MIKE SHEPLEY
Killing Symbols
Hey buzzard meat,
Ramrod; ream and clean. They Inspect these guns before the big ceremony. Spit and polish do make boots and buttons gleam. And, cuz I am such a trooper, I get this detail again and again.
I must look real sharp, marching up, presenting arms, taking stance... then aim…
...mutha of all! How I hate executions!
Oh, these condemned, they're good. The best! Impassive from the barbed wire camp on through the route, pelted with tomat and egg, sometimes fresh nightsoil. Pig and chicken innards. They still stand
tall unmoved, proud. Haughty, you might say, Covered over with jetsam and verbal invective. Hell, they go to the wall composed, content and self‑centered...1 might even say––HAPPY!
And though it could cost my life to whisper aloud, their control could almost convert me to the other side.
Pride, in the face of bullets at the very end, period
Well, anyways, I get an extra bottle of plain red for the duty. And, it IS better than being forced to be a spectator.
At first, after a great victory, huge mobs will fill the square, a cheering and a screaming to end the world. And they will stay for hours. It's a freak show carnival, costumes, beer venders... the whole lot singing out the latest cobbled up propaganda songs with hired troubadours cheer!eading 'em all on...
"All hail us, the eternal strong..."
"Steel hard into victory..."
"After fire flowers bloom..."
"Remembered our martyred sisters..."
You know the tunes. Only the words get reassembled, depending on who we attack, or who attacked us, this time. After awhile though, well, the thrill just gets gone. The melodrama turns into a slow mechanical puppet show.
You seen a dozen shootings, you seen a thousand. The crowds go. Pretty quick, too. Other things better to do. Like find fuel. Food...
So then the low are rounded up and herded in to watch. Bored soldiers without duty are marched out from the barracks and formed up in standing ranks as "witness" for hours on end. Man, that IS miserable!
I hear, other‑wise, the assembly for watching executions doubles as a cover for the MARQUE NOIRE.
But, wisely, I would surely not know...
Well, so... there are worse duties, Less the vino, too. Maybe it's best not to complain. But after four or
five executions, the old shoulder is bruised burning hot, and it is not easy to get sleep that night. And there's the damn ringing left in the ears, too, Like after battle…
...not that I've been in them that often. Three, only. And two were really minor skirmishes. What was that old definition of war for the soldier? A year of pure ennui punctuated by three minutes of bowel evacuating hot holy terror?
I'd give up two years of executioning to avoid ten seconds of real war. At least you know how the execution thing is going to turn out. With real war you could wind up with the bloody bullet! Or even worse...believe me, I've seen worse happen than death. Many times...
The Detail, like I said, is a machine puppet show. March out like wooden soldiers, all dolled up like Xmas nutcrackers. Stand stiff in a line as they drag The Stiff to the wall. Listen to the warrant be mumbled by some low rank officer. Always the same...
"The Condemned, by order of The State's ultimate and high authorities, pursuant all proper process, has been brought here..."
Booohriiiing bureaucrat boilerplate. The condemned never mentioned by name. One size fits all...
...then: "Load! Aim!" and when the officer's sunshine sword falls‑KA‑blammo!
A dozen holes in the condemned's chest and skull. No one dares miss, either. They check, real close. Group punishment. No red. Midnight watch for a week. Latrine digging details, all around.
In short‑ no one misses. Ka‑bloom!
So, one down, they drag him away. Bring up another. Lasts only an hour or so. Often less. Then the next squad takes over.
Well, not so many condemned left to shoot anymore now anyway.
Oh yeah. When we go to war, like twice a year around here, the leaders make a bunch of noise.
THERE WILL BE WAR CRIMES TRIALS! IF YOU––meaning the opposing leadership––DARE TO
FIGHT YOU ALL WILL BE TOAST!––But the big guys on every side know better. Way better. No one of them is going to ever hang. One hand washes the other. Always.
Now, among the mere mortal pawns, there are plenty of war crimes. War is pure unadulterated hell. And, well... there just are no prisoners. A bayonet thrust, the edge of a knife...no bullets wasted. Ever. So goes the way it always goes.
War with muskets and makeshift cannon is a very slow go. But, then again, we usually don't have far to go. A couple ripe cornfields, a herd of cattle. A mine. A spring. These are the targets for our campaigns. We go for the close and the practical,
Don't you wonder what it must have been like way back when, though? When a V of 20 lightning fast airbirds would flash in from the horizon to drop thunder and turn a couple square kilometers of living land to ash under instant fire? Ah, the aroma of that kind of quick victory––chemical smoke mixed with the sick‑sweet smell of crispy animal...
And then you could watch half of that fleeing V be turned into flaming meteors as the AA missiles caught up with them…
It must have been some sight, almost mythical, way back then...
...and think of the battles at night! Like galaxies clashing right over the face of the earth! A hundred thousand blazing wasps zipping through the ink dark skies, And endless sounds of hail hitting metal and the whistling of a thousand devils in the dark. Fountains of fire bursting across hills and dales, forrests torched, and cities. One helluva great hooha, that, then…
For all of ten minutes...
Then the soft cattle sounds under the soft silent beauty of the distant stars... from the wounded left
alone to die...
Well, what the hell. That was long ago. Three, four decades? There are a few left who know the tales. One wonders if they don't embellish some, I probably would.
Now we live in a world where big holes remain where fabled towns once rose. And we can visit, at a distance, the moon cratered, abstract sculptured ruins of the once great burgs. To think, a million, even more, once lived gathered together in such small spaces.
And we all know the broken metal arches of ancient bridges, those that glow a strange blue in the nights. And the broken dams still standing as large as the lost Roman aqueducts. From before...
... and we've all seen the fields of metal shells, like giant emptied horse shoe crabs shells strung across the country sides. All burned out charcoal black inside, lying over, even upside down. The remains of the great armored armies of before...
