süße Rache

Under the overcrowded streets of a place once called London, lies a city beneath a city. Past the jumbled mass of pestilence, damp earth, sewage, and rot deep in the tunnels lives a small population of people. We are called the Kanalisationsdreck or sewer filth in the Queen's english, that’s the title given to us by the Ober Erder but we prefer the term Kanalis. The OE are what’s left of the people who stayed above in 1944. The leaders of the OE thrive on corruption and the most depraved form of debauchery only the sickest minds could fathom. Due to over population they have gone to even more extreme measures to keep their sheep in line.

The Kanalis fled to the city after the Germans intercepted reports of the Yanks attempt to storm a beach in Northern France. The Royal Navy had already been dispatched to France but we all knew it was too late, the entire city of London was griped in an absolute state of panic. Reports of mass suicides started to pour in around the city. People wanting an escape from the suffering they knew they were about to endure, at least this way they could have a say in how they choose to leave this earth. The ones who weren’t giving themselves a first-class ticket to the afterlife were pleading with an imaginary deity that they knew deep down wasn’t going to answer them.

The churches were filled to the brim with poor souls begging for a last-minute hope of redemption before the impending threat of doom came knocking at their proverbial doorstep. Looters were pillaging the city like some gold starved pirate in a Robert Louis Stephenson story. As the fires began to break out and blazed in front of the velvety blackness of the night sky, London became something out of Dante’s nine circles. The screams and shouts of the anarchy that laid before my eyes were drowned out by a sound that we Londoners knew all too well, the roaring of propellors, the Luftwaffe and their dreaded bombers.

My name is Jules Scott, and I barely a man of 20, but this is not my story. This is the story of the how far one man will go for the ones he loves. My father, Benjamin Scott, was a well-respected man in our community. He owned a butcher shop in a small neighborhood in London. He was an extremely large man, when I was but a boy I thought he was the size of the tallest trees England, but in reality he was just a towering man standing at a height of 6’7” and 19 stone. He was a caring and hardworking man, but due to his earlier days of criminal mischief he had the reputation for having quite a temper. He never raised his voice to us, but we have seen for ourselves the brute force that man held under that steel exterior. He would always say to me “Jules, there ain’t no brains in ‘ere, just an old bull meant for fightin’, workin’ n’ dyin’.”

Around September 1943, whispers of an invasion from the SS became louder and louder each day. It seemed like with every bombing and Hilter’s fascist policies spreading like a festering plague, the idea of society as we knew it ending seemed more and more imminent. Once the bombings became more frequent, my father that knew that if my mother and I were going to be safe we would have to go underground. If we were all going to be safe, we would have to escape to a life where we would no longer feel the warm glow of the sun. Where no flower would rise in the early days of spring, where we would no longer be able to see raindrops fall like glimmering diamonds from the sky. We would be destined for a world of living in shadows, but if we were going to survive it’s a sacrifice we must make.

As each day passed, the SS began to seep into London, and we immediately began to fall to fear. During that time My father gathered a small group which consisted of myself, business owners, teachers, several townsfolk, a doctor and a midwife. Once rumor began to spread of our little endeavors, more people wanted a place in our safe haven beneath the earth. We all knew that if the SS caught wind of our little scheme that we would surely be captured and executed on the spot. So little by little, the city under the city was constructed right under the nose of the Schutzstaffel .

Slowly, the dark, festering underbelly of London glowed with the dim light of lanterns and some small bits of lights rigged up by an electrical system, curtesy of myself Eventually the cold and dank cesspool started to become our little town, we called it Scottston after my father. Business owners began moving their inventory to their underground stores, teachers began taking their students to help build schools and hold lessons underground. The wives and daughters began canning food, and we began saving what food we knew would last. We built communication systems and homes, even a water filtration system so we could have clean water. We even developed somewhat of a government between the group members, my father was elected unanimously to guide us. It was our own city built of steel and steam. Foolishly, we let our guards down and that’s when the unthinkable became all too real.

