“Geezus, I can’t believe that I signed up for this shit,” he whispered into the stock of his gun as he glanced at the shoulder patch bearing the letter’s’WW’ in black thread on his upper right sleeve shoulder.

“I’ve done some stupid fucking things before in my life,” recalling how he accepted a dare to jump from a jagged cliff side into the ocean, “But this…”

The though faded as he held his corporate-issued gun, black plastic and heavier than he thought it would be, against his chest. His uniform was insufferably itchy and far too hot for the jungle they were helicoptering towards.

The green canopy zipped by at a quick pace, and even faster when they drew closer over top of it. Staring at it as they slipped made him feel sick to his stomach.

Across from him was a man, heavy in gut and wearing the same uniform withe same patch. The only difference were the small dark dashes on his left arm, denoting the number of kills he’d attained on each weekend he’d gone out.

“Done this before?” Frank shouted over the din of the engine.

“Tenth time,” the man hollered back smiling, holding both hands up, palms open, finger extended.

“I’ll stick close to him. Who knows, looking at him, maybe this is really more game that anyone realizes.”

Corporate battles were nothing knew. They’d become popular in the early 21^st century, after the excitement and adrenaline rush of first-person video gaming had worn off.

Before reality reset itself, Frank thought, “Maybe it’s the same shit, but without the stupid goggles.”

Frank couldn’t for the life of himself understand why, other than ‘peer-pressure,’ he’d allowed himself to be talked into this act of stupidity. What made it so bad was the fact that there was a real chance that rather then getting his ‘cherry-popped in armed conflict,’ he be returning in a plastic bag, blown to and back, dead.

“Is a god-damned promotion worth getting killed over?”

Next to the Beer-belly sat his coworker, James, an asshole if ever there was one. A true kiss-ass and brown-noser, who though five-years younger had used his particular skill-set to worm his way up to the same company level as Frank.

Suddenly the chopper dipped and rushed between two large copses of trees, the tropical variety. Frank nearly lost what little he’d eaten earlier that day as the craft pulled up hard into a maintained hover.

The choppers gunner made a quick hand motion and Beer-belly launched himself into the shin-high elephant grass that was pressed down in the wash of the rotor blade. The Kiss-ass followed suit and Frank, though unwilling, joined them.

Soon the grass was standing up right, higher than the three figures who now used it for cover. They listened as the chopper moved farther away and then listen more for any other sound that might be nearby.

Within minutes, the trio was trudging towards the nearest stand of trees.

“Spread out,” Beer-belly directed.

The Kiss-ass moved to the right of Beer-belly and remained slightly ahead of Frank. This was fine with Frank as he didn’t like the idea of being the first shot if any shooting were to be had.

That night, the clear skies with their bright twinkle of stars, clouded over and it began to rain. Before Frank could get his poncho out of his pack, he was soaked and smelled as bad as a wet-dog that had rolled in a maggoted roadkill.

Meanwhile, Beer-belly and the Kiss-ass seemed to be comfortable and unaffected by either the rain, the wetness or their increasing stench. In the distance they could hear occasional gun fire and an even less-occasional thundering boom of a canon or perhaps the explosion of a mortar.

As soon as the rain slowed, they were on their feet and moving towards the battle. By this time, Frank was chilled to the bone.

“I’m so cold,” he said, “And I don’t care who knows it.”

“Shut yer jawing,” Beer-belly warned.

The Kiss-ass simply smiled a toothy-grin at Frank.

“Christ, how I’d love to wipe that shit-eating grin from his face.”

It didn’t take long for them to join in the fire-fight, though sporadic at best. They had approached from the west, on hands and knees.

“Maybe we can make a link up here with another unit,” Beer-belly stated.

It was where Frank saw his first dead body. It was riddled with holes, each flowering with a dark blood-red stain.

The man’s uniform was different from his. Gray, not Blue and his gun, though also plastic was a dark green hue.

Frank felt the bile rise from his gut and pass over his esophagus in a hot wave. He weaved three more times, but on the third nothing came up.

“Come on you F-N-G,” Beer-belly coaxed harshly, “Get up here and get to fighting. Like our buddy over there.”

“What’s an F-N-G?” Frank asked, as he crawled forward.

“Fucking new guy,” the Kiss-ass answered.

“Of course you’d know that and don’t call me a fucking new guy.”

Beer-gut and the Kiss-ass looked at each other, laughing.

