I bet you think you know me, don’t you? I bet when you look at me, you think you know my whole history. Oh, I bet you think I’ve sold my whole life for the drink and that I’ve been this way my whole life. You think I’m just a washed up wino sitting on your corner that doesn’t have a past or a present, let alone a future, just dreams soaked in brandy. That’s not how it is. I used to be someone. I used to be proud.
I remember back to the summer of two-thousand and seven when I was holed up with a couple of good men in that god-forsaken desert waiting for the end of a war we didn’t believe in. The heat had made us bitter; the heat had made us cold. I was sprawled out on a rug in a safehouse about three blocks from the embassy with Jerry, Jonesie and Straylor. Now, what you need to understand is that when you’re an unwelcome arm of foreign greed, the only truly safe place is in the embassy itself. This said, the embassy has some rules against the sampling of some of the exotic foreign pleasures, so when I say safehouse, I mean a den that asks no questions and doesn’t care if you keep your rifle as you tune out.
The four of us were lounging in the small back room, high as hell on something you can’t get in the states, watching the dust glide by open window slats when suddenly Milt rushed in. He was a mousey fellow about five-four, maybe five-five, and absolutely gave me the creeps. He was one of those kids who got beat up his whole life, until he started working out and got a rifle so he could be in charge. You hear the stories about soldiers doing some terrifying ****, and all those stories are about kids like Milt. The rest of us weren’t exactly paragons of the American way, but at least we didn’t hurt anybody. Looking into his eyes, even in my drug-induced stupor, I saw something I wouldn’t expect from a sicko like him. I saw cold fear.
He started jabbering then, about some girl who said something and how he’d done something, and how we had to get out right then. He’d jumped on enough girls since we’d been here, I wasn’t surprised he’d pissed someone off. I told him to chill. We were Americans, and more or less held diplomatic immunity, and going back to the embassy stoned as we were meant serious problems for all of us. I pushed the pipe and a bottle of gin towards him. He refused them both and continued to jabber about what was coming. Finally, I stumbled to my feet and opened the wooden slats.
They were coming. All of them. Dozens, hundreds, I don’t know. There were so many people, all so angry. There was a man out in front carrying the smashed end of a bottle who seemed to be the leader. His eyes blazed with righteous fury, he would hunt his prey forever. I didn’t speak fluid Arabic, but I’d picked up enough to understand the chant he had started; “cut off his dick, cut off his dick.” For each string of connected syllables he spewed forth, a furious retort spewed forth from the huge writhing mass behind him. As much as he creeped me out, Milt was one of us, and I wasn’t about to hand him over to the mob. We had to leave.
I barked some orders to my men. Being the commanding officer, they listened when I told them to move. Just listening wasn’t quite enough, and they found some real difficulty in stumbling to their feet. The mob was coming fast, and we had to go. We were still staggering, barely able to focus on the ground ahead of us. We burst forth from the safehouse and began to run up the street. The yells behind us increased in intensity and volume as they spotted us making a run for it. Somehow, we ran. We ran until we saw another group of people, holding more angry instruments in the symphony of mutilation, blocking our route to the embassy. We turned off running into an alleyway, running, staggering, half-falling through the dim-lit avenues. Lost in the city, the only thing we could do was run. We ran until we were cornered.
The first man I had seen leading the crowd shouted at us, trying to beat us down with words, fury, and spittle. He gestured wildly at Milt and made a few threatening gestures. I barked out a command. We surrounded Milt, rifles out. The crowd surrounded us, weapons drawn. We had the guns, but they had the numbers. We had the training and expertise, but they had the cold animal fury. For a few moments, nothing happened. Everyone stared. Everyone marked a man. I looked at the man with the bottle. When hell broke loose, I was going to put a bullet right in-between his eyes. I don’t like being spat on.
