forcing him to do the same. He kept this up for quite some time, until he could see the fishing dock on Little Neck Bay alongside him. He gave him the finger back and motioned for him to come on out and take him on. He realized at that moment that he was not from his time; didnt understand the rules of men on the road. He was younger, on his way to the Whitestone Bridge to the Bronx and the ghetto. He had a different understanding of getting the finger. It was the gauntlet thrown down. The cut-off driver began to feel nervous; he realized he was dealing with an emotionally overtaxed man. He changed lanes and tried to get away. However fast he drove, the other kept pace.

Suddenly, the Hispanic driver sped up to about 100 miles an hour, putting great distance between them. Rather than leaving the scene, however, he stopped the car on the Parkway, got out, and stood in front of the back of his car. He had a long, heavy metal chain in his hand and began swinging it, at the same time motioning the other driver to come out and fight. The other driver was nearly home and now in a panic. What if this maniac follows me when I exit, he thought. He passed on the right lane and exited and inwardly prayed that it had passed, for he had no idea what he would do otherwise: fighting for your life over being cut off in a car was not something he grasped. Fortunately, that was the end of it. The Hispanic man had what he wanted all along. His manhood.

He worked at an insurance company devoted strictly to coverage of limousine and taxi drivers. The owner had become a multi-millionaire from owning fleets of taxis, selling compensation coverage and running an insurance claims department. While he feigned friendship with all the drivers who came to pay their dividends, he told all his workers in the compensation department that every claim made for a work-related injury was an outright fake, even when the medical evidence conflicted with this. He had three investigators reading through every NYS ruling to try and find fraud, so he could prosecute. One of the workers, who went to hearings to represent the company hated the boss and his co-workers. At lunchtime he would go to P.S 1 after eating to stand in the courtyard of this annex of the Museum of Modern Art to look at a Yoko Ono installation. The ground was made up of small stones and the represented pieces were all industrial in this open courtyard, in keeping with the neighbourhood- Long Island City-a

factory district in New York City. Many of the pieces were rusted metal sculptures, in the style of Richard Sierra. Yoko Ono had placed a boxcar on a length of track, an old train perhaps from WWII. The sliding door was locked shut and there were no windows to look into or out. It was the red of blood or rust and against the white stones stood out, fore-fronted. Inside the train was a tape recording played over and over every day all day long. It was the voices and cries and screams of the contained, perhaps of those who had been shipped by railroad throughout Europe to concentration camps in Germany and Poland in the 1940s. He didnt know if they were historical recordings- unlikely -but they had such authenticity and power that he wanted to be able to save them, to take an axe to the wooden train and free those inside, even though he knew they were merely recorded sounds. He stood there nearly every day it was such a powerful experience and it made him hate his boss and co-workers at the insurance company even

more, because they were not in compliance with the law, that they lied about date of receipt of medical reports in order to file forms denying payment to treating physicians, that even legitimate claims were never voluntarily begun but had to wait until ordered by a law judge, that workers were being made to suffer to force them back to work before they were healed. How it scalded him even in the blasts of winter.

July 30 2007 Layla sat at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. Emma was supposed to be back from ballet an hour ago. The HSC trials were the next day and Layla was leafing through her set text, King Richard II, unable to concentrate, impatient to see Emma. Absentmindedly, she read a passage out loud: Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decayThe worst is death, and death will have his day The kitchen was getting dark but no one had bothered to turn on a light yet. Mrs Kester was chopping vegetables for a stew. The sounds of classical music drifted in from next door between breaks in the rush hour traffic. Mr Kester was reading the paper.

There was a loud knock at the door, it startled Layla. Mrs Kester went to answer it. Layla could hear a man speak but a truck rumbling past obscured his words. Mrs Kester screamed. Mr Kester ran from the room. Layla heard him crying and the man say that she died at the scene. The sandwich fell from Laylas hand and landed on the floor. All the air left the room and Layla was gasping, her stomach full of stones. She fled through the backdoor, down the side of the house and out, onto the street. Behind her, she heard Mrs Kester howling, repeating Emmas name over and over. As soon as she was away from the house, she began sobbing violently, her body shaking. The people she passed stared but Layla didnt care. The streetlights came on, shattering and sparking through the tears in her eyelashes. By the time she gets to the warehouse, there is no one to gawk as she cries. She entered down the side, amongst the fishbone ferns, slipped on the moss a little. It was dark inside but comforting and familiar. Deep in the corner was their love nest, an old sleeping bag

