The complaints have not been easing up. This morning it’s a couple, a middle-aged husband and wife, Midwesterners from the look of them. They’re wearing matching khaki shorts with nylon fanny packs and snow-white tube socks and sneakers that look like they’ve been spit-shined just this morning. The man points at me through his viewing portal and says to his wife, “Now look at that one, Edna. He don’t look too skinny. I mean, he don’t look fat or nothin’, but he’s not about to drop dead from hunger.”
“Maybe they just brought him in, Harry,” says Edna. “Maybe he hasn’t had time to waste away.”
“What about the others, then?” Harry protests. “Not a one of ‘em looks fit to drop dead.”
I’m trying to stay in character, but I can’t stop myself from looking around the barracks and considering Harry’s point. He’s right. We look far too healthy. The Camp Simulation Costume Designers made our prisoner uniforms baggy enough so that we’d look thin, but I guess it’s not doing enough. Granted, a few of the older guys don’t look so great. They’ve got grey hair and sunken eyes and grizzled faces, but most of us just try to do the best we can.
I think I’ve been getting better with the makeup. Before I left the employee apartment blocks this morning I spent almost an hour in front of the mirror applying Alabaster Pancake Number #3 to my face, neck, and hands, and Charcoal Ghoul Grey #2 around my eyes. I thought I had it pretty good—just the right combination of mortified paleness and diseased clamminess. But I guess I didn’t do as good a job as I thought I had. Somewhere beneath the camp there’s a Veracity Management Officer watching us on closed-circuit video. He’s probably grabbing his computer mouse right now and clicking a box on my Daily Employee Performance Evaluation.
Paula will not be happy. Last night she caught me in front of the freezer around 4:00 a.m. again. “Goddamnit, James,” she said, grabbing the bucket of Vanilla Fudge out of my hands. “You wanna lose the only Goddamn good job you’ve ever had? You’re supposed to be a starving Jew, for Chrissake! You keep piggin’ out on that shit and you’ll be back to doin’ Puppet Theater at the Retard Home.”
“It was the Cook County Center for Developmentally Disabled Life Quality Assurance,” I corrected her.
“Whatever.”
She is right, of course. Paula’s a strong woman, and she doesn’t get depressed as easily as I do. I’ve been going to the weekly appointments with Bob, my Trauma Simulator Therapy Specialist. He tells me it’s only natural to feel a little depressed when your job is to pretend to be a Concentration Camp victim, and he had the doctors put me on Zoloft, but I haven’t been feeling much better. The only thing that seems to make me feel better is Vanilla Fudge ice cream, and even that doesn’t last too long.
We tumble off the three-tiered wooden bunk racks in clumps of three and four. The guy next to me does a decent job at pretending to be unsteady on his feet. His knees buckle and a couple of us reach out to support him. Then I mime scratching my head, finding a giant louse, and flicking it onto the floor.
“Ew! Ick!” cries Edna. “That one had some kind of bug on his head!”
I consider “finding” another one and flicking it towards her viewing portal, but that would be sure to get me an Attitudinal Demerit on my DEPE. I settle for reaching down the front of my trousers and scratching my crotch.
Just then a Nazi guard yanks open the door to the barracks and shouts at us: “Schnell! Schnell!”
We file quickly out and line up in the courtyard. The air is cold. We breathe into our hands and stomp our feet, trying to stay warm.
There are Nazi guards everywhere, holding their rifles. Some pretend they’re going to shoot at us and then they laugh as we cower in fear.
The women come filing out of their barracks across from ours and line up in front of us.
There are a few young women with them, and a few young men with us, but there are no really young children here. The Camp does employ children, but because of the new Child Labor Psychological Damage Prevention Act they only work occasionally, when we do the Arrival at Concentration Camp simulation.
The morning Visitors, Harry and Edna among them, turn and shuffle en masse, repositioning themselves to see us better. They’re a modest group of a couple dozen. Some are eating giant pink clouds of cotton candy. Others munch on buttery popcorn.
Paula is with the women. She plays my wife here too, only here her name is Rachel. And my name here is Samuel, not James. We are supposed to be from a small village in Poland.
Paula/Rachel gives me a covert look of longing and need. It’s nice to feel needed, even if it is only pretend need. This is our dramatic moment.