...yes, before...
Before the "Final" War, the war that must end all more war. So they thought then.
Some say there were ten times as many of us alive then. Not just "us" us, but the whole of homo sapiens the world across. And that then we were not bent backed and lobster handed, too often with an extra and worthless stubbed appendage. Unmarked by the ugly stains of rust and moss running down our skins, Unpitted, and with noses and ears, ancient beasts hard to believe in, instead of our familiar holes.
And with straight teeth, standing straight, hard and white in near perfect rows. And even chins! Chins of all descriptions!
Hard to buy. That war to end all war––ah, sardonic irony multiplied by three! More than thirty years before. Twelve before I was birthed. It sounds like the tall tales of the Religious' paradise.
But some few, crippled, blind, still remain who clearly lived then. And the pictures, moving and otherwise…
I suppose it is fortunate that we both live in nations ruled by rational elites. Logical rulers. Ones that do not rely on flying invisible beings for justice. Ones who understand that all order comes from the muzzle of the gun.
And when the Holy Hordes––men, women and children––charge with their sharpened sticks and throwing stones, hot mystic hymns spitting from their lips… well... We can cut them down. Like ripe sheaves before sharp machine shears...
On the other hand, I suppose their method does help reduce their excess populations. You know, in such theosophies it is a sin, and quick death, to mess with reproductive nature...
And there are so many of them around now. The religious states. Even the pseudo‑rationalist. Who, still, when alliance is needed, transform overnight, according to the press, into mind mates of the pristine pure logic...
Even the day he tells me to start to pray...
...maybe especially!
Anyways––countries! We are all told by the "old ones" they would have called our nations mere "counties" a way back then. The largest state in this part of the world is a couple hundred square kilos round and has, maybe, 40 thousand head of human.
Well...anyways, did I tell you about last June, in the March war of the year XXXIII, we took this burg, once and now again part of our hereditary territory? It has a foundry that the xtians wrecked as they retreated. And a coal mine whose entrance we are still trying to find under the rubble of a collapsed hillside…
But we have the houses. Half the xtians left. Or maybe all, since this burg has changed hands so often. We
brought our own refugees in to fill them.
So, small gain, but some, For the blood paid...
Enough of our own to support us in this occupation, anyway. The xtians, or others, stare daggers into our backs, waiting for their sweet day of vengeance. Personally I, and most of my pawn compadres, would prefer to be shooting them. ALL of them. Or gathering them into a barn and torching it...
But our High Lords of Logic know that their labor is an economic boon, a long term gain for the commonweal. I suppose... still, I'd love to measure the calories that go into them versus the energy they productively put out...
So, like I say, we just shoot a few examples from time to time. The state, the Hypothetical one, both inside and out, has always survived on good doses of preventative terror. One might say––as I do here––that the great terrorists will always rule in the human sea.
Act too weak. Eaten up by the neighbor, by insider wanna‑beez. It's true here. And everywhere else. Naturally, however, here we are ruled by superior, and humane, logic. Live long and prosper, baubie...
I am sure you see, brother.
Oh...and we only shoot the males. The females we strip then whip through the streets, then chain them to some corner side pedestal for the passers‑by to stare at. The shameless hussies blush only a bit at sunrise and sunset. They, too, remain impassive…
Our guys with the chisels are amazing, they can remove plaster cloaks as fast as figleaves, even if,
perhaps, they get a bit creative when left too long with their implements. Still, the law is the law.
I understand the wivewomen of the state get a bit huffy about the expositioning of these ladies. Hard to beat near ideal perfection in the flesh, as it were. Anyway, like most footsloggers I cannot afford a wifewoman anyway. Much less two...
Well, like I say, we shoot the males. And the gargoyles. And the Angels of indeterminate sex anyway. And the demons, for good measure,
I felt pretty sorry for our prisoners‑of‑conscious though. It can be damn dangerous work to climb the front of some blasted church and knock these statues loose, then winch them down. I think more of the slave labor dies than graven images.
Of course, I know stone doesn't die. But the symbolism is very important, as I am sure you see. On the one side to show the vacillators on our side that the other's idols are impotent, to prove to the fools on the other side that their ideology is rotten right at its roots. If their gods had any real power they would intervene to save their worldly stand‑ins.
Makes perfect sense to me. Then there is the extra red...
Besides, the example made doesn't take much of a cognitive leap for the average ass to figure out what we would do to his kith and kin if they get in our way again.
It is, as the Sargent always says, the necessary gesture, Life could get a lot worse real fast, otherwise.
After we blast them they are carted off with oxen, back to the prison camp where the human condemned turn them in busted pieces, then big rocks, then smaller rocks. Now there is deadly duty. With hammers, all day. For years. Hurts too much to even contemplate. No wonder they cry such bitter tears. Curse us from the close edge of silence...
Call us IKONOKLASTS… which, I guess, we is.
I sorta feel sorry for them, Twice, Hard to lose your land, and all, then have to deconstruct your
mindset...
Well, like you know I say bro––life in the army's been worse.
So, how has it been hanging in your barracks. Write soon, wait too long and I might not still be here...
And take care!
Keep your powder dry––
Your elder and better, always, brother
Copyright © 2016 Map Literary
Mr. Shepley is a freelance writer/researcher, which leaves latitude to indulge in fiction. In the past several years he has had tales published in AtlanticPacific Review (Under Mike Briscoe), Snail Mail Review, with Verdad online & London Magazine online each publishing a tale from his collection of short fiction titled The War Book (the book as yet unpublished). The story published here in Map Literary is also from that book. He received Honorable Mentions in the Lorian Hemingway fiction contest three years running from 2012 to 2014. He lives and writes now in Sacramento, CA.