Slowly, they edged towards us. Nobody wanted to be the first to fire. Nobody wanted to be the first to die. Suddenly, it happened. No matter how many times I replay that moment in my mind, I don’t know who fired first. I remember right up to it happening. The sun, the sweat, and suddenly, the hate-fueled orgy of blood-lust making many into one. The sounds all merged into one gasp of release, the stabbing, the screams, the shots. As the man with the bottle drove it directly into my gut I returned the favor with a burst of fire to his chest. As it all went black, I didn’t expect to wake up.
Then I did.
My eyes were nearly swelled shut, my body nearly numbed by the fierce shooting pain in my torso. Note I said nearly, it still hurt like hell where the bottle had been driven into me. I could see an almost familiar room, dimly lit through the wooden slats in the wall. The dust drifted lazily across my vision. Slowly, as the world came back into focus I saw the man who had brought me here. He was totally unremarkable in every way. A face I could have passed a hundred times, and probably had passed a hundred times in my patrols. He stared at me as though he was in a daze, like a child waiting to open his Christmas presents. As he saw me focus on him, his expectation turned to a twisted glee shining through his smiling mouth like the sun through a window. I wanted to speak, but I realized for the first time that there was an alien object stuffed in my mouth preventing my doing so. I twitched and realized for the first time that I was bound fast in an upright sitting position.
I think I knew, somehow, exactly what was coming from the moment I had opened my swelled eyelids. As I saw him withdraw the thumbscrew from a nearby box, I wasn’t surprised, I wasn’t scared. Hah, that was a lie. I was scared as hell. He slid the device onto my thumbs, my wrists bound to the chair, my hands too numb and weak to protest. I shivered as I felt the cold metal greet its unwilling lover. I waited for it to start. Knowing what was in store didn’t make it less terrifying. I stared into the man’s eyes and hoped to see some glimmer of compassion.
As he began the first twist I thought I saw some. I felt the tightening caress melding my skin with the iron plate. I yelled out something, the gag flying from my mouth. I yelled out information. I don’t remember what it was. The man turned the screw again as he said something I couldn’t understand. I yelled out more, as the star-crossed lovers’ embrace grew ever tighter. The plate of metal dug into the skin about an inch above my knuckle eagerly kissing the bone knowing it would have but one night with its love. I confessed my sins. I screamed them for all to hear, as I felt the first crack ripple through the bone. The pain so intense I could almost pass out and escape, but not quite. I stared into the man’s eyes and saw no glimmer. Finally, as he cackled and cursed me in a foreign tongue I understood. As the crack widened I felt the ripple spread from an inch above my knuckle throughout my whole body, electrifying my being, wracking it with the gasps of the enraptured lovers and dying nerve-endings. This man wanted no information and no confession, he merely wanted my pain, my suffering, and my screams. As he turned the screw again, I felt at last the bone give out. I heard the bone give out. No, I wanted the bone to give out, but it didn’t. I yelled out, cursing myself, cursing, the man, cursing god, waiting, hoping, preying for it to end, all the while he smiled at me. The steel pressed deeper and deeper, kissing the resilient calcium until with a sigh and a scream, it was done. As the tears streamed from my face, he began to laugh. As I passed out from the pain, his hearty guffaw rang in my ears.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the heat. It was back like a teenage lover, caressing me lightly on every inch of exposed skin. As the pleasurable sensation of waking up warm faded away, it was replaced by several feelings I was less keen to receive. The first was the vertigo. I was hanging upside down. I stared down at the desert sand directly below me. My head felt incredibly heavy. As I twisted my head upwards to look at my body I became conscious of the immense pain I was in. The wound on my chest had more or less coagulated at this point, leaving a giant blackened scab that looked sickeningly damp, even in the direct sun. It glistened and glimmered, and I noticed it was leaking slightly. That wasn’t the only pain, though. I was aware of the ropes that tied my torso to the pole. They dug into my, scratching and twisting and burning in the heat. There were nails through each of my palms, securing my hands to the pole and to my side. I had been unconscious for a long time, as these wounds didn’t even hurt unless I moved, the raw tendons in my hand brushing against the rusted steel nails.
