by Dave Brockie
But then comes the suction from below. They are slurping hard, drawing me into the meat drain. The sides of the pool heave with fresh filth as the gullet begins to force me down, taking me from the flames of the Voiden and the city that they ruled. Plucked away and senseless, guided by unknown feelers, I rush underearth in search of a bloody new dawn.
***
One of the biggest things that freaks me out about New York is the shit in the walls. Yes, it is a veritable city of shit. The whole city is made up of giant buildings, towering beyond life and filled with humans. Humans who have to shit at least once a day. And many shit much more than that, some actually prefer to take a series of smaller shits in order to escape their boss or simply because they enjoy shitting. And when they do shit, it goes into the walls, and travels through those walls that surround the humans who do the shitting in its unseen search for a final resting place. Standing at the water cooler, eating your lunch, sucking off the boss, or even adding to the turd pool—at any moment you may be surrounded by more turds than humans. I sometimes uncomfortably fantasize that the walls are made of glass and this parade of wiggling excrement is made painfully apparent to the people who would rather ignore this unseen reality. And where does it all go anyway? I mean, we are talking at least 12 million turds a day. It’s enough to make you want to move.
“God, this is a terrible party,” I think, as I swill a 150-dollar bottle of champagne. They really need to do something about the music. It’s always the same band, the President’s favorite, and all they ever play are songs about Saddam and how great he is. Everything from the thirty-foot-tall portrait, to the colossal ice sculpture, to the horrid, keening wail of the singer, Adel Akle, as he babbles “Oh great leader, Great Saddam, Great Saddam, we pledge our lives to you,” everything’s meant to invoke the presence of the mighty leader here, amongst his most privileged servants. This is essential, as he never comes to these parties.
My breasts are bound back hard with a heavy elastic bandage. My uniform is padded as to reduce my curves. A fake mustache is expertly attached to my upper lip. I have many qualities that make me valuable to the Iraqi military—but being a woman is not one of them.
Things had not yet degenerated into the drunken orgy which I knew would occur later. Mass quantities of alcohol would be consumed as the men and women drank themselves to the point of delirium. Clothes would start flying and copulation would occur between vomit-spackled deck chairs sent sprawling by the impaired thrashings of the idiot humans. There would be drugs, there would be guns, and there would be murder. I planned to make my exit well before then and return to the presidential palace where I would indulge in my own selfish pleasures. You see, I had done very well for myself since that night in the Kurdish highlands.
After all, this was Iraq, the America of the Mideast. Women were not required to wear veils, alcohol, gambling, and prostitution flourished, and indeed it was considered unmanly to offer prayers. Baghdad was the Babylon of old, and that worked well for me. I had returned to the civilized world with a vengeance and this was the perfect stage for my latest horrific performance.
This disdain for traditional Islamic law, or Sharia was one of the biggest reasons Iraq was at war with its neighbor, Iran. Iran was a strict Islamic state under the rule of Saddam’s main rival in the region, the Ayatollah Khomeni. The Iranians were just emerging from decades of rule as a puppet state of the U.S., under the gluttonous leadership of the Shah. The Iranian people, miserable under the excesses of the ruling caste, had overthrown their ruler in a relatively bloodless coup and replaced him with the Ayatollah, a bearded troll with an iron will, the people’s spiritual leader, who had been in exile overseas for decades. Saddam, always on the alert for a power grab, had misinterpreted the period of instability following the revolution as a period of weakness. Allowing himself to be influenced by American money, (the U.S. was thirsting for vengeance after the hostage crisis) Saddam’s legions invaded Iran in 1980. Surprisingly, his opponent was perhaps a disorganized but certainly not a demoralized one. The Iranians were galvanized by this attack and responded with fanatical zeal. Millions of young men poured toward the front, ready to fight without weapons if necessary. Since then it had been a bloody war of attrition that had dragged on for six years and showed no signs of letting up. This party is in honor of this war, and the many phyrric victories of the last year.