Once we got word of the ambush at Omaha Beach we gathered at our safe point. It was at that moment we knew it was time for us to take the adventure to what would be our new life underground. Just as we began shuffling our wives, mothers, children, and elderly to the point of entry to Scottston, we were surrounded. The panic set in as quickly, some people ran into the outlying forest only to run right into their own deaths. Some made it into the city and others, like my father and I, stayed to defend our friends and family. A few of us made it out lucky, my mother was not so fortunate. Her life was stripped right in front of our eyes. Around her neck she wore a beautiful heart shaped locket that held mine and my father’s photos inside it. As my mother lie there taking her last breath the man who took my mother’s life, a man we only knew as the Oberleutnant ripped it from my mother’s neck. I remember the first lieutenant shouting at me in German, raising the end of his rifle, and then everything went black.

When I awoke, I realized that I had made it into Scottston. Instead of the joyous celebration of freedom I had hoped for, I was greeted with death, heartache, and hopelessness. My father, a once strong and happy man, was now a shell of himself. The person who loved him more than life itself was gone. His peace and joy all died with her.

Everything I have just shared with you has lead us to this part of the story. It has now been two long years since that day in June. The Germans won the war and have turned the surface world into an industrial wasteland. In their momentous thirst for power, they crippled the world economy and eliminated the planets natural resources. They keep plenty for themselves while the rest of the world chokes on their ignorance and they are bored. This is where things have gotten interesting. In their boredom, they have designed a new form of entertainment, they call Kampf der Bestien, the Battle of the Beasts, and my father wants to fight. His opponent is man has an all too familiar name, The Oberleutnant. This fight however is not your average bare-knuckle brawl, oh no. The winner of these fights gets to leave with honor, pride, dignity and a significant sum of money. The poor bloke that ends up on the wrong end of that battle on the other hand, meets their brutal and shameful end destined to become no more than ashes in one of their furnaces.

Tonight, I will watch my father go in to avenge the death of his beloved wife. I have watched him train with such viciousness in his eyes that the man he used to be is gone. His lust for revenge has developed a personality of its own and now it’s screaming to be released. It is with great pain that I must confess to you that I am acutely aware that this will be the last night I spend with my father, or what's left of him at least. Revenge, no matter how just the cause, always comes at a price.

The sound of the jeers and boos of the crowd is deafening. An OE, whose face is that of a reanimated corpse, spat on us as we passed through the crowd. Some grabbed and tore at our hair and clothes. The rest just shouted profanities only the most wicked demons would expel off their vile, accursed tongues. As we reach the corner my father would step into for battle, his opponent appeared like a malevolent specter. There he was in all his monstrous glory, the Oberleutnant. He was bigger somehow, like he had grown to massive proportions over the years. Dangling around his neck and reflecting in the lights above the ring was my mother’s necklace. It glistened across my father’s face in a way that seemed to almost be mocking him. Then, my father’s eyes locked with mine, “Son, the man I once was left with your mother, but when I look at you, I see the wonderfulness of her and all the best parts of myself, I love y- “, his sentence was cut off by the piercing ding of the bell.

The fight dragged on for several agonizing hours and these two behemoths of men have beaten each other to the point beyond resemblance. My father is on the losing end of this battle. With each swing of the lieutenant’s fist I see the strength leave his body. He is so weak and powerless and all I can do is sit and watch. All of the sudden, my father turned and looked me, the only piece of him left in this wretched existence, and nods. The lieutenant took notice of my father’s this and that’s when he received the crushing blow. As my father falls back like a tree cut down in the forest, he musters up his last bit of strength to rip the chain from around his rival’s thick neck. He lands on the mat with a sound that could have only matched the blast at Krakatoa and I swear to everything that is good and holy, the earth itself trembled. As my father lie there, eyes fixed towards the celestial heavens, he used his last breath to utter only a name, “Ophelia.”

As my mother’s name left his lips, and the last bit of light faded from his eyes, I took my mother’s locket from his hand and placed it carefully into my pocket. My father had succeeded in his journey for revenge. My mother had once told him, “Revenge Benjamin, is a dessert that is enticingly sweet. But every bite you consume comes with a price. How much are you willing to pay for that small moment?” It gives me chills thinking about it now. This is the price my father was willing to pay, and by the look on his face, the taste must have been exquisitely sweet.