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Obstacle
Courses Were Not The Only Obstacles
I am standing. I am
wearing green military fatigues. Other young men in fatigues are
milling about me screaming and frothing. I think there is close
to a hundred of them. It feels familiar.
I’ve been here before?
Déjà vu?
Déjà vécu?
I think I’m in boot camp.
Is that right? Could it
really be?
I am afraid.
I look down at my
hands. Surprised to see that I am wearing modified boxing gloves
and I am wearing a helmet. And a plastic cup girdled over my
hips covering my genitals. The air is thick with potential
danger. People are screaming for bloodshed, anyone’s. It did not
seem to matter whose blood is to be spilled. It doesn’t matter
who is be beaten to a pulp and fall. The fabric of reality
around me seems to shift. Everything uncertain.
I am aware of all of
us reverting back into our killer-ape ancestors. I am struggling
to control my growing fear.
I am trying hard to
amplify my growing excitement, my aggression. I want to do well.
I want to please my drill instructors. I want to impress my
fellow recruits. I want to become the killer they want me to
become.
Where am I? Shouldn’t I
be somewhere else? I have another life, don’t I?
A distant part of me
feels this is all wrong.
Suddenly, I am fighting two
giant men. I think they are my squad leaders, though I’m not
certain. Didn’t they beat me up in a blanket party?
It’s so hard to think, so
hard to be certain. I am afraid. No. I am terrified.
Somewhere, I hear a scream
of outrage and terror.
“It just isn’t fair!”
The voice is from inside my
head, screaming again, “It just isn’t fair!”
They both have pugil sticks,
ready to apply their evil ambitions.
“It just isn’t fair!”
They both flash broad
arrogant smiles.
The fear centers of my brain
are stimulated. I have an acrid taste of primate panic. It is my
own.
The faces in the crowd look
surreal. Their faces are distorted, shifting, slippery.
‘Is this all real?’
I want to be anywhere but
here.
They are coming toward me.
They are coming fast.
I feel primal animal terror.
I feel rage. Both are competing, both are fueling each other.
Adrenaline surges, my heart is hammering. Buzzing white noise
rising, roaring in the interior of my head. The sharp edge of
vomit is threatening to erupt forth. I am holding it back.
I have a dismal feeling that
I am living on borrowed time.
My opponents are
coming in faster. They are trying to surround and double-team
me.
They radiated menace and
contempt. Their handsome ebony faces are stretched into snarling
masks of bestiality.
“Please God, get me out
of here!”
They are making
feinting movements with the pugil sticks, their bodies trembling
with the impending violence they are going to gleefully commit
on me. The sticks seem as if they look deadlier than they
should.
They are cussing and
jeering at me as they are circling. The dual emotions of fear
and hostility crackle between us.
“I’ll fuck you up, you
little mother fucker!”
“Your dead man, your
fucking dead!”
They sense my terror.
“Yeah, that’s it you
little pussy, you better be afraid mother fucker!”
The screaming bloodlust of
all the recruits wanting to see murder and mayhem could no
longer be heard; the white noise in my head is drowning out all
noise, even the continuing jeers and threats of my two squad
leaders fall into the background. I can hear my synapses
singing.
My vision is narrowing
into a red-hazed tunnel.
I think I feel a hot wetness
spreading around my crotch, running down my legs.
I think I pissed myself. I’m
not certain.
I am pure mindless reflex,
beyond normal awareness.
I am in fifth grade
once again, fighting for my life. The black men’s faces now look
like Billy’s face.
I feel a painful blow on my
shoulder, then my back! Then my legs! Painful blows are raining
all over my body. I am stumbling.
I am moving too slow. The
air feels as heavy as water. I am frustrated. I can’t seem to
hit them or avoid being hit.
My terror is growing.
They keep hitting me. They
hit me again, and again, and again. A knife of pain spreads
through my ribcage.
The pain takes the air out
of my lungs. My ribs feel broken, like shards of glass cutting
and hitching my insides. I can’t breathe.
I fall to the ground.
“It’s not supposed to
happen like this!”
“Oh God, oh God, please
help me!”
They both are pounding me
with murderous intent.
They are screaming. Their
faces are demonic. They are pounding me repeatedly, over and
over and over, again and again and again. The frequency of the
blows increasing exponentially in time as the pain I am feeling
with each blow is also increasing exponentially in intensity.
I hurt all over.
I am pain.
“I can’t breathe!”
“I’m going to die!”
“I can’t fucking
breathe!”
The beating doesn’t stop.
“Where the fuck are the
drill instructors?”
“Why aren’t they helping
me?”
I have an overpowering urge
to be in the arms of my Mother and Father.
“Their still together, or
are they?”
“Fuck! I’m going to die!
It’s not supposed to happen this way!”
Why doesn’t someone save
me!”
In the backdrop of my mind I
hear whistles blowing and screaming. The drill instructors are
rushing in, pushing my murderers out of the way.
I look up and see Staff Sgt.
Steward and Sgt Valentine standing over me.
“Thank fucking God!”
I notice that they are both
holding evil looking pugil sticks. Theirs do not have any
padding. Valentine’s stick looks sharp on one end. Both of their
faces look menacing, evil and not quite human.
They are screaming at me.
“You are a fucking pussy!”
You’re a worthless piece of
maggoty shit!”
Get the fuck out of my
fucking Marine Corp cock-face!”
Now they are both swinging
their sticks at me.
I am unable to move.
I am able to feel
horrible pain.
I feel a sharp stick
puncture my ribs.
The two black men that had
beaten me down were now beating me once again as well.
The four of them are hitting
and stabbing me viciously.
The entire platoon is
screaming encouragement for my death.
I am the embodiment of pain.
“I can’t fucking
breathe!”
I am dying….
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