Suddenly she breaks away from the line and rushes towards me, her eyes flooding with tears. She wails and shrieks, announcing to the world that she can’t take another day of this hideous torment. I try to run to her but before I take two steps the other Jews pull me back.
Two guards have grabbed Paula/Rachel. One slaps her and tosses her roughly back towards the others.
This is good stuff. Paula is very convincing. The Visitors have stopped eating their cotton candy and popcorn. Even Harry and Edna seem engaged in what’s going on.
Across the compound, a door flies open and Colonel Reinhardt, the camp commandant, comes striding out, a riding crop in one of his leather-gloved hands. He is flanked by two guards who keep themselves a respectful step behind him.
As he approaches, we slap ourselves and lightly pinch our cheeks to bring color into them.
The Colonel makes his way slowly down the line of women. Here and there he grabs a handful of Jew ass or Jew tit as he goes, testing to see if they’re healthy.
He grabs Paula’s right breast. Paula feigns affront, but she gazes into the Colonel’s eyes for just a moment too long. Or am I imagining it? The Colonel says something filthy in German and the soldiers laugh.
Colonel Reinhardt culls the sick from the healthy. He points at the ones who can’t stand on their own and the ones who look like they’re about to fall over. Then the guards pull them out of the line. They’ll be marched off to the gas chambers.
He gestures for one of the guards to take an old man.
“No! No!” protests the old man weakly, falling to his knees and trying to hug the Nazi’s legs. “Please!” The Nazi extricates himself by kicking the old man in the head—on the side facing away from the Visitors. The old man is a good actor. He grabs his face, covering up the kicked area with a hand, while some madness compels him to go on clutching at the Nazi’s legs.
“Scheiss-a!” yells the Nazi, then unslings the rifle from his shoulder, levels it at the old man’s chest, and shoots.
The old man falls over backwards. A slowly growing patch of blood stains the front of his prison uniform.
“Shit,” I hear Harry say. “That’s about the fakest blood I’ve ever seen.”
***
One afternoon we’ve got three busloads of kids from some high school. They stand off to the side and watch about thirty of us at work in a field, digging a big ditch. The soil is loose because we’ve done this before a hundred times, but it still takes time to dig it big enough. The high school kids are bored. They make jokes and laugh and start throwing hard candies at us when we’re not looking. It’s annoying, but we try to ignore it because acknowledging their presence would be a violation of Camp Veracity Protocols. Every now and then they shut up when a Jew collapses from the backbreaking labor and a Nazi guard comes forward, hauls him to his feet and beats him on the head until he starts digging again.
When we’re finished digging, the high school kids watch as we are lined up in front of a ditch. Colonel Reinhardt gives the command and four Nazis open fire with their machine guns.
A line of bullet wounds appears on my chest as micro-explosives rupture the plastic packets containing stage blood underneath my uniform. No long heart-clutching, breath-rattling death-scene dramatics for me. I just pretend to be letting the force of the bullets knock me around and over, then down the sloped side of the ditch.
When I’m at the bottom, the guy who stood next to me comes rolling down and flops on top of me, his face winding up in my crotch. This is the third day in a row he’s wound up in my crotch. I’m not sure if this is on accident or because he likes me more than is appropriate for a work environment.
A few of the more melodramatic Jews are twitching down in the ditch, moaning with their last gasps of life. The Colonel approaches, takes his sidearm out of its holster, and puts them out of their misery.
“Whoa!” I hear one of the high school kids say. “That’s freakin’ wicked.”
***
Our friend Roger comes for dinner back at the employee apartment blocks after the evening Visitors have left the camp. Roger plays Colonel Reinhardt. He’s left his uniform at home and dressed in jeans, but he’s brought his riding crop prop and he keeps slapping it against Paula’s ass whenever she gets up to fetch something from our kitchenette.
Paula and Roger laugh each time he does it.
I laugh too because it would be small not to.
“Management tells me our Quarterly Revenue to Overhead Ratio is looking less than healthy,” says Roger, flexing his riding crop between his hands. “Business isn’t exactly booming.”
Paula gives me a meaningful look. “See?” she says, as if it’s all my fault.
What Roger is saying is nothing new, although he likes to let on that he has special knowledge because he’s one of the “stars” of the Camp and so has special access to Management.
