All American Killer

Whatever you do, do not join the goddam army. You might think it gets your life under control but it's exactly the opposite, it manifests the lack of control like four year manacles. You've given people free reign to fuck you over where before it was, well, not so damn official. Oh God, I'm screwed...

Guess I better backtrack a bit here. Like a lot of military morons, I joined up because I was running away. I just couldn't believe Her feelings for me were for real and I didn't have the nerve/heart/faith to find out. Am I Forever Unlovable? "I can't let her see me!" Now that I've stopped to catch my breath I realize my worst fear has come true by running away from my worst fear. Who set up these rules for life anyway? Goddam, they're hard!

When my relationship died, part of me died too. In a fit of self-hatred and self-pity I joined up. I told myself if I couldn't handle ruining my life maybe it would be put to better use by someone else. Big fucking mistake. I still don't know what the answer is to my problems, but surrounding myself with morons and control freaks sure as hell ain't it.

There's all sorts of invisible levels here in the military, and I don't mean by rank. I'm talking misery levels. Some fuckers know exactly what they are doing, they come in on their own terms, fight for those terms and leave with least amount of burn marks. I don't have even a prayer of doing that. The lifers are scary because most of them are hiding in military life and feel threatened by any hint of freedom. But in life, freedom is all there is, baby. As for me, I got my usual short end of the stick: uncommitted to this life (so no military privileges) but contractually committed beyond my control.

I just don't seem to be able to get a brain in me head.

My recruiting class

The further down the process I got the more I felt like just another piece of meat. Superiors saw nothing special in me (aka a 'Reject') just as I saw nothing special in this life. My one brief moment of connecting was with a veteran sailor serving on an aircraft carrier who complained of complete disillusionment as he found himself on the wrong end of a mop bucket day after day. I didn't feel so alone after that. I know all the hot shots look down on us Rejects but I don't care. All I'm doing is time - like any other convict.

The modern American image of the military is of nice, clean soldiers, proud and proper. We're not the slovenly draftees of the Sixties but a new breed made up of precision and duty. We hold our heads high commanding the respect we know we deserve. People stateside revel in that sort of fantasy but what I call it is a Facade For Fucking. As long as they can pretend we're angels we can keep doing the devil's work. The biggest patriots are really the biggest faggots.

Come fly to this Middle East hell in my goddam shoes, you lying fucks. No one gives a damn about you, what happens to you, or how or if you even come back. These people got agendas and you're here to fulfill them come loss of body and/or soul. Walking off that plane the first time smelling this sewer of rot was the most bone chilling experience of my life. What was unsaid was a thousand times more scary than what was said.

It's sort of like a mini America here: we only talk about the good stuff and pretend everything is great even though we don't believe it. We don't have the homeless to overlook while shopping but we do see the lost and broken ones as we go about our duties. "Thank God I'm not him!" we mutely pray. Wouldn't surprise me if that's been thought about me too.

It's hard to describe the vast sea of corruption. We soldiers feel outranked by the corporations. A laissez faire attitude of greed permeates across the compounds and infiltrates you like second hand smoke. Be smart, be a taker! Some think it makes them moral not to partake yet they also refuse to criticize the corporate dominance either. You hardly come across anyone who makes you feel truly guilty for succumbing to the seduction.

But like I said before, there are many levels and I know I'm unofficially a Reject. The black hole I fell into after the death of my relationship with Her literally frightened the life out of me. Monsters of guilt, demons of despair, maggots of doom ate away at me night and day. They still do. I'm sliding towards a fiery cliff and the knowing of it allows for no easy moments. A deep shadow follows me to the point I already felt lost on the plains of war even before my arrival.

"Murderer." That's the word I could not utter but never get out of my head. To whom could I confess? Who even has ears? Many pretend but few will listen to know the true horror. Even shaving in the mirror I avoid eye contact with myself. I must keep running, always running. She hates me. She hates me still. She hates me. She hates me still...

"Open Hell" I dubbed this place. As a Reject - someone with no aspirations in or out of the army, no one to even write home to - I knew eventually I'd be found out and given all the shit jobs to do. I was chum in the water in a shark infested sea. But God wasn't through punishing me yet for my poor decisions. No sir, not even! I can't think "...if only I hadn't met Baxter", I have to realize what put me in a position to meet a demon like him, but still sometimes I think, "...if only I hadn't met Baxter."

I was assigned to the supply depot. Baxter was the lord ruler and master of this black market universe. He completely bought into the credo of greed everyone so willingly gives a knowing wink towards. I'm sure he didn't arrive here the way I found him, he must have devolved over the years. It's not that I don't hate him but I can see how even he is a victim to this miasmic atmosphere. Lord, how I sometimes wish I could stick every face in America in this shit for just one whiff! "See? That's how it really is, you fuckers!"

But if I say anything I'm written off as a malcontent loser. Lots of vested interests out there in keeping the lie alive. Unfortunately, I've got truths of my own I'm running away from so how can I stand against the wind? Maybe everyone who runs away runs into a Baxter, creatures who never rise above their environment. In my damaged and disheveled state I must have seemed like a wounded animal to the perennial hunter-killers. I couldn't stop hammering myself in the false hope that would somehow make amends and appease Her. Sure, She wants me dead too.

