I was hiding on the bed – recon duty. From the lower vantage point, my perspective was dominated by the bright pink walls: 4x8 ft. pieces of corrugated cardboard licked with a thin veneer of offensively glaring paint. They provide excellent visual contrast to the targets. Out in the open, my partner gets an eyeful of messy bamboo ceiling and floor, a cacophonous pattern ill suited for unassisted targeting. He is poised to strike, a statue, tense and coiled. Only his eyes move, boiling with adrenaline as they sweep back and forth through the air, waiting for my direction. Across my line of sight drifts a bogey. He’s out in the open, without a squad or formation, traveling slowly, swerving like a drunk. Our plan is working.
“Near the wall,” I shout, pointing through the crack in my fort’s translucent netting. With a corking twist, the attack comes. Two hands fly through the air, driven to an unnamable set of coordinates designated by a deep subconscious awareness of time and space. A crack, and the two palms collide. When they pull apart, a black paste is smeared between the 3rd and 4th fingers of the left hand. If you look closely, you can see the tiny fragmented joints, dozens of them blasted apart. It brings to mind a pile of shattered black sticks jutting from the mud at odd angles.
One down. This is our first coordinated kill on the team’s first coordinated mission. The command was to move beyond guerrilla battles and quick retreats – to take it for the team and stick it out in the open field. To take casualties if duty demanded it.
We weren’t unprepared. We were armed with a variety of weaponry: short range projectiles, hand-to-hand combat enhancers and a laboratory of chemical shields and poison gasses. Plus we were fighting on our own turf. That was our blood smeared across the wall; don’t anyone forget. Fighting isn’t a choice anymore when your home is under assault.
A black static humm floats across my face. I have been infiltrated. My cover has been blown. A crack left open too long, perhaps, or a piece of the big blue cloth might fallen off the side of the bed, exposing a vital leak of airspace. Regardless, the enemy is inside; I am not safe. I thrash and clamor and twist, trying to escape my compromised position. I watch a parade of embroidered roses and cherubs fly by as the voluminous patterned netting streams across my face.
Defenseless, my only option is to join the attack. I rise to help my overextended comrade. Two fighters now, instead of one. Force multipliers. I go for my invader. There he is on the wall, brushing his hair with disturbing bravado. God, he is a big motherfucker. Black and stilted with those enormous soul-wells where eyes should be. With a squint and a grunt, I strike, remembering my second and last karate lesson from two years ago. Palm cocked, I jab at the wall, connecting with a smash as my left fist launches backwards for added torque, my whole mass converted into a slamming force against the thin cardboard. The whole building shakes with a silencing thunder clap. I pull back to examine the carnage. A crumpled dark stain held together by a satiny, mucous-y fluid that has splashed out like a cluster bomb, spewing detritus and gore to the outer reaches of its spindly splatter mark. The whole scene glints in the incandescent light swaying overhead.
My enemy left his mark though, on my palm – an engorged smear of blood across my hand. It is full and red and vital looking. Drop-like, before it breaks, and runs, dripping across my skin while elation fills my stomach. I am shimmering with acidic glee from the inside out. A post-murder high. Whose blood is on my hand? I have avenged him. I raise my hand in triumph and press it too the wall, a bloody palm marking my victory. Transfixed by the death, the shuddering, immediate snuff of a life, I fail to notice the smaller, near translucent short-range interceptor land on the back of my hand. But I feel the stab. Hyper alert and juiced on a raging adrenal gland, I can feel every molecule of puncture as the foreign object slides into my wet skin cells.
When I swat at him, he doesn’t move – just stands there and takes it. Another sign that our smoke coils are working. Planted throughout the room, these slow burning, lavender scented smokers perfume the air with a heady smell, one that seems to retard our enemies. Stupid and slow, we take advantage of them. In this state, they are wont to lay low, sleep in their humid little corners on the ground, staying away from the smoke. They like the bathroom, the earthy humidity of the concrete floor and stagnant toilet water make a comfortable base.
Now we are the invaders. I turn on the shower head and direct it through the air, across the walls, soaking the six-faced little cube room. I hope to infuriate them. Drive them wild in the artificial rain. Tongue between my teeth, I relish in these war games, the all or nothing, us vs. them mindset consumes and drives me. I am a vehicle for this primitive barbarism embedded in my genes. As my foes try to escape the flooding torrent, instinct drives my appetite for devastation.
In the bedroom, my partner waits, silent and coiled once more. He is holding a large, laminated map, folded like an accordion into a thick, floppy rectangle. This is the ultimate swatter. As the little airborne terrors streak past the bathroom door, he is ready. When one pauses against the wall, or bangs around in the corner, the map whips through the air like the hand of god, dealing death with explosive percussiveness. The room rattles like a bass drum every time the hammer strikes.
We have them in a pincer. As the decimated squad retreats from the bedroom onslaught (how many have we killed? twenty? thirty?) I stay put in the bathroom, waiting to reengage. A group of five or six tries to hide in the contours of the wavy sheet of tin that serves as a wall. I pounce without mercy. I use every piece of god-graced weaponry my body has. I punch at the metal. I scratch at the wood sill. Wherever there is motion, I move to eradicate. Another down below; the knee. Quick twist. The metallic rattle echoes brutally in the confined space. One more – top left. A palm strike and the thin metal bends back. Fresh air floods in and he escapes through the opening momentary opening.
I am frothing; my blood is on fire. I want him back. I want to pull him limb from limb. I am consumed by desire and steam is hissing between my clenched teeth. I have lost control.
0 comments:
Post a Comment