But we’ve all received a memo from Management that day:
As many of you perhaps have already become aware of, the Numbers have been trending in an anti-positive direction during the last Quarter. That is to say, the Consumer Interest Index (CII) is waning. And what happens when the CII wanes? Shareholders get nervous is what happens. And when shareholders get nervous they start thinking about the possibility that the Camp isn’t a very good place for them to put their hard-earned dineros, that the Camp isn’t a safe investment for their retirement funds and maybe they better take their hard-earned 401K money out and put it into something safe and stupid like U.S. government savings bonds. Then where will we be and, dare we say, where will you be? Do we need to spell this out for you? All right, we’ll spell it out for you. If less people are coming to the Camp and investors take money out of this great project, then we can’t afford you and will be forced to lay your lazy asses off!
Okay, so sorry for that outburst but it wouldn’t do any of us very much good if we were to pussy-foot around the matter, eh? Ha ha. So, our analysis of the Quarter’s Visitor Quality Control Camp Performance Evaluations has led us to attribute the waning of the CII to certain deficiencies in the Veracity Accountability Index (VAI). The necessity for Veracity Correctional Protocols to be implemented is now incumbent upon us all. Below, if applicable, you will find a Personalized List of Action(s) you are expected to implement effective immediately. This is for the benefit of the Camp as a whole. And what’s best for the Camp is best for you. Your strict implementation is a requisite element of your continued status in good standing as a Camp Team Member.
Below that, I read my Personalized List of Action:
It is expected that you will better meet Nazi Concentration Camp Jewish corporeal Veracity Expectations by losing body mass in appropriate-enough proportions. For your reference, we have included photocopy reproductions of “Real” Jewish Concentration Camp victims. Please note the concavity of the chests, the atrophy of musculature, the sunkenness of the eyes, the distended bellies, and the protruding prominence of the endoskeletons.
So I’m officially on a Food Consumption Modification Plan. Before me is a sludgy-shake that is designed to help me lose pounds quick. It tastes like shit but apart from water and my daily Zoloft it’s all I’m allowed to consume from here on in.
Paula, with her freakishly fast metabolism, can eat just about anything she wants, as can Roger who, being a Nazi commandant, is supposed to look like he’s living high on the hog. So Paula has piled their plates high with lamb and mushrooms stewed in barbeque sauce, buttery potatoes, and broccoli covered in melted cheese.
Paula gets up to clear their dishes and Roger slaps her on the ass with his riding crop. Paula tells him to stop but giggles anyway.
Roger leans towards me and tells me sotto voce, “She’s got a nice ass on her, your wife.”
I would hate him, but that would be anti-positive.
***
Everyone’s on edge this morning because of the new Veracity Correctional Protocols. Most of us are on Food Consumption Modification Plans and we’ve all been instructed to inject more realism into our performances.
We march out of the barracks and line up for the culling.
The women file out of their barracks and Paula/Rachel breaks away from the line and rushes towards me, her eyes flooding with tears. She wails and shrieks, announcing to the world that she can’t take another day of this hideous torment. I try to run to her but before I take two steps the other Jews pull me back.
There is an extra level of intensity in our performance today. We’re all striving very hard to be as real as possible. I am a Jew in a Concentration Camp, I tell myself. I am cold, sick, tired, starving, and miserable. I’m ready to die. I expect to die. Each second is an agony.
The action continues. Two guards grab Paula/Rachel. One slaps her and tosses her roughly back towards the other women. I am furious that these German swine are abusing my wife and I imagine tearing their intestines out but I do not move. I emote.
Across the compound, a door flies open and Colonel Reinhardt, the camp commandant, comes striding out, a riding crop in one of his leather-gloved hands. He is flanked by two guards who keep themselves a respectful step behind him.
As he approaches, we slap ourselves hard and for real, then pinch our wrists between our fingernails until we draw blood for real and use it to rouge our faces for real.
When he gets to me he stops and grabs my face in his gloved hand, as if feeling a piece of fruit to see if it’s ripe. Then he hauls off and hits me in the gut. For real. I fold over, hacking and wheezing for air, trying not to throw up my morning sludgy-shake. He calls me a “Dirty Jew” in German and walks on.
The Visitors seem pleased with our energetic commitment to Veracity.
***
The sludgy-shake makes me and everyone else on it shit five times a day, but it does work. After just ten days I’ve lost 20 pounds. When I walk I feel light-headed, like I might fall over. My rib cage sticks out from underneath my skin. My face is pallid and my eyes sunken even before I apply Alabaster Pancake #3 and Ghoul Grey #2.
