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The faceless

October 17, 2013 by Pen 2 Comments

It’s a hot day. Not the kind of hot you know. The kind of hot only Satan could have dreamed up. The air is dry. No breeze. Everything outside is baking. Eight in the morning and the temperature is just creeping over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ll hit 130 in the shade later. If only heat was my biggest problem.

Today, I’m going outside the wire. To the place where all the abuse happened. They call it Abu Ghraib. A prison. A place of hopelessness. The generals want me there to show that we don’t beat and torture people there anymore. That progress is happening. A prisoner release with media coverage. That’s my job today. I’ll take pictures and sing them a happy song made of words. About how great and beneficent we are. I’ll be fascinated by the truth beneath the pastiche and hate my role as the troubador of bullshit.

We will be driving through the most violent place on earth. An occupied city called Baghdad. One of the oldest settled places on the planet, where millions are currently involved in what the leadership of the occupation calls a “low intensity civil war.” I wonder how the thousands dying in that war each month would feel about the description of their murders.

I am a coward scheduled to ride inside an armored bus they call “the Rhino.” Tons of steel and air conditioning with convenient gun ports for shooting comfortably at any attackers. The ride will be more than an hour, on roads that are swept daily for evidence of bombs. Yet I am afraid. I know from personal experience that no one is immune to the numerous types of bombs that the occupiers are constantly being attacked with. I am an occupier to most of Baghdad. The ones who don’t actively hate me are mostly indifferent to whether I live or die. They have their own survival to worry about, and none of them live inside a protected, fortified perimeter like I do.

No, the average Iraqi lives in a city full of gangs, bandits and murder squads. They are subjected to a dusk to dawn curfew where uniformed gangs roam and terrorize. Some of the gangs are trying to make things better and others are just there for revenge. Sunnis were in charge for 30 plus years. The ethnic minority, they had all the privileges. Now the Shia are in charge, and they want revenge for being oppressed. If the Americans don’t break down the door and take away all the fighting age males in your house it might be one of the other gangs. If you’re Sunni, the Shia might come and take your brother or father away. They’ll tie his hands behind his back and put a power drill up to his skull and start drilling holes in his head. Take whatever information they can and then put a bullet or six in him. Or if you’re Shia, the Sunni might blow up your car while you are on your way to work. It’s a back and forth. Both sides hate each other passionately. Both sides pay lip service to the occupiers and make bombs to attack the foreigners with.

The convoy leaves on schedule. Schedules are important to us. We are sandwiched into our armored box on wheels. In the front and in the back are Humvees with machine guns mounted in the turrets. I would hate to be one of those guys. Bullet magnets.

We drive through the maze that exits our “Green Zone” and enter the world most who were born here have to live in. We call it the Red Zone. They call it hell. Eyes take note of us. Thousands of eyes. Dark eyes. I can feel them boring into the armor and penetrating the thick glass that is designed to stop projectiles. The hate is palpable. It settles onto me like a heavy weight. My chest sinks. My heart beats faster. I wonder if today will be the day. Every day feels like it might the last day here.

These people are fatalistic about death. I am not. I do not want to die. I do not want to be torn apart by a blast. Two days ago I was knocked down by one while in the shower. The concussive force of a car bomb a mile away rattled the trailer I live in so much that it was lifted up and then slammed back down. When I got back up from that, I found myself trembling. The aftermath made it worse. A thick column of black smoke outside attended by the attack helicopters that always swarm like angry bees to watch over the rescue responders on the ground. They told me after that explosion was a targeted attack on policemen waiting to collect their monthly pay. Many of them were ripped to shreds. And I am afraid it is my turn now.

The others on this bus annoy me. Some pray. I do not believe praying will make any difference. Sometimes I do it anyhow but only because it is an old ritual. Some talk to avoid introspection. I avoid them. I do not want to make small talk to pass the time while waiting to die. I sit in the back, with the interpreters. If anyone on this bus is hated more than the occupiers, it is the people who speak for them.

One of the men talks to me. “Where are you from,” he asks? I tell him I am from everywhere. It’s true. I have lived all over the world. I claim no place as my own. He tells me about his family. How his brother, father, uncles and cousins have been killed since the occupation begins. He wants to leave Iraq. That is his only goal. To get a visa to go to Europe or the United States. He wants to get away from his city. He wants to leave his country. I understand. Not everyone here is a fatalist. He doesn’t want to die for nothing. Like all the males in his family have.

