patrol 3: room

We’re staging in a giant apartment complex.  A known rebel socialite fortress. Dr. Seuss must’ve been the architect and the endless staircase guy the general contractor.  There’s stuff fitting the description of “degenerate art” on the walls (word pictures mostly), and it’s already mounted at odd, unflattering angles because of the half-assed geometry.  Hopefully that’ll be enough for the brass. Tearing all this shit down for a bonfire would be an awful slog.  

Turok is scared, freaking out because he’s “never seen this much indoors.”  I remind him to use his inside voice if he’s going to have a panic attack.  

We’re attached to some scarier, dumber unit.  Leashed marines with adult handlers. Their slogan is “More Angels Killed Than Bayonetta,” and they won’t stop saying it.    Mostly Arctician girls with the same stupid pink emo highlights and thick noses (I tell Turok he should bridenap one of them.  This calms him down, or at least redirects the fear somewhere healthy).  

Drones scamper underfoot.  In the hills behind us there’s big arty and generals peering through their glasses (just like witches at black masses?)

Drones report something to someone important, then it’s crunch.

Dog whistles blow at ultrasonic.  Leash holders don’t even hear the signal.  This is a children’s crusade.

We start clearing room by room.  

Breach, shoot.  

Rounds go in, rounds go out, like the funeral worms.  Catch me playing pinochle in one of these narrow fucking aparments lit with the same kind of sick as a “sick EDM beat.”  Not a chance.  

Every single room is different, like gates to different universes.  The universal constant in here—this little cosmos of sentimental objects just waiting for the Cat in the Hat to do a B&E—is clearly violence.  To hell with mathemagics. Here’s a guy defending his home with pots and pans on his head. Modified SCA. Here’s a woman with a collection of steampunk pistols that don’t fire but hurt bad when they’re thrown at your fucking face.  Here’s the loneliest soldier ever with the expected 7.62s. All of them get it.

These marines are really living up to their Punisher facemasks, throwing special occasion one-liners as they hop over dead bodies.  

“I DO VIOLENCE.”

“I’M A VIOLENT FEMME.”

“FUCK YOUR HOME AND FAMILY.”

We pass a huge teddy bear that looks like it might come to life at any moment.  This very cute, very wholesome, but very pretend thought now defines this theater.  

Heavy gut laughs for everyone.  

Gut laughs lower inhibitions.  Lowered inhibitions thwart readiness.  [Additional PSYOPs ASMR video excerpt].  

1 or 2 fingers after we’re underway, comm chatter about the bear begins.  “Hey does this thing move? Hahaha.” 1 fist later chatter is talking ambiguously or just outright making fiction about the bear: “Fire coming from the bear.”  Comms erode despite me and one other LT telling them not to fuck around. 2 fists later, bear has become a real source of anxiety or maybe just pretend-anxiety, I can’t tell (“Who has eyes on the bear?”)  4 fists later comm chatter is like that Orson Welles broadcast. The bear is the alien menace. Bloody brass listening are the scared people of Jew Nersey calling the station to check if its real. 

But attempting to confirm anything is useless at this point, since the folie-a-however-many has spread and is louder than two LTs.  Some higher-up makes the decision to direct artillery fire at our position.

Stuff is exploding around me.  I give orders that are mostly stupid or rap lyrics, while explosions that sound like beats for the latter drop the base around us.  “Take cover,” “Get low,” “Watch asses.” I feel the black bars closing in on my vision again. This is obviously a cutscene. Storyline battle?  Nah. Not enough control, and also we might die for real.

—

Impacts collapse the floor under me and a big statue of Courtney Love falls and closes up the ceiling where everything fell through.  No doors work. No exit from this universe.  

I’m trapped down here with two dead marines.  I kick them over, take tags, appreciate the fact that the sheetrock dust makes us all white and samey-looking.  Uncanny Valley girls.

But after 1 fist, I’m a wreck.  Like, totally.  

Try to shut down emotionally, but go into a loop like when the dumbass computer wants to do a million updates before powering off.  I start to think about the dead peeps in terms of those GovBox ads that 30 year olds fall asleep to in hospice.

“CITIZEN:  SHE’S YOUR SISTER” … err, nope never had one.

“CITIZEN:  SHE’S YOUR MOTHER” … OK, since this whole day has been poisonous pretending.

One corpse starts yelling at me (just in my minds eye, I hope, I’m not a fucking medic), Momma’s drawl.  Images of a milk jug. Then spilt milk. Then me, finger raised like a towel scholar. “What good is crying over … ” slapped upside the head, that’s what.  Strong memory of swollen jaw, defense mechanisms fire.

Me on the back of that milk jug.  Larger image next to mine is an artist’s depiction of the orc that kidnapped me.  Crude GIMP work by a GovRep paid less than I am to shoot people dressed like Dr. Who.  Titillating though. Orc has big muscles and a hardon. Obviously Monster Manual 3E (hardon sourced from stock photos).  Message without written words (which are obv illegal): You should fear this orc. Submessage: You want to fuck this orc. Subsubmessage:  This girl is missing. My gleefully pretending mind: You BET I’m missing!