There’s a combination lock on the fridge now so that only Paula can access it. At first some of us tried to eat on the sly, but they’ve closed down the camp store and confined us to campus for the good of all. Each morning we get a day’s supply of the powder that makes the sludgy-shake and that’s all we get.
I feel like I could eat a living, breathing human but Management is pleased with my progress. My Daily Employee Performance Evaluations have been getting better. Still, I’ve been feeling more and more depressed the last few days, and my eyes have been filling with tears at unexpected times, like when Colonel Reinhardt fondles Paula/Rachel’s breast or when I’m waiting to be shot into the ditch. I think it might be because they’ve cut off my supply of Zoloft. It’s not just me, though. Everyone else too. Just after they put us on the sludgy-shakes, someone in Management had an epiphany that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Concentration Camp victims to be on anti-depressants being as historically they probably were a bit depressed what with the slave labor and torture and threat of imminent death and all that. So the Veracity Accountability Index should be trending up now. Plus they’re saving money on what admittedly must have been onerous drug expenses.
I wouldn’t want anyone to think Management doesn’t care about its employees, though. They’re still letting us have appointments with the Trauma Simulation Therapy Specialists, although our co-pay has gone up to cover increasing costs.
I had my weekly appointment with Bob just this morning and he gave me a Mood Elevation exercise to do when I’m feeling down, as long as I’m not performing. I’m supposed to close my eyes and count slowly to twenty while imagining myself lying on a catamaran in the Caribbean with the sun shining down on my body, filling me with the Energy of Life.
I’ve tried this a couple of times now but I haven’t noticed any Mood Elevation. I think probably it would be more effective if I had actually been to the Caribbean at some point in my life. Or at least on a catamaran. But I haven’t. I’ve only seen pictures.
Bob probably has been on a catamaran in the Caribbean.
***
Normally they drop fake Zyklon-B pellets through vents in the top of the Gas Chamber Simulator. The Visitors would watch through glass portals as we pretended to choke on invisible gas given off by these pellets. We clutched at our throats, fell to the floor, coughed, writhed, then rolled over and died. The Visitors listened to our death rattles over the new RTT Digital Sound System which, I’m told, is so sophisticated that it makes our death noises sound more real than real.
Today they drop the pellets in and they fizzle and smoke. It smells sulfurous, bad enough to make us gag for real. Suddenly everyone goes absolutely monkey-shit. People scream, shout, try to escape. But the doors are stuck solidly shut. Some start crying in the corners or just crumple up on the floor and try to find fresher air by putting their heads between their knees. Management, it seems, has finally decided to kill us for real.
It occurs to me that we are naked and whereas before I had never thought about my nakedness while acting out my death, for some reason all I can think about now is covering myself so that people won’t be able to look at my privates when I’m dead. So I cup my hand over my crotch and cross my legs like I’ve got to pee, as if somehow this will make me less exposed to the scrutiny of the Visitors.
Then I realize—I’m not actually choking or having trouble breathing. The gas smells awful but I can still breathe. In a few seconds the others start realizing this too. And as soon as we realize that we’re not dying, we understand that this is a new ploy by Management to get us to asphyxiate more realistically. So we carry on with the pretense that we are dying from the gas, and there is a new energy in our performances because now we really know what it feels like to think you’re about to die of asphyxiation.
Management is pleased. The numbers are definitely trending in a positive direction again. The Visitor Quality Control Camp Performance Evaluations are way up and our DEPEs are up too. Tim, the Chief Veracity Management Officer, has circulated a memo of typical blurbs written by recent Visitors:
“The deaths in the gaz chamber seemed really real to my wife Meg and I.”
“Our children loved the bit when the Jews were lined up and shot into the ditch. Our littlest, Johnny, said it was almost as good as watching his favorite movie—Flying Fists of Dragon Fury #5.”
“How do you do it? Our visit was heart-rending, soul-stirring, spirit-breaking. Bravissimo!”
The praise gives everyone a morale boost. Everyone except me.
***
I am in bed and Paula is next to me. It occurs to me that we have not done the deed in some time and it is about time that we did the deed. I have sacrificed a lot recently, and I feel that I deserve to be able to do the deed with my wife, otherwise what is the point of having a wife, not that the only reason for having a wife is to do the deed but if you’re going to have a wife and not do the deed then why should she be your wife instead of, say, your friend or something like that?