I give him my e-mail address and tell him I’ll try to help. We arrive at the prison. Behind rusty barbed wire and chain link fences, hundreds of men are milling. They are quiet, calm and carefully watched. The air crackles with their energy. It stinks of their sweat. I see a man in a wheelchair. He has no legs. I wonder what he possibly could have done to be locked up in this sweltering hell. Hundreds of eyes watch me. Some are guarded, some are cold, but all are interested. They see my camera. Many turn their faces away, to avoid being captured in the lens.

Guards around the perimeter hassle me. “No cameras,” says one. He has a Mossberg shotgun. I show him my badge authorizing the camera. He grimaces but shuts up and walks off. I walk the fence line trying to shoot through the fences, trying to focus on the eyes of the prisoners. I am frustrated. I climb into a guard tower after making small talk with one of them. He becomes accommodating when I take his picture. There are always some like him. They want to be recognized. They are proud of the freedom they bring to foreign lands. Of the bad guys they stop.

A politician begins speaking. Then some generals. The foreign general goes first. Then the Iraqi general. I don’t know what they are saying but I know it is mostly bullshit. I take a few pictures. That is required. The commanding officer will want at least one photo of these people to make himself look good to them. I can hear him ingratiating himself now, in his deep drawl. He believes Jesus wants him here to help these ignorant people who are too stupid to manage their own country.

The gates of the prison open. The guards tense, ready for any trouble. Men begin to emerge from the pen. They stink. The temperature has risen to near 120 degrees now. I am sweating freely and drinking water non-stop. Running around with my camera. One man is clutching a Quran, his fingers spasmodic, his lips pursed in prayer. The legless man is pushed awkwardly through the double gates by a fellow prisoner. I wonder if they are friends, or if some guard just said, “Hey you, push the legless guy. Now!” I wonder if he had to wave a shotgun around to get taken seriously. I wonder what these guys did to get locked up in a sandy cage where the heat cooks them all day every day. And I remember the pictures. Of the ones my fellow soldiers beat and tortured and made into human pyramids covered in their own excrement. I am sad, but I keep snapping the photos and taking my notes so I can write a story about how great we are now at freeing prisoners who have promised not to rabble rouse anymore.

I see haunted eyes among the faces. Other men have hopeful eyes. A few look desperate to get away from this place. Some are fighting their own urges to run to the waiting buses. I am getting dizzy from the heat. Many of them are wearing towels on their heads but I have to wear a Kevlar helmet. It’s heavy and doesn’t allow any airflow. Eventually, I am finished photographing and taking notes. Four hundred men are distributed onto buses that will take them to different parts of the city where they will meet family members and be reunited. I wonder how many of these men have no family members left. Then my retinue is back inside our armored, air conditioned bus. The recently freed prisoners get to ride in non air-conditioned, unarmored charter buses that look like should have been put in a junkyard 20 years ago. The temperature is nearing 130 degrees. I am spent. I sit in the back of the bus again, and prepare to cross the world’s most violent city back to my bubble of unreality where we can swim in a dictator’s pool and sing karaoke at night while the life flight choppers bring the injured and dying in over our heads from all around.

I am somber. I hear a bomb go off somewhere far away. Gunfire punctuates the moments all around us. These sounds have been my normal for months. I look at Ali, the interpreter. His eyes are sad, haunted. He goes to sleep. I wonder what he will dream about. Maybe his dead uncle, whom he said was very funny. His favorite person in the whole world. Murdered with a gunshot to the back of the head and dropped off in the street in front of his house, a piece of rotting meat.

I drink water.

The bomb goes off unexpectedly, ripping the world to shreds. Dozens die in the 130 degree heat. But today is not my day. And the target is not my convoy. Instead, one of the buses full of prisoners is attacked by a suicide car bomber as it pulls into the depot where waiting family members stand. Men, women and children are blown into pieces. I see the pictures later and wonder if the legless man was on that bus or another one. I’ll never know. I see him in my dreams sometimes. His thick glasses falling down the brim of his brown nose and the scars on the nubs where his legs used to be. I sobbed for him once. And for myself.

Now, years later, all those prisoners are blurring in my mind. They are becoming faceless ghosts who haunt me everywhere I go. I wish I could tell you each of their stories, but I can only tell you mine. Sometimes I wonder if Ali the interpreter made it out alive. He never e-mailed me.