Suddenly, a great roar goes up from the floor. Uday, the President’s depraved son, has attacked an unfortunate guest with a battery-powered electric knife. He calls this device his “magic wand,” and uses it to trim everything from roses to noses. Great gouts of blood splash across the buffet table as people clear out in a large semi-circle to watch the murder, careful to hide any reaction other than amusement. Most go blank and turn away, knowing the slightest sign of disapproval could mean not only their death but also the deaths of everyone they ever knew. Some, seeking to curry favor, openly applaud the Prince’s behavior. The only one who truly expresses himself without self-conscience is the victim, whose howls of agony momentarily threaten to compete with the inane blather of the singer, who does not miss a beat, even when Uday produces a pistol and empties the entire magazine into the man’s rapidly disintegrating head. As he reloads, I decide it is a good time to make my escape. I make for a back stairway that will take me to the underground railway which transports Baghdad’s elite as Uday continues to pump bullets into the now inert corpe.
My bodyguards fall into step behind me as I move into the underground world that honeycombed the earth beneath the city. Saddam has been spending millions for years on an elaborate system of bunkers, tunnels and palaces that form an unseen city where he takes his refuge from the many peoples that are trying to kill him. Between the Kurds, the Iranians, the Israelis, and his own people, Saddam has many enemies. At this point the U.S. is not one of them.
I settle into the comfortable railcar which speeds off towards Mujamma al-Riasi, one of Saddam’s many palaces. Germans had built this railway and Americans had built many of the bunkers and underground structures which sprouted away from it, like the heads of some transit-hydra. These were the same tunnels that will save Saddam and his family from assassination many times over in the coming years. It is ironic that the tunnels were built by the same people who will later try to kill him.
As the train gathers speed in the subterranean gloom my mind wanders to the events that brought me here—how I had come from my primitive existence as the Wolf-Woman of Kurdistan to one of Saddam’s most trusted henchmen (I mean woman) in the space of only a few years.
I had lived for many years in the hills of the Kurds in the ruins of an ancient temple, built by a forgotten race that may or may not have come from this planet. There was a main temple area in ruins, and secret chambers beneath in which I had my quarters, in stark contrast to my present luxury apartment located within the presidential compound. I lived beneath the temple in absolute squalor, smeared with blood and hardened shit, determined to remake myself in an image so horrific that the humans would never be able to bear my presence again. But I was failing. I missed the company that some humans could give me, the conversation, the sex. I was curious about my new form and the pleasures it could give me. More and more I desired a return to the land of the living.
My den was littered with the scraps of civilization that I had taken from my victims. Wallets with photographs, scraps of paper scribbled with symbols, doodles, and personal notes, plastic containers, and old newspapers which I had no trouble reading even though they were in Arabic. One of my powers seemed to be language mastery, though I never quite got Chinese.
My curiosity regarding the outside world increased with every member of it I killed. I mostly preyed on the inhabitants of an Iraqi military base, located outside the only major city in the region. The Kurds actively tried to appease me by bringing baskets of goodies and leaving them on the slope below my lair. Once they even sent a holy man who yelled a whole bunch of shit up to me. I don’t k
now if he was trying to convert or banish me. I sent him back down the hill, minus his head.
Finally the Iraqis mounted a major operation to rid the region of my presence. The first thing they did was attack my temple with Hind ground-assault helicopters, condensing times slow demolition of the structure into the space of an afternoon. Then a large group of soldiers sealed off the area and sent a powerful column up the side of the hill. It was their belief that their assault upon me would be hindered by the Pesh Mergas, the Kurdish freedom fighters they mistakenly believed I was allied with. I tended to kill more Iraqis, simply because they were more numerous and thus easier to find.
