Heller's Regret Read Online Free Page A

ourselves around the Rules before the
fifteen minutes expired, pretending to absorb even a part of the
thousand pages in it in the allocated fifteen minutes. We presented
like the Von Trapp family having a musical gather-round. I would
have burst into song if I had any talent or energy and if I thought
the Assistant would tolerate it for a second.
    “Oh nice, ladies,” she nodded approvingly at
our close studiousness. Her voice switched to harsh. “Now out to
the Field. Let’s shift some blubber.”
    I spoke up very hesitantly. “Excuse me,
ma’am. May we please be allowed to use the bathroom first?” I kept
my eyes lowered to the unread rules the whole time.
    She looked at me indulgently, as though I was
her favourite annoyance. “Chunky, you know you’re supposed to call
me Assistant. I don’t know about this ‘ma’am’ business, but I don’t
want you peeing yourself while you’re working out.” Her glance
would have shattered ice. “You have five minutes.”
    We sprinted to the bathroom and fought over
the stalls, though at the end of five minutes we were all
relieved.
    “I need food,” despaired Jill, the
older lady, looking at herself in the mirror. Tears misted her
eyes. “I don’t think I can do any more exercise without it. It’s
inhumane to expect it.”
    “I agree, but it’s best for us not to think
about food right now,” I recommended indistinctly, patting her on
the shoulder while brushing my teeth, one of the few hygiene tasks
I could manage in the time we’d been given. I didn’t want to admit
to anyone I’d not only been thinking about food since the previous
night, I’d also dreamt about it. “Let’s all just concentrate on
getting through this session. We’ll help each other where we
can.”
    “I hope breakfast is more substantial than
any other meal we’ve had here so far,” said the young girl, Jessie,
leaning against the wall with her eyes closed.
    “My muscles are killing me,” complained
Ariadne, rubbing her left calf.
    Nobody had a chance to respond because the
Assistant poked her head into the bathroom. “Come on, ladies, I’m
waiting for you. This isn’t a nightclub where you can stand around
for hours gossiping in the bathroom. Get your ugly, flabby
lardarses out to the Field now.”
    I eyed her malevolently as I passed, which
made her top lip curl up. “I’m keeping close watch on you, Chunky.
I like your spirit, but I don’t like rebelliousness or
disobedience. I’m going to break you like a twig.”
    And that was how the Assistant and I became
such special friends.
     

Chapter 3
     
    One week slowly passed into two. Our daily
routine didn’t vary. Up at five-thirty, pre-breakfast exercise,
followed by a meagre breakfast. Exercise until a meagre lunch, then
more exercise before a meagre dinner. Bed at seven o’clock. No
matter how tired we were, every three days we had to wash our
tracksuits (and any other clothes, like socks, undies and pyjamas)
in the small laundry room leading off the bathroom.
    By the end of the first week, I was ready to
turn cannibal on one of my bunkmates from hunger. When I wasn’t
fantasising about killing Clive and/or the Assistant while I
slogged mindlessly through the torturous exercises, I tried to
decide which of my bunkmates looked tastier, and whether it would
be better to eat them with ranch dressing or a soy sauce and sweet
chilli sauce combination.
    Nearing the end of the second week, I’d lost
so much weight and had so little energy that some nights I didn’t
even bother to pull the blanket up over myself. We didn’t chat
anymore at night, but fell into our beds and straight to sleep. By
now, most of us were too tired to cry into our pillows, though I
heard Jessie’s plaintive quiet sobs on occasion.
    Apart from Ariadne, who must surely be
regretting her decision every second, all of us in Bunker One had
been sent here involuntarily – some by their partners, one by her
domineering older sister, one by her