Recently in Katorga Category

Next week marks the six month mark of writing Burning Violin, so I'm working on something a bit bigger than normal, you know, to make it special and such. So this week I'm being both lazy and shameless by posting one of my favorite scenes out of Katorga (my novel, available from Amazon in both paperback and for the Kindle). This scene captures a lot of the heart of the novel at once: it's brutal, terrifying, and yet darkly funny at the same time. There are few things more awkward than an author writing his own blurbs, so buy the book (or ten, don't be shy), and write your own awestruck blurbs for me to quote so that I don't sound like such a pompous twat typing about how awesome I am. Even though I am. Please enjoy...

A metal door was held open for Doug into a tiny room, no more than ten by ten, hardly the size of a decent bathroom.  A metal table with three chairs sat in the center of the room, and a broad mirror Doug recognized from old police shows covered one wall.  The room was otherwise bare concrete except for a drain at the center of the room right underneath the table.  The leader pointed to the single chair on the opposite side of the table from the other two.

"Please take a seat there, Dr. Bradley, someone will be right with you," the man said and then leaned close to talk in a low voice.  "These are desperate times, Doug, please do your best for the Republic."

Doug drew himself up straight and spoke as firmly as he could.  "I will do whatever I can, sir.  I'm a good party man, myself."

The man nodded and his lips touched on an enigmatic smile for a moment and then he left the room in a hurry, closing the door behind him with a loud click.  Doug walked slowly to the chair and sat down.  He looked idly over at the mirror and felt suddenly claustrophobic, the walls pulling in closer every moment.  Doug shivered and stared at those other two seats.  Some interminable amount of time later, it was impossible to sense time accurately surrounded by concrete and glaringly unnatural fluorescent lights, Doug nodded off, face lowering to the slick metal of the interrogation table.

..........

"Wake up you ignorant piece of shit fuck donkey," a voice screamed in Doug's ear.  A finger roughly ran up the side of his chin, covered in drool.  "You're slavering all over my goddamned table you drooling goat fucking cock monger."

Doug jerked up in the chair, almost falling over backwards before a hand caught him by his hair and steadied him.  He couldn't see, the fluorescents were so bright they were blinding him, burning his retinas.  Doug shouted out, and got a slap across his face for the trouble, cheek left stinging by a latex-gloved hand.

"What?  Who?  What?"  Doug exclaimed.  He blinked against the lights and began to see shapes.  Men in the two seats across from him, another towering over him, holding his head up.

"Three fucking stupid questions that only a slut slit licking terrorist taint sucking whore of a traitor would even think to ask!"  Another slap across his face.  "I've fucked sheep to death that made me less sick than you!"

"Now, now, Robert, why don't you go take a breather now that our friend has woken up," one of the men across the table said.  The voice sounded so kind that Doug almost whimpered.  The instinct made him feel ill, reminding him of dogs he had put down.

Robert shoved Doug so hard that he tumbled out of the chair and it landed on top of his head.  Doug cowered for a moment, expecting a kick or another tirade, but Robert only paused to spit in his face before exiting the room.  Doug lay there for a moment before standing on shaking legs, wiping the spittle from his face with the end of his silk tie as his stomach roiled in protest.  He picked up the chair with hands that hadn't shaken so badly since his wedding day and looked around for his bag, desperately needing a valium.  His bag was on the other side of the table, behind the two men.  Doug refused to ask for it, and sat down in his chair.  He took a deep breath and composed himself.

"There must have been a terrible mistake," he said.  "That man I came here with told me that the Republic needed me.  I came as quickly as I could and am at the government's service."

The two men exchanged a look.  They both wore the gray and red uniforms of the world police.  Doug thought that the three bars on each of their breasts meant that they were captains, but all he knew about such things were from television and movies, all of which were spinning nightmare scenarios before his eyes from memory.

"I am Lieutenant Thomas, and this is Lieutenant Allen," the man on the right said.  The man on the left said nothing, but stared at Doug through squinting eyes and lit a cigarette.  "I assure you that there has been no mistake.  We are quite aware of your activities and all we want to do is help you as best we can.  But make no mistake, we know absolutely everything, we just need to hear it from you."

"What are you talking about?"  Doug asked.  "I came here to help."

"And you can help," Thomas said gently.  "You can help by telling us the names and addresses of all of your co-conspirators."  He leaned forward and placed his hand on Doug's.  "It is essential to the security of the state that we know exactly what the plan is, in your own words.  We have to stop your friends before it is too late."

