and its constant rain, nothing stayed dry.
You can’t remember the last time you slept. Fucking mosquitos and fuck knows what else buzzing in your ear all the live long night. You’ve had the shits for days.
Farted yesterday—or was it the day before?—and dammit if you didn’t crap yourself. The humiliation of asking for new skivvies is not one you’d ever care to repeat. And to make matters worse, you’re not entirely sure why any of you are even here. These people live like savages, thatched huts, no electricity, no water, no fucking antibiotics. What does America care what these backward motherfuckers do, anyway? They might as well be on another planet for all you care. These doubts worry away at the small piece of your mind not occupied with the basic necessities of survival.
Finally in the village and Brewster goes apeshit, brains a villager for looking at him. Grabs the screaming wife and rapes her with his gun. Pulls the trigger.
The horror is incomprehensible. You think you’re going to pass out. The blood pooling from between her legs like a period gone wrong. You start laughing. The expression on her face, gook eyes all contorted and the shock of it. You laugh until you throw up.
You look up and a group of the guys are taking turns with a girl. She can’t be more than fourteen. She stopped screaming after the first one. Martin’s got a gun in each hand, playing John Wayne, shooting them off one after the other, villagers falling in his wake. Red. Everything is red. The world has turned upside down. The screams make you want to tear your ears off. Every way you turn something else to assault your eyes. Charlie Company has lost it.
All you can think about is your mother and her fried chicken recipe, and Elizabeth, your highschool sweetheart. She let you go all the way as a goodbye present. You just want to get back to that safe place. Please, let me get back to that safe place , you find yourself saying aloud.
Platoon leader Carlisle sees you standing there. “Get your thumb out of your ass, corporal, and join the party!” He pushes a teenage girl your way, she collapses at your feet, begging in her language for mercy. You stare at her. This is not you. This is not you.
“What’re you? A faggot?” Carlisle screams in your face.
“No. Sir!”
“Then fuck the bitch!”
“Sir…!”
“That’s an order! DO IT!” Carlisle is apoplectic.
You can’t do it out here. You take her inside a hut. You count three dead bodies. Old women. The girl screams and weeps. You wonder if these screams will satiate Carlisle. Your dick has never felt less like fucking in your entire life. In fact, you might never fuck again. The image of Brewster and the gun makes the gorge rise in your throat. You try to calm the girl. You look out the door and see Carlisle is otherwise occupied: spearing children with his bayonet, wailing like a cat in heat every time. You turn and the girl plants a dull machete right into your face. You’re not angry. You hope she’s killed you. You’re dead inside already.
You stumble from the hut and yank the blade from your face. The blood hot down your cheeks, chin, soaking the top of your shirt. You fall to the ground, praying for forgiveness. The world fades from red to black.
You wake up back in America.
Randall Ransom died in My Lai.
Ripper Ransom was resurrected in the Roswell Institute.
When the doctors asked if they should plastic surgery the scar away, you told them no.
That scar is the only thing that reminds you of the innocent boy you once were before you they made you into this monster of a man.
8:20 AM The Wreckage
J ust four miles from where Ripper Ransom sits in the Roswell Institute, the sun has risen over Charles Wallace Crane’s now-flattened Hollywood hill. It’s clear to the crime scene investigators that nothing else remains but dirt and ash. That there were thousands on this very site just hours before is almost impossible to believe. There is no
You can’t remember the last time you slept. Fucking mosquitos and fuck knows what else buzzing in your ear all the live long night. You’ve had the shits for days.
Farted yesterday—or was it the day before?—and dammit if you didn’t crap yourself. The humiliation of asking for new skivvies is not one you’d ever care to repeat. And to make matters worse, you’re not entirely sure why any of you are even here. These people live like savages, thatched huts, no electricity, no water, no fucking antibiotics. What does America care what these backward motherfuckers do, anyway? They might as well be on another planet for all you care. These doubts worry away at the small piece of your mind not occupied with the basic necessities of survival.
Finally in the village and Brewster goes apeshit, brains a villager for looking at him. Grabs the screaming wife and rapes her with his gun. Pulls the trigger.
The horror is incomprehensible. You think you’re going to pass out. The blood pooling from between her legs like a period gone wrong. You start laughing. The expression on her face, gook eyes all contorted and the shock of it. You laugh until you throw up.
You look up and a group of the guys are taking turns with a girl. She can’t be more than fourteen. She stopped screaming after the first one. Martin’s got a gun in each hand, playing John Wayne, shooting them off one after the other, villagers falling in his wake. Red. Everything is red. The world has turned upside down. The screams make you want to tear your ears off. Every way you turn something else to assault your eyes. Charlie Company has lost it.
All you can think about is your mother and her fried chicken recipe, and Elizabeth, your highschool sweetheart. She let you go all the way as a goodbye present. You just want to get back to that safe place. Please, let me get back to that safe place , you find yourself saying aloud.
Platoon leader Carlisle sees you standing there. “Get your thumb out of your ass, corporal, and join the party!” He pushes a teenage girl your way, she collapses at your feet, begging in her language for mercy. You stare at her. This is not you. This is not you.
“What’re you? A faggot?” Carlisle screams in your face.
“No. Sir!”
“Then fuck the bitch!”
“Sir…!”
“That’s an order! DO IT!” Carlisle is apoplectic.
You can’t do it out here. You take her inside a hut. You count three dead bodies. Old women. The girl screams and weeps. You wonder if these screams will satiate Carlisle. Your dick has never felt less like fucking in your entire life. In fact, you might never fuck again. The image of Brewster and the gun makes the gorge rise in your throat. You try to calm the girl. You look out the door and see Carlisle is otherwise occupied: spearing children with his bayonet, wailing like a cat in heat every time. You turn and the girl plants a dull machete right into your face. You’re not angry. You hope she’s killed you. You’re dead inside already.
You stumble from the hut and yank the blade from your face. The blood hot down your cheeks, chin, soaking the top of your shirt. You fall to the ground, praying for forgiveness. The world fades from red to black.
You wake up back in America.
Randall Ransom died in My Lai.
Ripper Ransom was resurrected in the Roswell Institute.
When the doctors asked if they should plastic surgery the scar away, you told them no.
That scar is the only thing that reminds you of the innocent boy you once were before you they made you into this monster of a man.
8:20 AM The Wreckage
J ust four miles from where Ripper Ransom sits in the Roswell Institute, the sun has risen over Charles Wallace Crane’s now-flattened Hollywood hill. It’s clear to the crime scene investigators that nothing else remains but dirt and ash. That there were thousands on this very site just hours before is almost impossible to believe. There is no
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