ARMY (excerpt from Killer of Killers)

1.

“First” he says, “you will fight with your hands.”

I am sent to the ground, my nose broken. I don’t think he moved, maybe the slight stitch of a shoulder. I stand again and he resumes his posture his arms out stretched so his body becomes a T.  This time he blasts shoulder into my chest and I roll backwards on the wet marble. We are in a massive gothic hangar with long gilded arches supporting the curved glass of the artificial sky.

“I wonder aloud if you were worth keeping” he says

“I’m starting to wonder the same.”

“Fight me.”

“This is a compound. You are ARMY. There is no fighting ARMY.”

“And all of ARMY smiles to hear. But it’s your fight that’s kept you alive thus. Stand and fight or I will end you like a lame mutt.”

I press on the bridge of my nose and force much of the thicker blood out of my nostrils. I wont be smelling for a while. I stand and the man smiles, knowing all along how things will go.

I make for his face with a quick left-right, stepping in properly. He taps away each of my fists as if swatting away fat flies. He twists his hips, spinning his upper body. His eyes follow me to the ground as he knee trips up my back leg.

His face is deadly serious during those moments of action. He smiles now, but this isn’t a smiling time and I fear wont become one for a very long time, if ever again. It hadn’t occurred to me before but I’ve come to realize something I’d somehow missed.

I was becoming ARMY.

This must be how it happens.

Death is nothing next to this life.

2.

Dimes fly by and still this man beats me, from rise to fall. I thought the first day was a sort of passing, but I can’t remember how long it’s been since then. The time is lost; I have no sense of it. I haven’t even touched him yet. But I will, someday. I will touch him with a real laster.

3.

This man passes my limits, leaving no area unhit. He is careful not to break my bones, but he causes optimum pain with each hit. He is a master of pain. I have been becoming harder to hit, but he isn’t stretched a bit. I have come to see he’s barely trying. He could punch his arm right through me. I am on the ground gushing blood. I will taste blood forever. I try to stop my heart with my mind, as the massive room spins around me.

At the end of the session, however many it’s been, he says:

“Sleep there, when you wake up we’ll get you squared.”

4.

I wake to the sound of horns, glory horns, I think they call them. For the glory of ARMY. The ground is bobbing. I am being carried on a length of cloth. I am too weak to resist these strange men in rubber suits. They look through their goggles with bored eyes, routine eyes. I fall away from the world and into the sky and rip through the clouds into outer space, achieving a great arc before falling back down, tearing through the heavens, to the ground, where I wake up in a sort of shock. I am, as a fact, being shocked. Tiny pads are stuck to my body with wires running from them. I am half submerged in a large tube. A round red orb watches me as little machines tick away my progress. This is a laugh, I must say, my thoughts are clearer then ever as my body is jolted relentlessly. I feel the juice cutting through my body. I can’t understand why they are doing this. How is this training? More tubes are coming out of my arms pumping some milky liquids in and other darker liquids out. This goes on for many days, half-asleep/half-awake, until I feel the like killing GOD and GODESS. 

5.

I awake in a small cubey room. Everything is levels of tan. Everything is rounded and safe, yet sturdy. There’s even a small light next to me. I am on a generous cot. Above me is a small reb ord, like the one in the shock-tube.

I feel rested like I never thought possible. My body no longer feels sore, quite the flip actually, I feel strong. My skin feels tight, my arms and chest are cut of the fat. I feel like tussling. On the square in front of me it says: FOR THE GLORY OF ARMY. On the table is a tan book with military lettering: SRM (SIMPLE READY MANUAL). I open the small book and flip through the pages, which are as thin as those of a holy book, but untearable. I enjoy the simple language and crisp diagrams of this book. I stop at a section about bomb making and begin to read. That door will eventually slide open and I assume I will be further trained- but for what?

“I wonder aloud”

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