Doug opened and closed his mouth repeatedly.  "But I haven't done anything!"

Thomas sighed and rubbed his eyes with both hands.  Allen blew a long cloud of smoke at Doug.  "Was your wife in on it?"

Doug blinked.  "No, of course not."

"Then you admit you were?"  Allen asked.

"Were what?"  Doug asked.

"In on it."  Allen said.

"On what?"

"It."

"No."

Allen paused for a moment.  "What it weren't you in on?"

"It?"

"It."

"What?"

"Exactly."  Allen said and blew out another long cloud of smoke.  "How can you know your wife was not part of it, if you don't know what it is?"

"She wasn't in on anything!"  Doug said.

"So you must have inside information on the plan, if you do know for a fact that she was not involved.  And even if she is not involved, your involvement makes her an accessory and thus involved just as much as if she were involved."  Allen said, he leaned back and blew out another cloud of smoke, tapping the ashes off his cigarette onto the concrete floor with a look of satisfaction like a mathematician having finished a twenty page long geometric proof.

Thomas leaned forward again.  "Look Doug, I know you're protecting her.  Hell, if our positions were reversed, I'd try to protect my wife too, but you can't drag her down with you.  You have a chance to make things right here.  Take responsibility, turn in the guys in charge, I know you were just going along with it out of friendship, you weren't really a terrorist, right?  I mean, if you don't confess and tell us what we already know, then we're going to have to assume that Caroline was involved, and have Robert go bring her in and interrogate her.  And I don't think anyone wants that except for Robert."

"But I didn't do anything!"  Doug shouted.

Thomas shook his head.  "Come on man, it's over.  But don't drag Caroline down with you.  And little Alice, I mean if you're lucky she'd get put into foster care, but really with two parents classified as anti-social, there's not much of a chance of her not getting sent off-world to work off some of your debt."

"Quit saying their names!"  Doug yelled.  "You have no right, you don't even know them!"  He sobbed.

"Shhh, I know, I'm sorry."  Thomas said, and patted Doug's hand again.  "Just tell us what happened."

"You were part of a group plotting to smuggle a dirty nuke into the Los Angeles spaceport, weren't you?"  Allen asked.  He opened a folder and threw dozens of pictures of Doug talking to various people, passing them by on the street, looking at various public buildings.  "We've had you under surveillance for quite some time and have tracked down most of your associates, but we need your help to convict them."

Allen folded his hands in front of him.  "So should we talk about it, or should we have Robert go get your wife and daughter and get answers out of them?"

The dog was going to die and knew it. He had that distant and sad look in his eyes that let everyone know that the fighting part was done, now was the part for finding a cave away from the eyes of the pack and laying his head down on his paws for one last long sleep. Doug knew it, and although he was the sort of veterinarian to be a little too sunny sometimes with his prognosis - optimism not delusion, he insisted to himself - he had made it more than clear to the owner.

The owner was the problem.

"Petey's going to be fine, you'll see doc, you'll see." The owner was saying, not for the first time.

Doug shook his head and tried to pull Mr. Anderson's hands away from Petey's fur where they dug painful furrows that Petey was too kind to protest. "Mr. Anderson, we've been through this. Petey's organs are shutting down. There's nothing we can do to fix this. He is old, he's had a good life, but there's not any more we can do."

Mr. Anderson shook his head some more and Doug sighed silently. Doug left the exam room through the sliding wooden door and disappeared into the small maze of equipment and stacked boxes to emerge through the back door of reception.

"Is Petey the last one we've got today?" Doug asked the receptionist.

Roberta was the kind of thin twenty-year old who would be a hundred pounds overweight once her teenage metabolism finally ground to a halt. She gulped at her ubiquitous Diet Coke and continued playing minesweeper. Doug grimaced as she lost the game, lifting his hand to stop her a moment too late. She immediately opened a new game and clicked randomly until she lost again. Doug wondered, not for the first time, if she even knew that the game had rules other than luck. An economy sized bag of Cheetos disgorged half its puffs across the desk and onto Petey's paperwork. One pink ear-bud headphone dangled over Roberta's shoulder, blaring some remixed club electronica in tinny tones.

Doug began to ask again, thinking she hadn't heard, but Roberta nodded impatiently and yanked out Petey's stack of paperwork from underneath the Cheetos, handing it to him without noticing either the crusty fingerprints she left or the glare that Doug leveled at her back.

"Next mutt's tomorrow at ten, Dr. B," Roberta called out as if he were in the next zip code. "Robbie, I think." She crammed half a dozen puffs past her teeth and bit down with a rumbling crunch while she started minesweeper and lost again.