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: Abu Ghraib, dreams, Europe, forgotten people, Green Zone, Iraq, non-fiction, occupied country, pen, prison, Red Zone, revenge, short story, story, suicide, true war, war, war stories

Hemlock

May 20, 2013 by Pen 2 Comments

You did this. You bastard. Things would have been fine if you could have acted decent once in a while. Why did you insist on drinking all the time? Why did you insist on beating me? I hate you. I always will. It didn’t start that way. I used to love you with everything I had. You used to love me too. At least I think you did.

Back in high school, you were so gentle. At least I thought you were. You didn’t hit me until later. I knew you had a mean streak in you though. I remember when you kicked your dog. What was his name? Jack. That’s it. When you kicked Jack for shitting on the carpet. He couldn’t help it, and you broke his ribs. I remember thinking maybe that was too harsh. I had no idea you would be breaking my ribs too, just a few years later. You fucker.

You were such a sweet talker. So full of promises. You told me you’d buy me that cabin in the mountains. Why did we end up in a duplex in the valley? Because of you. Your goddamn temper made sure you couldn’t hold down a job. And you decided I needed to be constantly pregnant. How did you think I could hold a job when I was constantly preggers? Six children, you gave me. You fool. We couldn’t afford one child, let alone six. You cursed us to poverty. You cursed us to mediocrity.

If I didn’t love books, you would have undone me. I’d probably be dead right now because of you. You beat me within an inch of my life so many times I can’t count. But I’m resilient. I always came back from the beatings. You scarred me, but you never broke me. You worked me over good, but you never won. The six kids did more lasting physical damage than you did.

You. I’m not sure where it started to go wrong with you. Long before you broke Jack’s ribs and punched out a few of my teeth when I questioned you not paying the rent. I suspect you were broken when you came out of the womb. Your mom used to tell me that you were special. I think she was willfully ignorant when she said that. You were just mean. I’m guessing you used to get your jollies torturing small animals before we met and you whispered all those sweet lies to me. You deserve to rot in hell.

Why am I even talking to you anymore. You’ve given me everything I needed. I should just walk away. I don’t know why I’m standing her explaining anything to you. I should walk away. But for some reason I feel the need to stand here. You have to listen now. It is my turn. Shut up. You just shut up.

When you started hitting Shelly, I knew I had to do something. She is only seven years old, for God’s sake. I let you sucker me, and that’s my fault. But Shelly didn’t have a choice. You had no right to beat our child like that. She had no control. The doctors told you. I told you. She has nocturnal enuresis. It would have resolved but I think you were the main cause of it. You scared her. You shouted at her. You lurched around the house drunk and mean. They all hate you. I didn’t do that. You did that.

In the summer, I started researching. Hemlock seemed the easiest. I considered dimethylmercury, but it is too hard to get. Arsenic is too easy to test for. There were other choices, but hemlock seeds were easy to order. If you have taught me anything, you’ve taught me patience. I grew the plants in our backyard. It took four days to ship from Ohio. It took a year to get the plants big enough. You made fun of the plants, like you made fun of all the things in my garden. And you kept on being your rotten self. Treating me like dirt, and treating our children like a curse. You were foul that whole summer while the hemlocks sprouted.

When I started to mix the flowers into your meals, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. You got sick that night. Threw up a lot and complained that it was my fault. You weren’t serious, but you were certainly correct about that much. I did make you sick. I made you very sick. That whole month, I experimented with dosages. I got things just right so that you were too weak to be yourself anymore. But not so weak that you couldn’t suffer through it.

Remember that time you raped me? The first time? The one you apologized for? That was the last time you apologized for anything you did to me, to our children. You blamed your actions on the alcohol, but that was just a cover story. You always take whatever you can, whenever you think you can. I never forgave you for that. The insurance policy was my idea. Do you remember? No, of course not. You took the blood tests and I paid the premiums. So you wouldn’t think about it. I can’t believe I used to love you. You beat the love right out of me.

Tomorrow, they are going to pay out on the policy. George, John, Jr., Susan, Shelly, Michael and Tom are never going to have to cringe from you again. I’m glad I killed you. Now we have a chance at a real life. All the good you are ever going to do started the moment I decided you had been punished enough. I’ll never forgive you. I take no comfort from the fact that you are lying in the ground rotting. Your ugly face still haunts me. Your fists still pound me awake in the night. You voice still rattles around in my head. Sometimes, I wish I could kill you all over again, just to make sure you cannot come back.

Goodbye John. May you rot in hell. The children and I are going to the pound after we get the check. We’re going to get a dog no one wants. We’re going to name him Jack. He’s going to have a good life John. I’ll never come back here to visit your grave again. I hope it’s lonely where you are.