It's quite the struggle to swim against that current.

Baxter started on me right away. "Everybody's doing it," he'd always say - and he was right. We'd all heard stories of full pallets of money disappearing, of half-hearted construction never intending to be finished going through the motions to milk a contract, of the mercenaries making six times what we do, of orders handed down from on high to oblige the defense contractors even when we could do things more efficiently ourselves, of that whole general feeling we're here to live a lie and those who can lie the best are the winners. I truly believe here in Afghanistan you can see the entire ugly underbelly of America. One day all this shit will come out - when it's too fucking late.

I wondered what Baxter wanted from me, he being a man operating purely on self-interest and nothing else. I had nothing to offer except my abused life in the military to further my shame. Baxter and his cronies accepted me into their cabal knowing I was someone who needed acceptance. I knew it was wrong. I only felt darkness around them but then hiding in the dark is what got me into this mess in the first place. So I stuck with them and their own Facade For Fucking until finally they got around the subject of Thrill Kills.

It's the darkest of secrets here even after reports of it happening. Of course, what comes to light is only a fraction of what's covered up. I read the reports years ago of a Thrill Kill squad being outted and I wondered about the lack of outrage or any sense of scandal. Boy, when the American public sets its mind to being willfully ignorant they aren't kidding around! But being here in the midst of all this shit, I can see how letting them get away with it only rots the soul of every soldier.

An expert in the ways of guilt, I know they want to get caught, for someone to draw the line. The officers act like they are the killer's friends, but truth is they are betrayers - just as I betrayed Her. Baxter and company wanted me to join the club, that's what he wanted to squeeze out of me. They constantly demeaned and badmouthed the locals. It's a common practice even among those not trying to draw you into hell.

Soon, your mind gets contaminated. Take a liking to a local and you become like a "nigger lover" in the deep South. A saw people covering up their feelings, hiding genuine affection with put-downs afterwards to prove they had no real feelings for any Afghan. It's like a perverse but unsaid esprit de corps to keep up the Facade For Fucking that we are superior to the subhuman Afghans.

It's easy to see the flow of shit. We all feel worthless and shit upon by the higher ups, and so like abused children we go looking for those whom we can abuse to prove our worth. Man, it's really hard not to get sucked into that mentality. A few brave voices stand against it but the pull is strong and swift. Baxter and buttheads came to learn my story about Her in bits and pieces so I guess that's why they picked out an Afghan woman as a potential Thrill Kill target for me.

The President did this. Why can't I?

She was a whore, they said. A predator of men. Gave guys herpes with her nasty cunt. They got no morals here, these savages. Killing one of them is like killing an animal. See how they treat each other with their sick, backwards culture. They got no soul. Killing one of them is no crime. Just the opposite. It proves the morality of our mission. We can kill them and still be in the right. They kill one of us and we burn down a village. I think we said all those same things about the Indians.

Yes, you too can get away with it! Like some sleazy whore, Baxter and his boys got me liquored up, feeding me hate and bravado stirred by a ready rifle. They knew where my target would be, alone and unsuspecting. They worked on me for hours seeing me not budge. "Just go take a look! You don't have to shoot, just go look at her through the scope." I wanted them off my back so I obliged (which is a habit around here). I know, I know - an obvious mistake.

Another "if only" moment happened like the sun rising in the east. I felt calm looking through the scope at the silhouette in the night. I knew I wasn't going to shoot. I was glad I came after all. I'd defy Baxter and after this they'd leave me alone for the rest of my stay. Then this one voice says, "That's Her, isn't it?" No! Of course not! "What do you think She wants? Think She wants you to live?" Oh, God, how can I answer that? I kept a secret hope that somewhere in Her heart She still kept a place for me despite all that happened. "It's you or Her. Don't be a sucker!"

Being a fool is my forte. So how could I argue against the idea it was foolish to think She has anything but contempt for me? I saw not an innocent Afghan woman, but an enemy who wanted me dead. One thing I loved about Her was that She would brook no fool. And who had proven himself a bigger fool than I? She'd mock me till the day I die. What would She say if She saw me right now in the clutches of these half-witted assholes? "I can't let her see me! I can't let her see me!"

That's when I fired. Dead on. History repeats itself.

My fellow conspirators fled in a stream of stifled giggles. My world faded to black. "I'm damaged for real now," I remember thinking in a daze. "No ever going back from this actual murder." I was afraid the death of my relationship with Her had made me a murderer but I knew in that moment I had taken things too far. I was a ghost after that, a cripple at whom passers-by shook their heads. Oh, how I dread the night. I refuse to suffer the justice of men - and Baxter was right anyway about no one investigating in a meaningful way for her wailing family - but the justice of God I would gladly suffer if it means getting out of this hell of hells, drowning in infinite, formless black.

*****

I'm not going to kill myself here. I'm not giving Baxter and his cocksucker buddies the satisfaction. Not giving the goddam army any satisfaction, either. All you fuckers can just fall right off the fucking face of the earth. Dear God Jesus, I wish you would! No, I'll wait until I get back to the States after my Welcome Home Heroes parade, under a bridge in a city where no one knows me and most of all where She won't find out - ever. I always said it would be better if She never really knew me - and I've spent the rest of my life proving that true.