Turning my head in various directions, I saw terrifying things. To the right and left, I saw my men, naked and nailed in a similar fashions to myself. Milt was nowhere to be seen. Seeing my own predicament, I can only imagine what they did to him. We were up on a hill above the town. Staring hard, I could see smoke rising above the distinctive shape of the American Embassy. Good game, everyone, this was the end.
The worst pain wasn’t in my hands, in my chest, or in my vision. It was in my head. Looking at the upside-down curls of smoke, I couldn’t help but wonder if I deserved what I got. I had come here uninvited, I had forced someone else’s will on these people. My men had beaten, raped, and exploited everyone here, all under the guise of freedom. Were we still the good guys? There was part of my head that said that we were. Back in America, I had two children sleeping soundly in their beds knowing that their daddy was fighting the people who threatened this country. Didn’t that count for anything? But there was that man with the bottle. He was probably the father of that poor girl Milt had got his hands on. Wasn’t he just another Daddy fighting terror? What did that make me? I with my rifle, he with his bottle, we tried to kill each other for the same reason. Then I saw the choppers, the tanks, and the marching feet off in the distance. The cavalry was here.
I was pulled down by a man who was just like I had been, strong and righteous, full of god and hellfire. He told me the chopper would take me and the others to a friendly hospital to get cleaned up. He said the whole operation was going to hell and we were bombing the whole town in about four hours. Said I was getting a goddamn purple heart. I passed out again.
I woke up in a hospital bed, bandaged and full of morphine. The television was on. I watched the bombs fall over that town. We’d made a lot of ground that day. Four similar uprisings had been quelled when word got out that we’d razed the town to the ground. When they showed the “enemy forces”, I couldn’t help but wonder who those people were, if they had kids too. I spent most of the nine-month recovery wondering that. When I got home, my family said they didn’t even recognize me, that I was different, quieter. I couldn’t talk to them. I couldn’t talk to any of my old friends in the service either. Not about the things that mattered. It all fell to pieces from there, until I lost everything and everyone. I’ve only got two friends left, the bottle and the bullet, and every day I need to swallow one of them.
I remember back to the summer of two-thousand and seven when I was holed up with a couple of good men in that god-forsaken desert waiting for the end of a war we didn’t believe in. The heat had made us bitter; the heat had made us cold. I was sprawled out on a rug in a safehouse about three blocks from the embassy with Jerry, Jonesie and Straylor. Now, what you need to understand is that when you’re an unwelcome arm of foreign greed, the only truly safe place is in the embassy itself. This said, the embassy has some rules against the sampling of some of the exotic foreign pleasures, so when I say safehouse, I mean a den that asks no questions and doesn’t care if you keep your rifle as you tune out.
The four of us were lounging in the small back room, high as hell on something you can’t get in the states, watching the dust glide by open window slats when suddenly Milt rushed in. He was a mousey fellow about five-four, maybe five-five, and absolutely gave me the creeps. He was one of those kids who got beat up his whole life, until he started working out and got a rifle so he could be in charge. You hear the stories about soldiers doing some terrifying ****, and all those stories are about kids like Milt. The rest of us weren’t exactly paragons of the American way, but at least we didn’t hurt anybody. Looking into his eyes, even in my drug-induced stupor, I saw something I wouldn’t expect from a sicko like him. I saw cold fear.
He started jabbering then, about some girl who said something and how he’d done something, and how we had to get out right then. He’d jumped on enough girls since we’d been here, I wasn’t surprised he’d pissed someone off. I told him to chill. We were Americans, and more or less held diplomatic immunity, and going back to the embassy stoned as we were meant serious problems for all of us. I pushed the pipe and a bottle of gin towards him. He refused them both and continued to jabber about what was coming. Finally, I stumbled to my feet and opened the wooden slats.