spread open, the remains of the fire and a couple of ratty cushions. She flopped down, kicking up the scent of Emmas perfume. A scream escaped before she could stop it, the sound pounding off the walls. She screamed and screamed, the screams let go to more tears. She cried until she was dry and numb, her mouth sticky from dehydration. Then Layla saw the broken glass and picked up a shard; it cut into her palm but she didnt care. She pulled up her skirt and dragged it across her thigh. The blood first formed droplets, then rivulets and then trickled onto the sleeping bag. Then she sliced herself again

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

Camelia staggers into his drive yelling incoherent obscenities and waving a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam. Her breath is visible in the dawn chill but she is wearing only a camisole and skinny jeans, her heavily pregnant belly protruding between. She looks like she has not bathed in days. She pulls out her keys and swerving hard, she drags one down the side of his car. Thatll teach youfucking motherfuckerThat what you get Camelia flourishes the bottle and staggers up the front path, swigging, cursing and weaving her strides. ITS YOUR BABY AND YOU KNOW ITCOME OUT AND TALK TO MEPLEASE!!! She stomps her foot. She barely makes it up the three front steps, tripping a couple of times, the weight of her belly unbalancing her further. She bashes on the door then throws the empty bottle at it. This raises no reaction, so she picks up a cast iron boot scrapper from the portico and throws it through a

sidelight nearest the doorhandle. Leftover shards sticking in the frame cut her wrist as she the reaches in to unlock the door. An alarm sounds but she enters anyway and wanders through the house, dripping blood on the carpet calling his name. There is a second story and she climbs the stairs with difficulty, clinging to the hand rail. At the top she hears the sirens in the distance. She turns to leave but trips and tumbles down a flight of stairs, coming to rest on the landing face down. A tearing pain sears in her belly low down and she feels a gush between her legs. She puts her hand on her crotch; it comes up bloody. The baby is kicking frantically. The sirens sound like they are right outside now and she can feel the blood pooling beneath her. Everything begins to grey out

Two black men in an old car on their way to pick up one of their paychecks got lost in an insular white neighborhood in Queens, New York. They didnt know that and parked the car to get something to eat in a restaurant and ask directions. When they got out of the car they were met by some teenagers who splattered them with racial slurs and told them to get out of the neighborhood. The two men didnt take them seriously- they were old enough to have experienced racial hatred many times before. After diner they got directions to where they were going and left the restaurant. By that time a sizeable gang of white teenagers had assembled and were now armed with tire irons, bats, thick tree branches. No words were exchanged this time. When the two men started walking towards their car the youths attacked them. One of the men drew a knife and because the teenagers were cowards, he managed to escape with barely a scratch. His friend however was knocked to the ground, beaten with fists and feet and bats

and tire irons. He was covered in blood and stumbled down the street, running as best he was able under the circumstances, to try and find an escape. His skull was fractured, although he didnt know it. He found a hole in a fence leading to a highway and climbed through it. In his haste to cross, he wasnt aware that it was a three lane highway with heavy and speeding traffic. Ironically, he was struck and killed by a car driven by an off-duty policeman. The next day twelve hundred protestors from Bedford Stuyvesant, where the two black men lived, peacefully marched into the white neighborhood, where they were greeted with jeers and the same hatred shown the first black students to gain admittance to Clemson College in South Carolina in 1963.

They couldnt be human. They werent human. Otherwise, it would be impossible to do to them what was done to them. The mass murder without provocation of men, women, children, the elderly: 347 to 504 of them. Some of the women gang raped and mutilated. Ironically, in My Son village. My Son, the only begotten, who so loveth the world.. Even if it was incorrectly believed that the civilians were enemies in hiding, disguising themselves as peasants. It was mere suspicion that those who were killed were hiding the enemy beneath their thatched houses. The assault was immediate, aggressive, untrammeled. Indiscriminately, people and animals were shot, killed with grenades, bayonets, herded into an irrigation ditch and exterminated. A helicopter pilot later flying over the scene saw no men of draft age, no weapons. After the incident, the dissidents in this country began to call soldiers of the war baby killers. After a tribunal, all but one of the many involved in the massacre was convicted and sentenced: he received three-and-a-half years under house arrest. Remember and never forget Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire while in a meditation pose in Saigon City to protest the war and show combatants, men, that their life is illusory, that all things perish, that there is no self to hold on to, no sovereignty to precipitate killing.