"Bobbie," Doug corrected, but Roberta only shrugged.

Mr. Anderson entered reception with Petey in tow, who walked with an awkward gait that alternated between standing and bolting forward two or three steps while his legs held out. Deterioration of the brain stem due to complications from an old injury had given Petey the shakes and the steroids didn't do much to help. Petey looked up at Doug, grinning through his panting - it was chronic at this point - and waited for the treat Doug had been tossing to him on his way out for the last six years. Doug obliged and winced as Petey's legs collapsed under him as he lunged forward for the treat, his jaw bouncing hard off the tile and the treat skittering away to safety under a cabinet. Roberta finished another game of minesweeper and then handed Mr. Anderson a sheet of paper.

"That will be two hundred fifty-seven dollars, will you be paying with cash or credit?" Roberta asked in a squirt of words that left her mouth almost as one syllable.

Mr. Anderson stared at her for a moment, and then seemed to find some iron in his spine. "Two hundred fifty bucks? You didn't do anything. You just told me my dog is going to die. What the hell did you do for two hundred and fifty bucks?"

"Sir," Roberta started, but Doug brought a quick hand down on her shoulder.

"Mr. Anderson, it's the listed expense. It's not something I can do anything about, as you know." Doug said and frowned. "If it was up to me, there'd be no charge, but you know I can't do that."

"Should report you," Mr. Anderson ranted. "That's what I should do. Let them know that you're racketeering in here. Turning a profit on the people's backs, that's what you're doing. Be in the next black van, you would."

Doug held up his hands, not quite panicking but feeling it rumbling up anyway. "Mr. Anderson. I swear to you, I have never charged you anything but the legal requirements. I'm a good Hegemonist just like you. A party man for ten years next week." He said the last with pride and a smile. "Why don't you just swipe your card and take Petey home. Give him some hamburger if he'll eat. Take care of your dog."

Mr. Anderson nodded, paused, asked "are you sure you can't do anything?" one more time and then sighed and waved his right index finger over the scanner mounted on the desk. It beeped, churned away for a long minute like an old man trying to remember whether he had grandkids or not and finally beeped twice to confirm the transaction had gone through. He pulled Petey through the door and disappeared into the grey afternoon. Doug sighed.

"Roberta, can you make the arrangements so that Petey can be disposed of if Mr. Anderson calls back and needs the service?" Doug asked.

"Sure thing, Dr. B," Rebecca said and made no move to minimize minesweeper.

Doug sighed again and went out into the little lobby across from Roberta's desk. He examined the bulletin board, just looking for something to distract his eyes. Rattlesnake vaccines, puppy training classes at the park down the street, order forms for indestructible rubber toys and anti-coprophagia tablets (now in wintermint!) lined the wall, just the normal vet clinic bulletin board kit. A photograph of the First Citizen printed en masse on high gloss and distributed with all such kits stared down at Doug, beaming and proud and defiant, with that wrinkling around his eyes that a legion of designers had probably decided implied a fatherly affection. First among equals! Doug pushed a spare pushpin through Joseph Steel's right eye and felt a little thrill of misbehavior. He cleared his throat, pulled the pin out and stuck it back in the wall. He caught Roberta looking at him.

"Damned kids," Doug muttered. "Don't have anything better to do than vandalize public property."

"Hey Dr. B," Roberta said in her nice voice. It was different from her indifferent normal voice because it meant she wanted something. "Have you thought about hiring on my friend Susie part time like we talked about?"

"I don't have the money," Doug said. "I told you that."

Roberta shrugged. "Well, I enter all the billing, and we're doing really good lately, all this income, and," she added the dramatic sigh, "all this work to do, I think we need the help."

"Roberta, we're barely scraping by, you know that," Doug said. "I'm lucky I haven't had to cut back your hours." He regretted it as soon as he said it, and Roberta's face hardened.

"Well, I wouldn't want you to have to cut back your hours, of course." She snapped. "I have rights, you know."

"Yes, yes, I know, Roberta, believe me I know." Doug excused himself to his office in the back and collapsed into a chair to sigh. He could not find a glass, so he filled a beaker to the brim from a bottle of delightful merlot that was flown in from France each week. Doug had six stashed beneath his desk.

He toasted the black and white candid photo of a dog running on the beach, "Rough day here Sam, how's heaven treating you?" Doug asked his long dead dog and drained the two hundred milliliter beaker. "Because this world bites."

Doug frowned in honest wonder. "Now why would I say that?"