They were coming. All of them. Dozens, hundreds, I don’t know. There were so many people, all so angry. There was a man out in front carrying the smashed end of a bottle who seemed to be the leader. His eyes blazed with righteous fury, he would hunt his prey forever. I didn’t speak fluid Arabic, but I’d picked up enough to understand the chant he had started; “cut off his dick, cut off his dick.” For each string of connected syllables he spewed forth, a furious retort spewed forth from the huge writhing mass behind him. As much as he creeped me out, Milt was one of us, and I wasn’t about to hand him over to the mob. We had to leave.
I barked some orders to my men. Being the commanding officer, they listened when I told them to move. Just listening wasn’t quite enough, and they found some real difficulty in stumbling to their feet. The mob was coming fast, and we had to go. We were still staggering, barely able to focus on the ground ahead of us. We burst forth from the safehouse and began to run up the street. The yells behind us increased in intensity and volume as they spotted us making a run for it. Somehow, we ran. We ran until we saw another group of people, holding more angry instruments in the symphony of mutilation, blocking our route to the embassy. We turned off running into an alleyway, running, staggering, half-falling through the dim-lit avenues. Lost in the city, the only thing we could do was run. We ran until we were cornered.
The first man I had seen leading the crowd shouted at us, trying to beat us down with words, fury, and spittle. He gestured wildly at Milt and made a few threatening gestures. I barked out a command. We surrounded Milt, rifles out. The crowd surrounded us, weapons drawn. We had the guns, but they had the numbers. We had the training and expertise, but they had the cold animal fury. For a few moments, nothing happened. Everyone stared. Everyone marked a man. I looked at the man with the bottle. When hell broke loose, I was going to put a bullet right in-between his eyes. I don’t like being spat on.
Slowly, they edged towards us. Nobody wanted to be the first to fire. Nobody wanted to be the first to die. Suddenly, it happened. No matter how many times I replay that moment in my mind, I don’t know who fired first. I remember right up to it happening. The sun, the sweat, and suddenly, the hate-fueled orgy of blood-lust making many into one. The sounds all merged into one gasp of release, the stabbing, the screams, the shots. As the man with the bottle drove it directly into my gut I returned the favor with a burst of fire to his chest. As it all went black, I didn’t expect to wake up.
Then I did.
My eyes were nearly swelled shut, my body nearly numbed by the fierce shooting pain in my torso. Note I said nearly, it still hurt like hell where the bottle had been driven into me. I could see an almost familiar room, dimly lit through the wooden slats in the wall. The dust drifted lazily across my vision. Slowly, as the world came back into focus I saw the man who had brought me here. He was totally unremarkable in every way. A face I could have passed a hundred times, and probably had passed a hundred times in my patrols. He stared at me as though he was in a daze, like a child waiting to open his Christmas presents. As he saw me focus on him, his expectation turned to a twisted glee shining through his smiling mouth like the sun through a window. I wanted to speak, but I realized for the first time that there was an alien object stuffed in my mouth preventing my doing so. I twitched and realized for the first time that I was bound fast in an upright sitting position.
I think I knew, somehow, exactly what was coming from the moment I had opened my swelled eyelids. As I saw him withdraw the thumbscrew from a nearby box, I wasn’t surprised, I wasn’t scared. Hah, that was a lie. I was scared as hell. He slid the device onto my thumbs, my wrists bound to the chair, my hands too numb and weak to protest. I shivered as I felt the cold metal greet its unwilling lover. I waited for it to start. Knowing what was in store didn’t make it less terrifying. I stared into the man’s eyes and hoped to see some glimmer of compassion.