As I sit their upon my rock, deciding whether to attack now or play possum. I am pissed. I really like my temple. It has a crude quality that appeals to me. Plus, there are the many carvings that I spend hours attempting to decipher. They have destroyed all that with their damn helicopters. But my decision is suddenly made for me. A rocket bursts from the brush aside the road and slams into the lead vehicle, a BMP armored transport which bursts into angry orange. The column is enveloped in a hail of small arms and machine gun fire that comes from all sides of the trail. Men spill from the trucks, clutching at themselves as metal rends their flesh. Enjoying the spectacle, I watch as rocket after rocket tears into the vehicles until the transport are reduced to flaming wrecks, belching their deaths into the once-calm summer sky.
All except one. One of the lead BMP’s in the column is fighting back against his unseen foe. Another RPG slams into the vehicle but deflects off the hull, spinning into the underbrush before exploding. The 23mm. cannon atop the vehicle is spitting back, locating the position of the rocket launcher and momentarily silencing it with a well-placed burst. Bullets are hitting the BMP from all sides, kicking sparks off its hull, but armored and impervious, the machine begins to pick its way past the wreckage of the column, trying to maneuver through and escape the trap. I can see Pesh Mergas fighters moving closer to the road, preparing a volley of grenades. Their rocket launcher is momentarily out of action, and they are moving to finish their prey before air support, undoubtedly already called, arrives in the form of a Hind. The track is littered with dead and dying Iraqis and their equipment—AKs, RPGs, etc . . . they are good prizes for the poorly equipped guerrillas and they want them badly. The only thing stopping them is the BMP and its damn gun. They load their last RPG and fire it with a terrifying whoosh! This one strikes the BMP right in the front hull and it does considerable damage, tearing off a crew hatch and halting the things attempt to ram its way out of there. They wait a moment to approach, and then begin, satisfied the gun is dead as well.
It is not. It opens up just as the first fighter emerges from the brush and makes his way towards a dead soldier’s ammo bag. The slugs tear the man in half and rip towards his fellows, who retreat again in a confused and babbling bundle.
The grim tableau, enacted with such terrifying swiftness at its onset, now assumes the character of a stalemate. The Pesh fighters change position, readying themselves for a last rush at the vehicle, which has settled in the middle of the road, unable to retreat or advance not due to the profusion of flaming wrecks, but to the dead driver within whose face has been pulpified. But the turret of the weapon continues to move, searching in a slow circle, occasionally letting loose with a belch of death. The defiant beast against the dark pine and its unseen occupants touches something within me—pity? Rooting for the underdog? After all, they have come here to kill me—but that have never meant much to something that can not die. Whatever the reason, I decide to wet my blade.
Yes, my blade. I had found it beneath my temple as I burrowed in the unseen ways which I littered with the bones of those I had brought here. I had found a tomb. A tomb with a low central dais upon which were the remains of an ancient king, a long-dead protector of some forgotten realm. The jewels that adorned his crown and scepter held little interest to me, though they betrayed no hint of time. But the sword, which the skeletal fingers held pried to its chest, well, that was an object I could utilize. A weapon that I instinctively knew how to apply in the most expert of ways. Looking at my eyes reflected in the gleaming blade, I trigger a rush of ancient memories. The times of the Variag, and the burning chaos-wheel, that filled the sky with the flame of change. The day the overlord had died. Other ages, other tales. Perhaps it was my corpse that sat upon this throne.
The gloom of centuries removed from light has not dulled its finish; the ticking of time unguessed has not blunted its edge. It leaps from its scabbard with a grateful cry, and flashing at the end of my arm in a gleaming trail it leads me crashing through the underbrush towards the carnage below, my war cry rising like a wave of doom.
They hear my wail and know that I have come. Two manage to pivot their position and lay down a pattern of fire which tears apart the bushes just ahead of me. A grenade explodes and I leap above the fire, trailing hair like a cloak as I emerge through the canopy of brush, nude, glittering blade raised on high, and I plummet earthwards in a deadly arc. Wild-eyed, a fighter raises his weapon, spitting death too late as my sword splits his body from neck to groin, spilling his vitals into the dirt. I continue with my movement, compressing and hacking to the right, extending my arm from its socket in an impossible blow that disembowels my victim, leaving him fumbling with his severed entrails.
