Method of Escape

Bu dump, bu-dup, dbpdd-kr-whwooo krach, “shit.” Anatoly Silverslav heard rebounding from behind the thin concrete wall. What followed were barely audible groans and a bellowing, “I broke my damn mirror. I can't believe I broke my damn mirror.” Anatoly shifted from his cot and kicked the wall while yelling, “please, please shut up.”
“I broke my damn mirror and my balls got a hole in it.”
“I heard.”
“Then I gets to yell.”

Anatoly waited a bit longer before he could hear the groans start coming back. The groans turned to wall punching and wall stamping, “I hurt my damn hand.” Followed by more wall punching. Anatoly had the misfortune of being cell neighbors with possibly the loudest Jew in the entire complex. Everyone called him Koufax on account of his love of the game of baseball and how consistent a pitcher he was in the courtyard wiffleball games. He was loud, lanky, had great hair, and loved by the entire Hasidic crew during the summer when stick ball games could actually be played. Anatoly on the other hand was fat, piggy, and no one liked him. He was balding; had no talent beyond his exceptional ability to memorize long strings of numbers.

There were some others that were in Anatoly’s room, another man named Levi, an Italian Jew who didn't speak any German, but was quiet and clever, so no one minded when he was around. A Polack transvestite that could never decide between absolute confirmatory or rebellion. No one cared for this person, and so he was rarely discussed beyond negging. No one knew why he wasn't with his countrymen.

Anatoly considered his cellmates and himself as a superstitious people. The following day would mark the 70th day since jubilee. The Germans had another name more official for it, Wäschtauschen, and the Hungarians just called it the big swap. All the cloth would get sent in for laundry and thus all the wealth of the prison would reset. Without a real system of money, undergarments, cloth, and anything else was the primary means of exchange. People would tear their shirts trading for tobacco, or other goods like spoons, but most of the time it was tobacco. Anatoly didn't smoke, but he considered picking up the habit.

The swap had no consistent schedule, conditions on the front effected truck routes which in turn delayed the cloth market reset. New shipments of prisoners would often cause more laundry as the fear of lice and other diseases that Hungarians and Slavs carried would be introduced to the prison unless effectively eliminated by the wardens. This caused a speculation market that went under the Germans noses. Prisoners would attempt to find prisoner intake schedules, predict happenings on the front, military production needs, or expected disease outbreak news in order to stay ahead of the game of when the wealth reset were to occur.

Anatoly was smart enough to usually end up on the wealthy half after a month or so of the reset, but when he predicted wrong life was miserable, the soup was dirtier, and his cellmates would not speak to him until he he could trade back up to a useful level of wealth. Koufax on the other hand some how always ended up with a new ball at the end of the cycle. This annoyed Anatoly. In fact this annoyed him so much Anatoly could not describe how much this annoyed him, but he was not good with words.

The following day Levi and Anatoly were resting behind the tent producing Luger bullets. Levi rummaged around his pockets for a cigarette, but couldn't find any, so he spent the next half hour searching through the dirt for scraps of the paper and leaves to put one together. He was offered a full one, American made, if he were to give up his shirt. He did.
They entered back into the facility and a German with a very nice hat asked Levi where his shirt went. This was only a formality, he knew where the shirt went. Levi said he lost it, and was pistol whipped for trading his shirt for a cigarette. Anatoly did nothing because he did not wish to be pistol whipped too. Levi didn’t mind Anatoly's inaction because he too would not have done anything.

That night Levi slept exceptionally well either on account of his head trauma or the rest that comes from a hard days work, Anatoly assumed it was the former. Anatoly did not sleep well. He was upset, Koufax had received another mirror and a better ball. All the water in the facility was opaque on account of the dirt in it. Anatoly bent himself over to peer into the water in the small jug. He moved closer magnetically drawn to it. The water seemed to get clearer, the surrounded walls of the jug got more blue. He began to fall through finding himself elevated and falling two hundred feet above a gorge of water. Infinity green on all sides, a forest sprawled encompassing the most beautiful lake he’d ever seen. The wind opened his lungs and he breathed again. He neared the water and the wind was warm. He hit the water and his whole body relaxed and he was free. He sank deeper to where the light could not penetrate. He stopped sinking and began to fall again through the roof and down smashing his water jug. He fell asleep. When he awoke he smelled like stale dirt and old funk, but he always smelled like that, so he sat up and went back to work taking a piece of bread by the door.

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Pub: 03 Mar 2025 21:34 UTC

Edit: 03 Mar 2025 22:34 UTC

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