Category: random

Fatigue; it’s a Marines greatest enemy when on sentry duty. Hendry and I had the assignment; we sat in the farthest listening post from the forward operating base.

Half-asleep, I heard Hendry ask in a near panicked tone, “What the fuck’s that, Sarge?”

Not known to swear very often, I popped awake at Hendry’s voice and looked into the darkness towards where he stared. All I could see was the jet-black ink of night, while he could see varying shades of green projected by the night vision googles he held up to his face.

“What?” I whispered, half-annoyed.

“Listen!” Hendry demanded.

Though only a few seconds, it felt like a few minutes as I halted my breathing and adjusted myself to hear even the faintest noise. Then, there it was – the unmistakable sound of a little girl’s laughter.

Fearful of falling victim to the menace of the ‘thousand-yard stare,’ seeing things in dark, I shifted my eyes quickly from left to right and back again. I saw nothing, but I did continue to hear that faint laughter, which changed into a giggle and back again.

As I started to reach for the radio handset, Hendry suddenly shifted, moving his shoulders and head forward reminding me of a pointer hunting dog. I admit, it is a strange thought to have rush into one’s head during a moment of impending danger, but I also adjusted myself, hoping to see what he’d detected.

“There,” he half-hissed, half-whispered, as he pointed into the darkness, “I can see her. She’s skipping back and forth. It looks like she’s picking flowers or something.”

I still couldn’t see anything beyond a yard or so. A high cloud cover had obscured any moonlight.

“Lemme have the NVG’s, L.C.,” I directed.

Hendry complied as he maintained his M-14 at the ready. Looking down range, I saw her too, exactly as the Lance Corporal had described.

“What the fuck,” I mumbled, more as a statement than a question, as I handed the goggles back to Hendry.

The giggling and the laughter continued as I debated with myself about what I should do next. I knew exactly what my orders were but I had no idea how I could explain it without sounding section-eight.

“She’s coming toward us, running…I think,” Hendry said, almost calm.

Quickly, I brought my rifle up and placed it against my shoulder. No sooner had I done that then she appeared – but there was something off about this child.

“Ellos vienen!” cried a child’s voice.

The words barely had a chance to register in my mind, when a shot rang out from the treeline and across the field. The child fell face forward into the tall grass and scrub as if she’d been struck in the back.

Without hesitation, Hendry returned fire on the muzzle flash, as I radioed in that we had contact. Quickly, Hendry and I crawled from our post and into a secondary position that we’d established as a mortar dropped into our previous fighting hole.

For over two-hours we beat the enemy back as they tried again and again to breach our perimeter. Come sunrise, the enemy melted back into the jungle ahead of our teams, whose job it was to engage the bad guys long enough to either run them to ground or call in artillery.

Once we were certain that the bad guy were no longer a threat, Hendry and I walked over to where we watched the child as she pitch over from being shot. We found nothing but a bundle of old, dead flowers in the spot.

Later, after learning one of the teams had found an injured enemy soldier, we heard scuttle-butt that he and three of his buddies were watching a little girl playing in the open land between the treeline and our FOB. He said one of the men shot the girl and that they were startled when the same guy was shot through the throat by our return fire.

When asked about this little girl, neither Hendry, nor I said a thing. We may be dumb-assed Devil-dogs, but we aren’t completely crazy.

Her: “Why are you putting the U.S. flag out?”
Him: “It a national holiday — Mother’s Day!”
Her: “It’s not a national holiday — and I’m still not cooking you breakfast.”

The Central Authority claimed it had all started that year. However Dom knew it had begun earlier than that — over 25 years before the deadly rioting of that year.

Yes, Dom had been part of a movement to take control of the United States from Progressives. He had been vocal in his opposition to what the media labeled, “Hillary Care.”

Fortunately the idea of socialized medicine died with the Clinton presidency. However it raised its ugly head once again some decade and a half later — this time as the “Affordable Care Act.”

It was the first time Dom recognized the new media dialog of “parsing.” The act turned out to be anything but ‘affordable’ and it eventually led to the governmeny take over of all health care in the country.

But it wasn’t health care that lead to the riots that year — it was the dismantling of the second amendment. The loss of privately owned pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotgun created a chasm between the people and politicians.

It too, began with a parsing of words. Gun control enthusiasts changed the argument to gun safety and before people knew it cities and townships were holding gun swap rallies which lead to voluntary registrations then mandatory registrations.