So I roll over and put my hand on Paula’s breasts, which is my sign that I want to do the deed, but Paula pushes my hand away. But maybe she didn’t really mean to push my hand away. Maybe it’s been so long that she just didn’t realize that I was putting my hand on her breast because I want to do the deed rather than just putting my hand on her breast for the sake of putting my hand on her breast. So I put my hand on her breast again. And again she pushes it away, this time more definitively.
I sit up and say to her, “Paula, I don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve had sex, but it’s been quite some time, and I think it’s about time we had sex.”
Paula groans and tells me that she doesn’t want to have sex with me because, she says, my new famine victim body grosses her out.
I am not pleased. “My new famine body grosses you out?” I echo her, the tears filling my eyes again even though now is not a very good time because it undermines my righteous indignation. “You’re my wife! I starve myself half to death to keep my job so that I can support us and now you tell me I can’t even get laid by my own wife?”
“Oh, all right, then,” she says and rolls onto her back. “Get on with it.”
I try to get on with it but I’m all sniffly as I wipe tears and snot away from my face, and anyway the truth is I don’t much feel like it now. I tell her nevermind and roll over and go to sleep.
***
The part of the work I think I’m pretty good at is the nightly escape attempt. About a dozen of us sneak out of the barracks and scurry across the camp while Nazi guards march up and down the courtyard. Every night I make a little too much noise as I’m crossing over into the field on the North side of the camp and I crouch in the weeds with the others while one of the Nazis, thinking he’s heard something, stops marching and approaches. He listens carefully and shines a flashlight out into the field.
The Visitors watching from specially positioned bleachers hold their breath and tremble with anticipation. Will we be discovered? Will we be beaten or shot or shoved screaming and struggling into the crematorium ovens? Or will we miraculously manage to escape the evil Nazis, flee the camp, and find freedom in some secluded corner of the surrounding countryside?
Then the Nazi, seeing nothing, turns and goes back to marching in the courtyard. Slowly we get up and creep towards the fence which rears up before us and curves inward at the top like a wave of electrified death. A buzzing fills the air. The electricity coursing through the wires of the fence is almost palpable.
One of the men approaches it with insulated wire cutters stolen from the construction shed. Freedom is within our grasp.
Suddenly a canon blast of light cuts through the darkness and an alarm sounds, filling the night with its wails. The guards in one of the watchtowers have spotted us.
“Achtung!” shouts a Nazi from somewhere above us. “Achtung!”
They open fire with a machine gun and we scatter in every direction. In desperation, one of the men hurls himself at the fence. The night sky is filled with the buzzing of special effects electricity surging into his spasming body. Sparks dance off the metal of the fence and streak across the air to land in the grass.
I try to get back to the barracks but suddenly Nazi guards are everywhere, hemming us in, shooting some, hitting others with their rifle butts. One takes a swing at me with his rifle but I duck underneath it and stage-hit him in the face. He staggers back just a step but then grabs me and hauls me back to the fence.
Normally he gives me a slight push with his boot and I fly backwards into the fence where special effects create a shower of sparks and I pretend to spasm to death until my body is horrifically twisted and my tongue hangs out of my mouth, but ever since the new Veracity Protocols have been implemented my Nazi antagonist has been getting progressively more abusive. Tonight he smacks me with a backhand to the face for real then kicks me hard in the solar plexus for real and I go staggering back into the fence for real where special effects create a shower of sparks and I pretend to spasm to death until my body is horrifically twisted and my tongue hangs out of my mouth.
The spectating Visitors applaud the performance when all the would-be escapees have been rounded up and shot or shoved into the fence for a pyrotechnic display of special effects electrocution. It would be nice to get up and take a bow, especially after having been hit in the face and kicked in the chest for real, but that is not allowed of course.
***
Paula has been going out often at night for a while now. I haven’t asked where she’s going but I’m pretty sure she’s getting plowed by Roger. She stops back in the mornings to change into costume, but I don’t mention it to her. We grunt greetings and try to avoid looking each other in the eyes.
Then I get back to the apartment one night and I find Paula already back there and packing to move out. Roger’s there too, helping her pack up. She’s going to be moving in with him at his Preferred Employee Housing Unit.