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: dogs, Goodbye John, happiness, hemlock, love, murder, penfist, poison, revenge, short story, story

Undertow

April 10, 2013 by Pen Leave a Comment

I remember everything about that day. The brisk wind off the ocean, the scudding clouds and that pinkish sky. Little pebbles in my shoes. They distracted me. While I have made many mistakes in my life, that day represents the worst of them. I made the easy choice, and it was the wrong one. Maybe if I’d done it different, I wouldn’t be sitting in this room again.

Susan was still asleep when I woke up. She always slept late after our nights together. I guess she felt no guilt back then. I never saw an ounce of it in her green eyes. They were shut tightly when I left around sunrise to get coffee. She was snoring softly. I didn’t want to wake her. I looked at her body. So ripe. The black lingerie she wore for me, those little bits with the see through top and bottom. I loved that set on her, so I stared at it awhile. Watched her breathe. Watched her eyes moving underneath the lids. Smelled her cigarette smoke, clinging to everything in the room.

Then I went to the lobby, and I walked downward, following the path along the cliffs that hold the ocean back. When I looked back at the hotel, with its plethora of glass eyes, I wondered which of them might be awake. Watching me. Probably very few. Like Susan, the hotel slumbered.

The weather was strange that morning. It felt like it might storm or it might turn hot. I couldn’t tell at the time. The air smelled of salt, but there was something else. A stillness in the air. It felt like solitude. The only thing moving, other than me, was the ocean. I didn’t see any other people, and I didn’t see any birds. It was strange. There were usually birds.

I kicked pebbles. Stared in amazement at the tenacious shrubs that clung to the cliff’s edges. Life has a way, at least for a while. Then it must give up its turn. The green of the shrubs contrasted nicely with the grey of the soft rock from which they grew.

We were both unhappy. Susan and I. Both in marriages that made us feel unappreciated. Somehow we found each other. It had been going on for a few months, and we were still in that fantasy where somehow we were going to love each other forever, perfectly. Human hope. It’s amazing.

She had kids, and both of us had a lot of miles on our marriages. Finding happiness isn’t easy in this psychotic world. Safety is an illusion, you can see that from watching the news. Security? Ha! Ask anyone who has been downsized what you get for your blood, sweat and tears. Try to get a politician to explain how all the money is being used. Good luck with that.

We try for it all the same. And they steal from us, those rich, conniving, soulless bastards and whores. Paying us for fealty with our own money. Training us to vote for their false security and their wars. Lining their pockets with the extract of blood and tears and ruined lives. Those fucks.

How can you stay with someone who doesn’t pay attention to your dreams? Susan and I listened to each other in that regard, while we fucked and held each other and drifted off to sleep together. I loved her big green eyes. I loved her heaving breasts and nipples that turned from pink to red when I was inside her. I loved her smell, and the taste of cigarettes in her mouth when I kissed her. I love her compliance to every demand I made in the bedroom. She was good for me, for a time.

I was thinking about Susan and sipping my coffee when I noticed the girl, down at the bottom, right up near where those waves turn big and break against the rocks. The wind tugged on me just then, and teased me with its gusting. Playing, like a true master does when he knows he can have you at anytime. I knew the wind could force me into the water if it wanted that. I looked down, in the direction of that unfulfilled promise of escape. That’s when I noticed her.  She was almost directly below me. She saw me too. I don’t know how she could. I wear neutral outfits that blend with most environments. But she did.

She was waving at me. I couldn’t see what color her eyes were, but I could tell her mouth was open. She was screaming. Her blonde hair splayed out in the water, a nimbus around her upturned face. Every wave washed over her, hiding her face and then revealing it again. I still don’t know how she got there, 40 or so feet under me. She must have been caught in an undertow. Why she was out there that early in the morning never made sense. I guess some people get up and go swimming at first light. Who the hell knows. Not me.

I’m a strong swimmer. I thought about it for a few seconds. My life was complicated enough. I decided to let her go. I thought it would be better for her. Less pain. I’ve heard drowning is an easy way to die. Peaceful once you stop fighting it.

She went under five, maybe six more times from when I first noticed her. I hadn’t totally made up my mind. If anyone else had been around, I would have gone after her. I was pretty sure I could make the jump without passing out. They taught us how to jump off the sides of ships in the Corps. I had done it dozens of times without incident. The timing was bad, that’s all. Without an audience, I can’t perform the hero role. What’s the point? I’ve seen how it usually ends for heroes.