Finally, once the Federal Government announced that it had signed the United Nations’ “Arms Trade Treaty”, and that all but two states ratified the treaty, rioting broke out across the country. Soon military units from Russia, China and Mexico, called up by the U.N., arrived to put a halt to the rioting.

It was unknown to Dom and possibly to the Central Authority how many people died during that week’s event. That’s when the “DDP” formed, which organized the disappearance of those who wanted no part in what they believed to be a new one-world government.

“It’s funny how they took an insult, and turned it around,” Dom thought of the DDP.

He knew DDP stood for ‘Dooms Day Preppers,’ which he had seen on TV years ago, but paid little attention too. Shortly there after, the third banking collapse happened.

By this time Dom and his family were living in the mountains between Utah and Nevada. He had decided to join up with the “DDP” but failed to make contact before the authorities swooped in and detained those not already living in one of the designated Resettlement sites.

“I didn’t know they were for real” or “I figured that was a bunch of right-wing hog-wash,” and worse was heard throughout the compounds. Dom realized then many people had swallowed the worm and hook the media had lured them with and now it appeared to be too late

Dom’s wife Anne died in one of the compounds. By that time Dom was in a Reeducation camp along with his son, Cam.

Cam, however disappeared early one morning over a year ago. Rumor was that he took the old man’s advice and escaped the first chance he had.

“And don’t you worry about me,” he told Cam. “Jus’ get yourself free and keep moving and don’t you dare try to rescue me.”

The thought brought an agonizing pain to Dom’s heart. He had raised the boy to do right and the rest he had to leave “up to God.”

Through the entire struggle, Dom believed God would make into good that which is bad.

A Gate Keeper caught Dom praying once. Within the hour they dragged Dom from his domicile and chained him to a wooden pillar in the middle of the compound.

With the sound of a horn, the citizens of the compound gathered to hear it announced that Dom was to be caned — 20 lashes for failing to appreciate all that the Central Authority had given him in exchange for his life.

Dom could vaguely recall the third blow. He passed out and suffered the following 17 blows in silence.

When he awakened he had lost several days and several pounds.

The wounds were open and raw. He could barely move from the pain that racked his entire body.

Dom managed to drag himself up the wall of his domicile and peer out the slit facing the compounds center. He did his best to hold himself up as he reached for the door.

However the room twisted and turned as he pulled the door open. Dom fainted in the doorway where he remained to early the next morning.

Something was picking at this skin. It hurt one moment then felt relieving the next.

Too weak to get up Dom laid on the cold cement surface of the room as the sun jabbed a beam of light through the window slit in the back of the room where his cot stood. It was then that he saw the shadow that moved across his back.

Stronger and slightly in fear, Dom moved as if to roll over and the shadow jumped to life and streaked away. It floated gently to the top of Gate Keepers shack, looking back at Dom.

A black bird was making a meal of maggots growing in his infected wounds.

Dom lay back down quietly and soon the bird returned. Hours and hours later long after the sun had gone away the bird flew away, having eaten every last morsel it could find.

Dom owed his life to both the maggots and the black bird for cleansing his wounds. He took it as a sign from God that He has seen Dom’s struggles and when God deemed it right, all would be traded for blessings.

Slowly his wounds healed and though not fully strong enough, they returned Dom to the general work force. As a member of a crew of ten men, they made then dig ditches manually, complete terracing and fill in rutted roadways.

The physical labor was hard but it left Dom feeling whole. It also made him work muscles and flex joints that he would have otherwise allowed to soften or grow stiff.

He also realized that to survive the camp he would need to become a model student— a step below becoming a model citizen. Dom decided to devour whatever he was given to memorize and regurgitate it when required.

As goes the TV commercial, so goes society.

Mayberry was so peaceful because only one man in town was married, and he stayed drunk.

I practice ‘rage yoga’ which involves swearing and drinking. Okay — so I practice swearing and drinking.

At 74-years-old, Grandpa Bill was a man of very few words. One late afternoon, as we sat on his porch in silence, he produced a large cigar box, handing it to me.

“Wanna to tell you ‘bout this,” he said, as he motioned for me to open the box.

Inside was a neckerchief wrapped around three items: an obsidian stone, a length of burnt bone and a battered Colt .45. Being 12-years-old, it was the pistol that held my fascination as I picked it up.

“This is so neat, Grandpa,” I said as I held it as if I were aiming it at a bad guy in some Western movie.

“And it used to be pretty at one time,” he smiled.

“Does it work?”