Their laughter fell-away quickly as Beer-belly pointed at the Kiss-ass , who was hunkered down behind a log, taking careful aim and squeezing off one round at a time. Unsurprisingly to Frank, it looked like the Kiss-ass had been doing this for all of his life.

“Of course, he’d be a natural, the mother fucker.”

Frank remembered how the Kiss-ass had swept in that one late afternoon and asked Janey out to dinner, knowing Frank was interested in the young woman. He settled on chubby and drab Mary Anne in accounting.

Without warning the gunfire became more directed. Frank found himself curled in a ball behind a clump of thick weeds, too afraid to move, too frightened to raise his gun, too scared to even shoot back.

Then it was all over. The shooting had ceased and he watched as Beer-belly crawled forward and into the brush, followed closely by the Kiss-ass.

As for Frank, he stood up and looked around. He was alone and wishing he’d stayed home, in bed, wanting to forget that a possible promotion hung in the balance when it came to these war games.

The brush to his right lit up, bullets blazing around him, but none touching him. An instinct to survive kicked in and he returned fire on the place from which he’d seen the violent flashed of light.

Again, a quietness filled the battle field.

From his front came the figures of Beer-belly and the Kiss-ass. They were hurrying to learn what the disturbance was about and to see if they might get in on whatever action might be had.

“Got yer cherry-popped finally,” Beer-belly called out.

Any possibility of celebrating was cut short as a lone figure, in a gray uniform, stumbled out of the elephant grass to Frank’s right. The soldier was on top of Frank before he could react.

The Kiss-ass blew the man in half with a rapid burst of gunfire.

“You dumb ass Cherry, you must have a death wish,” Beer-belly said.

Frank looked down at the body halves. He looked up and saw a green gun laying near where the man had exited the grass.

“Huh…he lost his gun,” Frank said as he walked over, picked it and giving it a once over.

He saw the manufacturing stamp on the guns barrel. It was the same stamp as the one on his gun barrel.

Frank felt suddenly sick again. This time he didn’t heave, but he did feel his neck, face and ears turn to fire as he fought to suppress the desire to pass out.

“Your fuckin’ partner there saved your worthless ass, Cherry,” Beer-belly continued, “You ought to be…”

He looked at James, that tormenting brown-nose, ass-kissing, woman-stealing prick, and with the enemy’s gun angled at him, pulled the trigger. The blast ripped the Kiss-ass’ head off his shoulders and a mass of blood squeezed itself out of his pencil-thin neck in several dark-red gushes.

“Son-of-a-bitch, you little idiot, you killed our own man,” Beer-belly squealed.

Frank found the same pleasure in killing him as he did in wasting the Kiss-ass. In fact it might have cause even more enjoyment as Frank developed a real thick boner as he watched the fat asshole do the dead-man’s dance before crumpling to the still moist earth.

“Killin’ ain’t so bad after all,” Frank smiled as he retrieved his gun from where he’d left it laying, “Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll have enough points that by next weekend they’ll let me go Rambo on some of those gray cock-sucker’s fucking-asses.”

If you wear a face mask and glasses at the same time, you are entitled to condensation.

They laid on the plaid blanket in each others arms, watching the distant stars above and enjoying the warm summer evening. The only sound to be heard in the darkening night, was that of the Whipper-Will’s call.

“I can’t believe how perfect we are together,” she said, stroking the side of his bearded face.

“Me neither. I’d be happy to lay here with you forever,” he said.

“Me too, but these bodies won’t bury themselves,” she coo’d, motioning at the pair of long-handled shovels that rested beside their now-empty picnic basket.

“Yeah, we can return to this afterwards,” he smiled.

If Betty White changes her last name, I’m done…

Juneteenth? I thought it was ‘Black Friday.’

After watching how some people wear their masks, I now understand why contraception fails.

The narrow dirt streets, between the brown and towering chimney-like housing, were very quiet this morning, absent the odor of the combustion motored vehicles and the sound of the mechanical gear-shifting and handlebar bells of the hundreds of bicycles, but 11-year-old Xi Yang paid no attention to this. Nor did he think much about the increased number of guards that patrolled back and forth outside the district walls.

His attention though, was drawn to the absence of his favorite statue, the one where images of all the worlds children held hands and appeared to be moving in a circular, clockwise motion. In fact, Xi began to notice how all the statues along his way were no longer there.

“Hello, Acant,” he called out as soon as he say him.

Acant was easy to spot. He stood taller than most kids his age and his multi-horned head was darker and did not match his back-shell or his six thin and jagged exoskeletal legs.