Paula tells me she’s gotten a promotion to the Camp’s new Anne Frank Experience attraction. She is to play Anne Frank’s mother in a replication of the hidden apartment where Anne and her family spent most of the war hiding from the Nazis. Visitors will watch from viewing portals as the family hides quietly during the day, gathers round the shortwave radio at night, and discusses whether the Allies will get to them soon. The climax allows the Visitors to witness the terrifying discovery of the family by the Nazi SS and their subsequent deportation to Auschwitz.
“It’s time I pursued my own abundance,” Paula tells me, and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s a big step up for Paula, and I’m only holding her back, so I let her go. I even try to help her and Roger carry her boxes to Roger’s Nazi jeep, but I fall to my knees in the dirt with a box of old books because I’m too weak and faint these days from all the sludgy-shakes and increasingly intense Concentration Camp re-enactments.
Roger stops and helps me back to my feet. “Buck up, old chum,” he says, taking the box I left on the ground. He gives me a playful tap on the chest with his riding crop before they ride off, and I stand there waving goodbye to them in the darkness.
When they’ve left I go back into the apartment and notice that the refrigerator is gone. All that’s there is the rest of the day’s powder for my sludgy-shake. So I sit on the couch with my sludgy-shake and consider quitting. But where would I go? Back to the Cook County Center for Developmentally Disabled Life Quality Assurance? The pay was crap. Here at least I have a decent salary, a company-subsidized therapist, and a tidy little 401K. So I close my eyes and count slowly to twenty while imagining myself lying on a catamaran in the Caribbean with the sun shining down on my body, filling me with the Energy of Life.
I don’t notice any Mood Elevation.
***
The camp has decided to go all-inclusive. This means they’re going to convert the employee housing blocks into Visitor Vacation Lodging, complete with restaurants and shops in the lobby where people can buy souvenir Camp Holocaust sweatshirts and T-shirts which say, “I survived the Nazi Gas Chambers and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
Tim from Management is in the courtyard using a bullhorn to round us all up. He has a bus behind him and is flanked by a dozen or so Camp Security Personnel.
“Please take only one bag!” he calls out to us. “The rest of your things will be kept safe and returned to you later.” His voice is calming and trustworthy. I can see his smile from my window.
So I pack a bag of clothes and a picture of me and Paula from our wedding and I go downstairs with the others.
“Where are we going?” I ask Tim.
“We’re moving you into the barracks until alternative arrangements can be made.”
“The barracks?” says a young guy behind me. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“It’s just temporary,” Tim assures us, still smiling.
“Screw this,” the young guy says. “I’m not staying in the freakin’ barracks.”
Tim keeps smiling, but seems to be straining just a little to do so. “Come on, now,” he says. “This is what Management has decided is best for the Camp and what’s best for the Camp is best for you.”
“Fuck that!” the young man says, and turns to go back into the employee apartment building.
Tim gives a small nod to the Security Personnel and they go after him and grab him. “Let me go!” says the young man. He takes a swing at the lead Security Man but his target ducks. Then the Security guys unsheathe their clubs and beat him on the arms and shoulders until he’s on the ground trying to cover his head with his hands.
A moment later they have him up and are putting him into the back of the bus.
***
And so now we’re living in the barracks, sleeping side by side on wooden planks while roaches scuttle across the floor at night. There are rats too. Some of the guys are joking about having bonfire-roasted rat. They’re just joking though. We’re hungry, but not that hungry. Management is still feeding us the sludgy-shakes which seem to give us the basic nutrients we need. The rats, though, are beginning to freak me out. They’re growing increasingly bold and I want to grab the little suckers and squeeze the life out of them. Every now and then one comes within striking distance and I lash out with a leg to kick it. Usually I just wind up kicking one of the other guys, a practice that is not winning me any popularity awards around here.
Management promised that we were only to be here temporarily, but temporarily seems to be stretching on a bit. Still, no need for any of us to worry anymore about meeting Veracity Protocol Expectations. We are thin, sick, beaten down, and afraid, just as a real Holocaust Jew should be. The good news is they’ve given us all raises because camp revenues have been going through the roof since they went all inclusive. Somewhere my bank account is getting nice and fat, and when my contract is up here I’ll be able to live the good life.
As I close my eyes to try to sleep, I count slowly to twenty while imagining myself lying on a catamaran in the Caribbean with the sun shining down on my body, filling me with the Energy of Life.
I can almost feel it.