“There are other ways to control your life, than ending others. That isn’t control.”
“What do you mean?”
It is wrong. Remember what you used to be?
Lies! Slay him! Bleed him like a pig!
“By killing other’s you only control their lives, but it won’t let you control your own,” says the sniper. “It will only take yours over too, it will control you the same way you exercise it over someone else. And you will lose the freedom you want. You will become a monster, soldier boy.”
Shut up! That is the dumbest thing you have ever heard! It is power, control. The exact thing you have always craved Peter. Now you have it. Buzz, I, let you be your true self—my obedient disciple.
Really? Do you believe that? Do you know what you have become?
“I like killing.” Peter twists the knife deeper inside his torso. The man cries out in pain once more.
He breaths heavy, blood leaving his mouth in waves from the internal punctures. “Then you’re already a monster, worse than I ever was. I am sorry.”
I rip the knife out. “Just kill me!” I slice my bicep, letting the blood drip onto his face. I slice my thigh, something lumpy and thick oozes out with my blood. I pull on it.
“NO!”
I rip at my cut pocket and wound. Looking for the other half. I find it, and I try to put it back together. But the blood has soaked it too much. Her white dress is red. The photo halves curling up and falling apart. The two halves slide out of my palm into the oil that is quickly licked up by the flame.
“JUST KILL ME!”
But instead, I stab him again and again. Blood flies in a stream across the room. I stab into his mutilated body, my tears fall and explode into little splashes against his blood, and yet he is still breathing somehow. His chest becomes a mesh of ripped apart flesh, intestines spilling out. I reach in with my hand and grab a handful. I look at the man. He is blinking and chocking to death.
How the fuck is he still alive?
I thrust the gore into his mouth fully suffocating him. The rebel tries turning his head away from my hand but fails. Finally he stops breathing, his own guts leaking out of his mouth.
I wipe my tears away, only adding more of his blood to my face. I kneel over the carnage of my kill. The room is a quiet wretched mess of gore and horrible smells. The oil burns freely in the corners consuming the idol he was praying to earlier. Consuming her, consuming the last of me. The blood forms into one river that travels directly into the flames before the melting idol, taking along the burnt ashes of the photo with them.
Why?
“Don’t let this war destroy who you are.”
You are truly gone.
XXV
I stagger back to my supplies, reconnect my dosage control pad onto my forearm, insert the tube from my drug distributor back into my chemsack, and shoot up a shitload of DT. I don’t care if they find out at this point. I grab my helmet and dust off Rosa, and follow the tunnel to the surface. As the light greets me, my fucked up reality becomes calm again.
Tranquil. And I hear her.
There you go my little soldier. There you go.
Tears run down my face, stinging my eyes as they clear away the dirt around them. “Yes! Cloud! I love you!”
I pull myself out of the spider hole I was tortured in, and discover that I am in the middle of Rickshaw village. I’d never guess they had an underground fortress harboring rebels this whole time.
The village is destroyed. Shacks and huts on fire as helicopters hover in the distance firing at runners. I walk down the street and hear a commotion that draws me to a mango tree grove. A group of marines have formed a circle around a native girl slicing open mangos while others hold her limbs outstretched. They take turns raping here. Her screams carry out over the burning crackling wood and distant gunfire.
Whatever.
“What is going on here!” says a voice. The marines rise releasing her and come to attention. I turn to see Blake and Tarnus walking towards us. Tarnus walks over to the weeping woman that is now holding her naked body close to herself in the dirt. “You all know this is a fucking crime.” He looks around at the marines. “Next time you’re going to fuck some local, do it where I can’t see it!”
The crowd of marines leaves back to their ordering officers, and the girl limps away to her burned down hut where corpses lie strangled about in the doorway.
My hands are tied and my shins kicked in as I fall to the ground. “What is happening?” I say.
Tarnus checks my vitals. “He’s high as fuck on DT.”
“I’ll prick him first,” says Blake.
A needled meter takes a blood sample from my arm. “You son of a bitch,” says Tarnus.
“Private, you are by here discharged and under arrest for drug addiction while on duty,” says Blake. “You really did take all of the fucking morphine. Do you know you killed Vick because of it?” Blake pushes me down onto the ground, kneels beside me, and raises me by my collar a few centimeters from the earth. “Vick died from shock, because all the morphine was gone. You killed him.”
“Tie him up in the center of the village then give him some NorTab to make him sober,” says Tarnus. I am carried away and tied to a pole shirtless as my unit gathers around me.
I am sober. What have I become!
A helicopter hovers in, and lands nearby as the rest of Love forms around me in the center. Commissar Herus appears, limping towards us, and holding a black whip in his hands. “Love Platoon,” he addresses the group of marines watching. “Today a brother was lost in Easy. Because someone shot up all the morphine causing the injured man to die from shock.” Herus walks behind me. “That was this man. Our own Medal of Honor war hero. Nothing more than an addict that would rather put his selfishness before his own brothers. I do not need to even explain the sins he committed against the Party, against all of you, here today.”
The air cracks as the whip comes down with the first cut into my back. “Ah! I’m sorry!” My tears fall to the dirt as the whip keeps striking me. I look around in between bursts of pain at my unit. They look at me with hatred.
Even Isaac.
I call out to him, “Please!” Isaac lowers his head. The whip comes down and my own blood splatters the ground before me.
You deserve it. Maybe you’ll finally die.
But the pain! I can’t take it. Please make it stop.
The whip cracks again. “Stop!”
The whip cracks again. “I’m sorry! Please stop! Make it stop Cloud!”
The whip cracks again. “Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop! Cloud! Cloud!”
The whip cracks again. “I’m sorry mom! Creon! Mom please take me away!”
The whip cracks again. “Please mama! Please I just want to go home! Take me away. I’m sorry!”
The whip cracks again. “I didn’t mean to kill him! Just make it end. Mama! Mom, mom! Take me away…”
The whip cracks again. “MAMA!”
The whip cracks again. My world turns sideways and becomes blurry and distorted. I hear the crack of the whip against my body. Watch as the blood pours into a puddle around my feet. But I don’t feel anything.
XXVI
What’s happening? My face rests against a soft surrounding with an opening for my nose and eyes. In front of me is a checkered tile formation—a floor?
“More sedation, please.”
“Can it be performed while he’s awake?”