As he began the first twist I thought I saw some. I felt the tightening caress melding my skin with the iron plate. I yelled out something, the gag flying from my mouth. I yelled out information. I don’t remember what it was. The man turned the screw again as he said something I couldn’t understand. I yelled out more, as the star-crossed lovers’ embrace grew ever tighter. The plate of metal dug into the skin about an inch above my knuckle eagerly kissing the bone knowing it would have but one night with its love. I confessed my sins. I screamed them for all to hear, as I felt the first crack ripple through the bone. The pain so intense I could almost pass out and escape, but not quite. I stared into the man’s eyes and saw no glimmer. Finally, as he cackled and cursed me in a foreign tongue I understood. As the crack widened I felt the ripple spread from an inch above my knuckle throughout my whole body, electrifying my being, wracking it with the gasps of the enraptured lovers and dying nerve-endings. This man wanted no information and no confession, he merely wanted my pain, my suffering, and my screams. As he turned the screw again, I felt at last the bone give out. I heard the bone give out. No, I wanted the bone to give out, but it didn’t. I yelled out, cursing myself, cursing, the man, cursing god, waiting, hoping, preying for it to end, all the while he smiled at me. The steel pressed deeper and deeper, kissing the resilient calcium until with a sigh and a scream, it was done. As the tears streamed from my face, he began to laugh. As I passed out from the pain, his hearty guffaw rang in my ears.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the heat. It was back like a teenage lover, caressing me lightly on every inch of exposed skin. As the pleasurable sensation of waking up warm faded away, it was replaced by several feelings I was less keen to receive. The first was the vertigo. I was hanging upside down. I stared down at the desert sand directly below me. My head felt incredibly heavy. As I twisted my head upwards to look at my body I became conscious of the immense pain I was in. The wound on my chest had more or less coagulated at this point, leaving a giant blackened scab that looked sickeningly damp, even in the direct sun. It glistened and glimmered, and I noticed it was leaking slightly. That wasn’t the only pain, though. I was aware of the ropes that tied my torso to the pole. They dug into my, scratching and twisting and burning in the heat. There were nails through each of my palms, securing my hands to the pole and to my side. I had been unconscious for a long time, as these wounds didn’t even hurt unless I moved, the raw tendons in my hand brushing against the rusted steel nails.
Turning my head in various directions, I saw terrifying things. To the right and left, I saw my men, naked and nailed in a similar fashions to myself. Milt was nowhere to be seen. Seeing my own predicament, I can only imagine what they did to him. We were up on a hill above the town. Staring hard, I could see smoke rising above the distinctive shape of the American Embassy. Good game, everyone, this was the end.
The worst pain wasn’t in my hands, in my chest, or in my vision. It was in my head. Looking at the upside-down curls of smoke, I couldn’t help but wonder if I deserved what I got. I had come here uninvited, I had forced someone else’s will on these people. My men had beaten, raped, and exploited everyone here, all under the guise of freedom. Were we still the good guys? There was part of my head that said that we were. Back in America, I had two children sleeping soundly in their beds knowing that their daddy was fighting the people who threatened this country. Didn’t that count for anything? But there was that man with the bottle. He was probably the father of that poor girl Milt had got his hands on. Wasn’t he just another Daddy fighting terror? What did that make me? I with my rifle, he with his bottle, we tried to kill each other for the same reason. Then I saw the choppers, the tanks, and the marching feet off in the distance. The cavalry was here.
I was pulled down by a man who was just like I had been, strong and righteous, full of god and hellfire. He told me the chopper would take me and the others to a friendly hospital to get cleaned up. He said the whole operation was going to hell and we were bombing the whole town in about four hours. Said I was getting a goddamn purple heart. I passed out again.
I woke up in a hospital bed, bandaged and full of morphine. The television was on. I watched the bombs fall over that town. We’d made a lot of ground that day. Four similar uprisings had been quelled when word got out that we’d razed the town to the ground. When they showed the “enemy forces”, I couldn’t help but wonder who those people were, if they had kids too. I spent most of the nine-month recovery wondering that. When I got home, my family said they didn’t even recognize me, that I was different, quieter. I couldn’t talk to them. I couldn’t talk to any of my old friends in the service either. Not about the things that mattered. It all fell to pieces from there, until I lost everything and everyone. I’ve only got two friends left, the bottle and the bullet, and every day I need to swallow one of them.
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