Tora Tora Tora

Crew Cut and I sat on wooden benches inside of a rusted out garbage bin at a turn in the mountain pass. The side of the garbage bin opposite of the road was broken at the hinges and open to the forest, providing a strange rusty-framed vantage for the eye's journey down the various steppes of the pass as it dropped in noticeable gradients like a shading scale or broken staggered piano keys. The distance decreased between steppes, the action of an imperfect collidescope, some architect, we saw this all clearly here from our metal nest twirling down into the predawn black. I imagined seeing camels and a grotesque band of draped nomads fluttering somewhere in the void. We switched about looking though a leather and brass telescope.

With a sudden flurry of movement from his otherwise still body, Crew Cut alerted me to the appearance of a green column of Russian tanks and personnel carriers which were rapidly approaching our location at the bend in the road from behind the bulge in the mountainside. The men were walking beside the tanks, and began reconnoitering the area presumably for IEDs and RPG/sniper teams. Their canteens, ammo packs and various other, black-shaded hanging regalia clinked and popped loudly. The men now behind us, behind our rusty metal sheath, were marked by frequent audible signs of exhaustion, a fact which only increased the numbing fear in my head. Our garbage bin was a prime target for a security sweep. We had come prepared, however, with the disguises of homeless men, papers from the nearby town for Bruskehbki to use as shitting fodder, vodka, a pair of man-sized cardboard boxes and so on. After dispatching the appropriate signals, we quickly disassembled our radio equipment, and piled the "trash" into a plastic deli bag along with drying cured meats and packets of soy marinade. Instead of staying silent--we decided to call their bluff and appear roaring drunk.

We were being held at gunpoint. Crew Cut started up in dance and they shot him in the belly and cracked him in the skull with rifle-butts. He's not breathing regularly---forcefully. Now and then his body pulsates and blood red sloppy vomit slides out of his mouth off his face between vollies of foamy white convulsions. He's dead and his eyes are empty now--this struggle is just for show...I cry as I wipe the bloody vomit from his chin with a moth eaten, filthy sock.

I see her from outside a metal gate locked by grey handcuffs. My wife and I are waiting, bloodied for her as we cry for help--we wonder if she will help or if she will shoo us away, knowing the harm we could be carrying with us.