I thought letting her go would be better for me. The movie of me dragging her back to the beach played in my head. I didn’t want to explain who I was to anyone, or why I was checked in under a fake name, with a woman who wasn’t my wife. The girl’s head went under again, and this time, it didn’t come back up. It wasn’t like in the movies. I never saw the dramatic hand come up one last time and then slide slowly under. A wave covered her face. She was gone. I never got to see her running down the beach, trapped in the false hope of youth, her breasts bouncing carelessly in an overworked bikini, her ass calling out its siren song to every man she passed.

I was spellbound. Lost in thought. I watched the ocean for a few moments. Those waves kept going, crashing mindlessly, endlessly against the cliff walls and piles of jagged rocks down there. The noise soothed me. I finished my coffee and wondered what the girl had believed in.

It rained gently for about five minutes. The drops were far enough apart. I barely got damp.

Most people believe in something. I never have. I think it just goes black and then you rot. I’ve seen death too many times to believe there in something on the other side.

Eventually, I bent down and checked the pistol I always carry on my ankle. It rested snug in its pouch, like always. Then I took off each shoe and shook out the pebbles. I retied the laces carefully.

I walked back up the path to Susan and pretended to be excited about the rest of our weekend. We made love again. Ate the room service meals. Planned our lives out, together while eating eggs. Showered. Got dressed. She in a bikini and me in my neutrally colored cargo pants and t-shirt.

I read to her from the collected stories of John Cheever, and she told me that I could be a better writer than him, that my love letters to her were the best she’d ever read. And I thought about that girl’s face going under. That open mouth in the middle of all that blonde hair. I listened to Susan telling me she loved me, and I stared at the peeling plaid patterned wallpaper on the walls.

We undressed again. Spontaneously told each other dreams, big and little, while I played with her breasts. More lovemaking, slower than before. The bed creaked and banged against the wall. Susan had more energy than I did. She did most of the work. That was fine.

The walls of the room hid us from the world, and the world from us, but only for a brief sojourn. That’s really all you ever get when it comes to good things. Out there are mostly dark spaces and black hearts and small minds. In my youth I was oblivious to them, cocooned. In my early adulthood, I thought I could escape them, and for a while, I did. Then I experienced war, and I knew the reality. The dark spaces and black hearts and small minds eat everything eventually. They will eat me too.

We ate breakfast late, and went down to the beach, following the winding paths along the cliffs. Susan swam in the ocean and I tried to write. I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the words. The birds had come back from wherever they had been hiding that morning when I let her go. The girl.

Today is the first time I have been able to write. I think about death too much. My wars changed me. It’s hard to take much seriously, except fucking and eating. Humans are too fragile and vicious and petty to make long-term plans. Death comes randomly, no matter what you want.

It turned very hot later that day. It stormed too, but only inside my head. That’s where most storms are born. In my memories. After that hot day, the dead girl showed up in my dreams. She was usually bloated. Only rarely did she appear while still fighting for her life. We all fight, but eventually, we lose. No exceptions.

Susan and I continued our affair for another year or two. She ended up getting religion, and telling me I needed to get help. She said she was going to ask for forgiveness, and that I should too. I can’t be forgiven, because there is no god. I hope Susan is happy with the one she made up.

The girl’s body washed up a week later, miles away from the cliffs where I let her drown. Some kids found her. Someone made a Youtube video, probably one of the kids. She was bloated up to several times her living size. Except what the fish had taken as tribute for the intrusion into their habitat. We eat fish. Fish eat humans.

Pieces of her were gone. Toes and fingers and eyeballs. What was left of her skin had gone gray, and her hair was coming out in patches. That water isn’t cold enough – she would have lost the hair and skin in another day or two.

When I finish this letter, I will walk out to those cliffs where I let her go, stare at the waves one last time, and then join my abandoned, hopeless girl in eternal nothing. I want whoever finds this testament to know that I am sorry. Also, you can keep my pistol. You might need a pistol one day.

I should have been a better warrior. I should have been a better husband. And I should have jumped off the cliff that day instead of finishing my coffee and going on with this charade. I’ve been a tourist in this life. I wish it had been different. The time for sightseeing has to end. I wish all of you well. Life is short, and there is nothing after. War is coming. I hope you’re ready when it gets here. I don’t have another one in me. I can’t fight anymore.

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: abandonment, adultery, dark contemporary, dreams, drowning, faction, Ha Ask, John Cheever, love, penfist, short story, story, suicide

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