I see the fighters like red blobs through the brush as I line up, coming in low and fast, striking with my weapon in one great slit, interrupted only by the blossoming of cloven flesh. I strike like lightening, bouncing off trees, the leaves whispering my passage as I heap the ground with writhing men.
As my scimitar projects in one direction, so my foot moves in another, clawed and knotted and lurking at the end of my leg, striking another man in the face, knocking his lower jaw clean out of the socket as his tongue flaps wetly. Arm raises, gun chatters, arm lowers, brains spurt. I spin a blood weaving, a manic expression which leaves my blade sheathed to the hilt in another man’s chest. He feels the steel sliding into him and I fancy that he thinks—
“So this is what its like. This is what it feels like to die.” All his worries are gone, and the biggest mystery in his life has been solved. And he realizes that it is really not as bad as he may have thought it would be, even considering the violent nature of his death, and the bad reputation that dying has. And I think that maybe this helps him know peace.
The sword flies from the chest, trailing gore and dragging his soul behind it. When my sword dances in this way I build up a vortex of ghosts, who are trapped by the blade and transferred along its length into my groping hole. Feeling glee as I suck the dead, I dent a head. The blow is so solid that the skull breaks in the perfect outline of the intruding foot; when I recoil and attempt retraction, the foot stays in the man’s skull, my toe claws wiggling in his gray matter. It throws me off just enough to make me stumble, my foot clearing in an eruption of chunks. But that creates enough time for the last of their number to react—react by falling to his knees and praying to me in a rush of hysterical babble. Sparing him does not interest me and seconds later his decapitated head rolls at my feet, then feels the rude insertion of my questing tongue as I take my sweet and sexy time with him.
The few survivors of my assault thrash off through the brush, careening over the rocky soil directly into the sights of others who wish to kill them. Most notably the Hind that I can already hear making its way towards the column. I have no wish to encounter this creature in any way, as its rocket pods could easily tear me apart. I beat a hasty retreat to the temple.
I have a nice slit trench that I bolt up, noting gratefully the sounds of the Hind attacking the lower slopes. I pause and look back, seeing the bug-like machine flash through a gap in the pine and then bob high and away from the slope, its load erupting behind in a roar of napalm. I can feel rather than hear the thin and piping sounds of men being burned alive. It makes my pussy wet.
Then comes a surprising sight, as a sole Iraqi soldier moves in
to view, in the clearing below my now ruined and smoking temple. He darts rock-to-rock, his clothing charred, his helmet gone, but still doggedly intent on completing his mission. My capture, my death, or his.
I enter the temple from below and take a position in the center of the complex, where I sit back and wait. He approaches through a hole one of their missiles has blown in the wall, and he fearfully begins to examine the temples rubble-strewn interior. Alarmed by the amount of bones and the voluminous silence, he becomes more and more frightened, and his grip increases on the handle of his weapon. He approaches the low and murky corridor that leads to my den. I am exactly aware of his every movement as he draws near and I feel his increasing fear. I raise the level of my breathing to just the point where he might be able to imagine that he hears it, increasing his apprehension to an even more palatable level.
He moves to the threshold of the door, long since removed, and moves into the chamber where I wait above him, folded into a nook of stone. His weapon traces a slow circle about the room, lit only by cracks of sunshine through the broken walls.
He is a young man, dark-eyed with finely-formed features and a thick, manly mustache. His eyes dart intently about, at one point looking directly at me. He stops and freezes, and I pull a thong which releases a load of ossified bones onto him in a sepulcherous torrent. His weapon explodes through the clutch of the crypt, spraying bony chunk. I drop upon the beautiful wretch and in a glimmering arc hack the end of his weapon off in a brief flurry of sparks.