“Not since the last time I had to use it,” he stated, “And that’s what I wanna tell you ‘bout.”

He picked up a bottle of beer from the ice-bucket beside him and opened it with the ‘church-key’ he had sitting on the table between us, “We were sitting around when a Cherokee woman came crying to us. Said two of her children had been taken by a shaman to a bunch of rocks a few miles east of own and that he was going to kill them.”

“Being hot-blooded, me and James, another Oklahoma Ranger, decided that we could not stand for such a thing and immediately began searching for this shaman. James found the entrance to a shallow cave and we both figured that must be where this Injun had taken the stolen kids.”

He paused to take a drink from his beer, then lit a cigarette, “I crawled through the small crack in the rocks, first. The entrance opened into a narrow passageway, so narrow that I had to turn sideways to get through it. The walls of the passage had scratchings and etchings in then. Then it opened up into a cavern.”

“How could you see all this?” I asked.

“In the center of this cavern was a fire pit. Around it stood a dozen children, chanting and singing, eyes rolled so far back in their heads that you couldn’t see their pupils.”

Grandpa Bill took another drag on his cigarette before saying, “Now this is where it gets strange.”

“You mean chasing a kidnapper into a cave and finding a bunch of kids acting strange, isn’t strange enough?”

He laughed, “Never thought about it that a-way. Anyhow, before I could gather myself, I heard a voice behind me, so I turned, and there’s this old Injun holding a gun to Jame’s head.”

“His English, though broken, was good enough for me to understand that he wanted me to drop my holster. I did,” Grandpa Bill sighed as he shook his head, “And then he blew Jame’s brains out.”

“Naturally, I lunged for the gun, but he shot me through my right thigh. I blacked out and when I opened my eyes, the Injun was in my face asking me if I wanted to meet ‘White-man’s God.’”

“Thank goodness, he didn’t kill you.”

“I think it surprised him when I nodded yes. Didn’t know what to do at that point, so he walked over to a doorway, something I had not noticed before then. It was massive, made of pure obsidian. Biggest slab I’ve ever seen, but it had a large chip in its center half way down.

“The shaman picked up that piece of obsidian, you see in the box, there – and placed it in the chipped area – then something started to push the door open from the other side. As it opened, a unhuman, spindly hand came through the crack between the door and the jamb.”

“The hand was large, long fingers, and it felt around the edge of the door, as if it feared entering the room. Being scared to death myself, I crawled over to my holster, pulled my gun and I shot that dirty Injun in the back.”

“His blood splashed on the hand, which caused whatever it was to go crazy. Next thing I realize, I’d forgotten about my thigh and was on my feet, using all my weight to closed that door.”

“Must’ve surprised it, because I felt it give way, but then it pushed back. I almost had it closed but the hand got in the way.”

Grandpa Bill stopped and looked out towards the setting sun,”I pulled my knife out and hack at the fingers. Lopped one off and it howled a deafening noise as it pulled back.”

“That’s when I slammed the door closed. But whatever it was, the began to push back, opening the door again.”

“Panicked, I noticed that piece of obsidian the shaman had placed in the chip. I forced the door closed again, then clawed the chunk of rock from the door, letting it drop to the ground.”

The second it hit the rocky floor, the banging and guttural roaring stopped. Everything going silent. The kids then snapped awake and started crying.”

“The finger I’d cut off, caught fire, burning till it was nothing but bone. I went to James, but he was done in, so I picked up the bone, the rock and with the children following me, limped my way through the narrows of the cave and into the welcoming glitter of a starlit night.”

“It wasn’t till early morning that a posse found us. A few of the fellas were brave enough to crawl back inside the cave and drag James’ body out.”

“It was sent back to his family in Pennsylvania so as he could have a proper funeral and burial. I continued to ride for the agency for a few more months before I decided I needed a change of scenery and I came out here to California.”

“What a story, Grandpa. How come you never told me about this before?”

“Figger you’re almost 13 and you should know there are things out in the world that defy understanding. I didn’t know this when I left my home in Ohio and I wanted you to have a fighting chance if you ever come up against something you can’t explain.”

“So, what became of the cave?” I asked.

“It was dynamited shut shortly after James body was removed,” Grandpa answered.

We never talked about it again and Grandpa Bill died a few months later. To this day, I have no idea what happened to that old cigar box and its content therein.

The greatest joy of having a penis, is sharing it with someone who doesn’t have one.

‘A butt tuba,’ spelled backwards is still ‘a butt tuba.’ Jus’ saying.