“You should not have come here, today,” Acant gargled, his mouthpiece more suited for his native tongue, a clicking.

“No? Why?” Xi asked.

“You should not have, that is all.”

“But I don’t understand. We played here yesterday and we still need to finish the ramp for your bicycle.”

“That will not happen anymore. You should go. Bad, bad.”

“Is it the stupid war?”

“Bad, bad,” Acant repeated.

Xi watched his friend. He looked neither sad nor angry, but then he also knew that Acant’s type have very little in the way of facial movements, so any real emotion was in the eyes or in their speech.

“Is it because your people are winning?”

“We are not people.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, you go. Trouble.”

“But what about the ramp?”

“Forget ramp,” Acant’s voice rose sharply.

It wasn’t until then that Xi realized that a crowd was forming. Smaller and larger, older and younger, all of Acant’s kind.

“Okay,” Xi said, disappointed.

Somewhere in the gathering crowd he heard the slur, ‘grub.’ He’d heard it used on ‘district enforcement,’ but had never been called it before.

“I don’t understand,” Xi said, “I was born here, like my parents and grand parents and their parents, but suddenly I don’t belong here, suddenly I’m a — grub?”

“You always been grub,” Acant said.

The claim stung Xi deeply. And though angry, he felt more like crying as he tried figure out what had changed between now and yesterday afternoon after class.

He knew Acant had learned the same lesson in history that he had. On Earth, nearly two-hundred years previous, America and China were at war with each other.

As they battled they learned of a bigger threat, that there was a need to move humans off the planet. That’s how Xi’s family, now called Terrans and no longer Earthlings, had come to the planet Dalis and met the Dalisians.

At first the Terrans enslaved the Dalisians, forcing them to work long hard hours with little food or sleep. This had been more than 150-earth-years ago, but things had changed.

Though separate species, the Dalisians eventually earned their freedom and became equals with the Terrans, who eventually began calling themselves Dalisians as well. But then a war had begun a dozen years ago, before either Acant or Xi were born, between another race of Dalisian-type species and human exploring for new colonizing grounds and mineral enrichment.

A stone flew from out the growing crowd that now surrounded the boy, striking Xi on top of his right shoulder and he fell down. This was followed by a din of rapid clicking, some which Xi understood was about him — including grub, kill, feast.

He felt the kicks, clawing, scratching and stabs from the many legs of the crowd that seemed to surge over him. Thankfully, Acant stepped in and stopped what was happening.

“Go! Bad! Trouble! Not wanted!” Acant garbled before falling into a guttural clicking, that sounded far more threatening than Xi had ever known.

Bloodied, Xi got to his feet and turned to leave, only to find his way blocked by other bug-like Dalisians. Another stone sailed from the gathering, smashing into Xi’s left temple.

The boy’s vision swirled into nothingness as he toppled to the ground.

He died from the blow, never understanding why he’d been turned on by Acant and his kind. District enforcers came a few seconds later, but by that time there was very little left of Xi, as his body had been picked clean.

Judy took her dog to the park to run and play, burn off some energy so that he might sleep the whole night through.  ‘Ralph,’ was named after a cartoon television sheep herding dog that he didn’t resemble in the least.

At the park, he raced back and forth and wrestled and rolled with the other dogs, all there for the same reason. After an hour or so, Ralph found himself alone, and in order to while-away his time, he found other things to do.

“Come, Ralph!” Judy called.

He was slow to respond as he sat on the ground and chewed with an unending intensity on the item he had found. Again she called him, this time sounding more demanding, “COME, RALPH!”

This time, Ralph turned his head slowly towards her voice, and with bright and unblinking eyes, looked straight at her. Judy literally shit herself before she could even think to holler, “Drop it!”

From now on, ‘Cracker Jacks,’ shall be known as, ‘Caucasian Jacks.’

Another lightning storm and she found a scared Papa standing, his back pressed against the far wall, yet again.

“It’s only lightening, Papa,” the nurse gently coo’d, “No need to be frightened.”

“No. It’s the shadow that comes with it?” his voice quivered.

“I don’t understand, Papa. What shadow?”

“The shadow that wants to get behind me — behind you.”

“What happens if a shadow gets behind us, Papa?”

“Death!”

“Non-sense, it’s only a shadow, that’s all, Papa.”

But she wasn’t looking when the lightning next flashed. Papa pressed himself harder against the wall, eyes closed, knowing what would happen next.