(Momma crying over milk jug)

My cast-off/funeral under the interstate.  Just a pair of underwear. Orc ate the rest.  Rats in attendance, 10. Acquaintances that I never called friends in attendance, 20.  Momma there bawling her eyes out. Priceless.

Step off the pretend-train into beautiful Sub-basement Town.  Population: me and casualties. Real fire coming from above quickly ushers me back onto the train, where everyone I’ve ever done wrong is waiting to slap me across the face with every mistake I’ve ever made.  Is my squad dead up there? The doublefisted piss pounding they’re giving me on this train makes me think they must be, and these are their thicc, weighty ghosts.  

At some point, I scream and punch a hole in the drywall which is the side of the train which is the drywall.  Maybe no hole. Maybe my fist just bounced. But something feels dislocated.

I spend swollen fist time sitting in the back seat building alternate realities from recurring thoughts (or thoughts about thoughts) in my head.  Do you see why I hate fiction yet?

“Your father should have raped some sense into you,” I say to Jester a long time ago, my head says to me.  

This thought spawns many worlds, and our real Earth Prime of “how Jester actually responded” is only one of them.  Earth Prime was her getting red in the face, laughing hysterically, us eating ice pops afterwards. But on Earth Three-Fivety-Six, she’s a dictator—a sassier, less smol Lord Nim—monologuing about me, saying things I can’t hear that were never said that my mind only registers as ‘HURTFUL’ with no additional intel.  

“You … “ + [some distorted mind-speech with a scathing tone and impossible-to-understand words] is basically what I’m hearing from my brain, but I respond to it out loud like I hear everything perfectly:

• ”Oh, fucking every brat thinks that they know better!” 

• “So you’re saying that sense is your particular virtue?” 

• “Actually Jester, you’re an obnoxious diva who was the Best Hope of your shitty muckdweller parents, and you grew into a little spoiled bitch because everyone was always holding you up.”  

And in my head, there’s a hippo campus of hungry hungry academics that just pore over Jester’s actual response and invent new “evidence” to modulate the frequency of the accusatory mind noise so that it can keep.  goING. FOREVER.

Fortunately, each response I give disperses the pretend haze a little bit and I get glimpses of the situation around me.  Bodies still dead. Machine gun bursts every so often up above. Outside light in full retreat through cracks in the rubble.  

Oppressive nighttime crickets break me out of my stupid idiot jail of loops, and soon I hit a more gutty patch of pretend.  

This time I’m immersed in the feeling that I’ve scored some verbal slam dunk on Jester and she’s upset, apologetic, or like “you’re right,” or some variation of all of these.  I imagine all this clearly. (“I know I’m right!” I screech loudly, making sharp gestures at nobody). Relief. Power? It’s kinda like when you don’t let a Bad Guy surrender and blow them away.  But this ride lasts only until muscles untense. I eventually loosen and fade back into the surrounding world mostly bored and drained and ready to shut up forever.     

Swollen fist time tapers off as my hand unfucks itself.  Does this change my perception of space and causality? Only Carl Sagan knows.

All this time spent in my head and my head hasn’t changed, including my stupid, emotion-proof face that shatters mirrors I’m within arms reach of.  I slap myself hard to cause a grimace. All this dissociating and I still can’t step outside my body and beat myself to death. I reach for the sidearm that I’m not allowed to have.  Anger when just pocket lint. 

Someone is shouting upstairs, a deep adult man voice.

I kick the door and my Adidas sneaker leaves an imprint.  

The door opens.  

“Hey.”

I say “what” or grunt.  Eye contact is no longer in the RoE.  

“You alright?”

I start shouting.  Sheetrock dust flies everywhere and overwhelms my senses.  I’m mostly blind and coughing. Do I throw a stool for effect?  Sure.

“Don’t.”

I hit my chest, sputtering out fragments of TMI-filled speech that project spittle and my anxieties onto everyone present.  Flashlights sweep across me and I reflect on how dumb my shadowpuppet must look/feel.  

“Just come out of this room.”

Heavy sighs and mouth-breathing restore order.  My eyes clear up. I’m led upstairs by some musclebound knight, around readjusted architecture and lucky reverse-snowmen who caught the homeruns that our artillery guys hit.  

—

“Did we win?” I ask while the blinders keep my eyes focused on a computer-generated image of Cait Sith dirty dancing with Aerith, the standard treatment for “battle fatigue.”  

No immediate answer.  White light from the screen is making my head hurt.

“Ma’am …,” I say making some assumptions about the gender demographics of psychiatry relief units.

A hand reaches into my recovery box and grabs my nose.  Giggling. I recognize Jester’s voice.

“Cowabunga!  What’s got 2 fists full of recess time and no KIAs in their unit?”

I make a wooooooo sound.  It’s sincere.  

The screen shuts off just seconds after the dance number transitions to Khia “My Neck, My Back,” a great segue into my complaints for the medical officer.  

I’m cleared in two fingers.

“Jester,” I’m determined to say something honest that might kill some demons.

She’s already engaged in a post-mission dance party.

“We’re here, we’re queer, so get used to it!  We’re here, we hear. Here queer. Here. Queer?”   

“Let’s go play DOOM.”