Remember and never forget the capture of an enemy soldier and his immediately being shot in the head in Saigon. Remember the final pull out, people scrambling to get into the last helicopter leaving Vietnam for good.

The first person Kylie met in the street looks at her like she is from the backside of Pluto. Its the blue hair she tells herself as she wanders up the street looking for a caf. Triona holds her hand a bit tighter than normal. They pass a group of people having a conversation on the footpath. They all stop talking and turn to watch as Kylie and Triona walk by. This is repeated all the way along main street. Half way up the second block, they find an old caf, the kind with stained glass in the door and front windows and old vinyl booths. It is full of customers who all watched them enter. The counter is manned by a red faced woman in her fifties. She looks them up and down, almost like she is counting the tattoos on her arms, hands and face or Trionas piercings. Couldnt you read the sign? We dont serve people with visible tattoos. Cover up or leave. It is a hot day and they are both wearing spaghetti strap tops, so they turn to go; Triona trips, falling flat on her face. A man in a dirty trucker cap had put his foot out. Kylie helps her up to the dead silence of the onlookers and they leave. Further down the street they find a place that will serve them. They take a seat at a wrought iron table in the shade of an awning and drink their coffees. An elderly woman strikes up a conversation. You are so brave. When I was young we could never do what you do Sadness passed across her face, followed by a slight blush. I envy you

After the coffee, they head back to the car. They were planning to break their journey with a night on a motel on the edge of town but now thinkbetter of it. A car full of young men pulls up near them. A shirtless, weasel thin individual gets out; he grabs his crotch. Bitta thisll fix ya ladies His friend whoops from the car. Kylie and Triona keep walking, heads turned pointedly forward. The car full of idiots follows them back to their van at walking pace. There is a suddenly burst of laughter from inside the car as they came into sight of it. Someone has painted cunt muncher down the side

You are so, so right- it is not about being the best. It is about being you, it is about the process of making. What do we dare? To stand up in the boat, know the whole thing might get upset? In the fragile world of preserving and sustaining ourselves, this may be hard to do. Sometimes theres no way but in.

Once an Italian woman, a dancer, was brought to the crematorium. That drunken pig, the roll call officer Schillinger, ordered her to dance naked. She took advantage of a favorable moment, came near him, grabbed his pistol away from him, and shot him down. In the exchange of gunfire that followed, the SS won of course. Once Moll took a family of six. First he shot the youngest in the presence of the rest, then he shot the older ones and finally the father and mother. Thousands of women with shaved heads asked about their children and husbands. I lied to thousands of women, telling them that their loved ones were still alive, even though I knew very well that they were all dead.

JANDA WEISS, Brunn (Brno)

The soldiers of the 45th Division that had liberated Dachaus concentration camp saw the carnage and unspeakable horrors of the camp. They were both elated to have liberated the camp and sickened to see the sights of the camp. It was, however, on finding the Death Train on a street in Dachau that left them in disbelief. The Nazis, knowing the Americans would take the camp, piled innocents into train cars, and then strafed the cars with machine guns. The people, some dead with their eyes open, were riddled with bullet holes The 45th had seen all manner of horrors during the war, but nothing to compare to this carnage. It caused them, disciplined as they were, to break the rules of war, and they began to kill one by one the POWs of the Waffen-SS who had already surrendered. Brig. Gen. Henning Linden and an advance party from the 42nd Rainbow Division had this to say: We ride in a Jeep with a guard out ahead of the boys and we were several hundred yards ahead as we approached the Camp. The first thing we came to was a railroad track leading out of the Camp with a lot of open box cars on it. As we crossed the track and looked back into the cars the most horrible sight I have ever seen (up to that time) met my eyes. The cars were loaded with dead bodies. Most of them were naked and all of them skin and bones. Honest their legs and arms were only a couple of inches around and they had no buttocks at all. Many of the bodies had bullet holes in the back of their heads. It made us sick at our stomach and so mad we could do nothing but clinch our fists. I couldn't even talk.