Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

by Austin Aragon

  The next nail begins to rip. “No! No! Fuck! Ah!”

  Then the next.

  “Jesus no! Please fucking stop. What is going on! Help! I have to be free. I can’t be caged! You can’t control me!” Peter rolls his head and his body shakes violently in the bounds. They begin punching him again.

  “God listen to this guy,” laughs the leader. “Fucking loony. See, these Earthlings aren’t that tough.”

  They reach the final nail, his thumb. Peter cries out.

  Kill them all!

  “God, fucking, ah!”

  Kill them, you control yourself! You control them!

  “Stop please,” says Peter.

  No! Dare them to continue. You will only hurt them more!—create a greater offering. Find strength in me! Fresh tears run down his face. Yes, I can feel their power, they are of rage.

  “Alright, get the iron rod,” says the leader. “He won’t seem to crack.” The torturer exits outside Peter’s vision behind him to an underground tunnel.

  “You’re going to go even further?” says the sniper.

  “Further? I barely got started. This fucker is going to fry.”

  “I think he’s had enough,” says the sniper.

  The leader rotates around on his chair to face the sniper. “Are you fucking okay? What’s wrong with you? Don’t forget who the leader is here, I make the shots. And don’t forget what our cause is either. What we’re fighting for. That bastard,” the leader points his arm back at Peter, “deserves everything we can possibly do to him. He’s killed some our own friends.”

  The sniper withholds himself from saying anything more. Suddenly gunfire and yelling come from the tunnel behind Peter. The torturer sent to get the iron rod falls forward into the room with his back full of bullet holes.

  The sniper runs to a hidden tunnel covered by maps and posters, and crawls away. The leader rises as he reaches for a firearm. Soldiers with bright headlights enter into the room over the fallen body. “Drop your weapon!” says the point man. The leader raises his firearm instead.

  BANG!

  A bullet bursts through the leader’s chest, and he twists backwards over the supply rack from which he armed himself.

  “Bloody hell!” says the point man as the fire squad clears the room, “It’s one of those American Hell Dogs” The squad unties Peter, and they wrap a damp rag around his tortured hand.

  “British Grenadiers here, and you’re lucky chap, we just saved you,” says the squad leader as he continues to pan the room.

  Peter falls to his knees, the strength slowly coming back to his suspended limbs. He maintain his gaze on the hidden tunnel.

  Go after him. Kill him!

  “Oui,” says the squad leader, “You good?”

  “Yeah, let me get my stuff,” says Peter. “I’ll follow you out later,”

  “It’s not proper policy to free a POW, to just leave them on their own.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Peter rises shakily to the table, grabbing his confiscated belongings. “I need some time to think stuff out.”

  “We will be directly above where we are now.” The grenadier points his finger at the earth ceiling. “Follow the tunnel, it’s an easy one to the surface.” The squad leaves the room as their headlights illuminate the underground tunnel.

  Peter grabs the knife that killed Rommel from earlier off the table, and enters the hidden hole. He crawls through the hastily made passageway, his knees and hands sinking into the displaced earth as he moves along. At the end is a dim light. As Peter comes out, he see the sniper on his knees facing an idol—one not of me! The sniper looks back at Peter in horror. Peter breaks out of the tunnel into the room as the sniper limps for his Dragunov.

  Peter charges and tackles him, knocking the gas lamp over in the process. Its oil spills onto the floor around them, the uncontrolled flame licking up the oil into a firewall around the room and catching fire to the books and curtains around the idol. Peter smacks the sniper’s thigh wound disabling him, then pins one of his hands down, and jabs the palm of the other with the knife.

  “Stop!” says the sniper.

  He killed Rommel. Kill him slowly like they all tried to you back there. “I am the one in control. I am the one with the power here.”

  Peter punches the man repeatedly in the face as he cries out. Just like the worthless thug in Nova Carthago. He stabs his other hand with the knife. He pulls it out and thrusts it into his side keeping it there. The man moans and gags through his swollen face. Peter pauses for a moment out of breath.

  The man’s face is a beaten pulp, but yet he speaks, “Stop, you are becoming a monster. Don’t be what I am, what the aliens are.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about,” says Peter, his hands soaked in the rebel’s blood.

  “You don’t have to become a monster,” the man chocks on his bloated tongue and broken teeth, he turns to spit some out, “don’t let the war destroy you. Like it has our world.”

  “Your world,” Peter snorts. Why are you listing to him? Just cut his tongue out so you don’t have to hear his shit. “You killed Rommel. I am going to kill you regardless.”

  “I have killed many people. I regret every single one of them, even the Herculeans. Don’t be what I am soldier boy, go home, leave, to your home that isn’t destroyed yet.”

  Through his gored and fucked up face distorted by Peter’s hands…he could see a fatherly type concern and sadness, a true regret of his past actions.

  No! You fucking hate him. You hate all of these fucking people. The whole goddamn planet. You only love me! Love killing! “I can’t leave, I was sent here, and this is what I became.”

  “Do you like killing? The act of ending life?” he says, barely speaking through his ruined face.

  Yes, yes you do. It’s the ultimate freedom, the complete control over somebody else. To end them. Real unadulterated power. “It’s the only way I feel in control.” Really, why are you still talking to him?

  “There are other ways to control your life, than ending others. That isn’t control.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It is wrong. Remember what you used to be?

  Lies! Slay him! Bleed him like a pig!

  “By killing other’s you only control their lives, but it won’t let you control your own,” says the sniper. “It will only take yours over too, it will control you the same way you exercise it over someone else. And you will lose the freedom you want. You will become a monster, soldier boy.”

  Shut up! That is the dumbest thing you have ever heard! It is power, control. The exact thing you have always craved Peter. Now you have it. Buzz, I, let you be your true self—my obedient disciple.

  Really? Do you believe that? Do you know what you have become?

  “I like killing.” Peter twists the knife deeper inside his torso. The man cries out in pain once more.

  He breaths heavy, blood leaving his mouth in waves from the internal punctures. “Then you’re already a monster, worse than I ever was. I am sorry.”

  I rip the knife out. “Just kill me!” I slice my bicep, letting the blood drip onto his face. I slice my thigh, something lumpy and thick oozes out with my blood. I pull on it.

  “NO!”

  I rip at my cut pocket and wound. Looking for the other half. I find it, and I try to put it back together. But the blood has soaked it too much. Her white dress is red. The photo halves curling up and falling apart. The two halves slide out of my palm into the oil that is quickly licked up by the flame.

  “JUST KILL ME!”

  But instead, I stab him again and again. Blood flies in a stream across the room. I stab into his mutilated body, my tears fall and explode into little splashes against his blood, and yet he is still breathing somehow. His chest becomes a mesh of ripped apart flesh, intestines spilling out. I reach in with my hand and grab a handful. I look at the man. He is blinking and chocking to death.

  Ho
w the fuck is he still alive?

  I thrust the gore into his mouth fully suffocating him. The rebel tries turning his head away from my hand but fails. Finally he stops breathing, his own guts leaking out of his mouth.

  I wipe my tears away, only adding more of his blood to my face. I kneel over the carnage of my kill. The room is a quiet wretched mess of gore and horrible smells. The oil burns freely in the corners consuming the idol he was praying to earlier. Consuming her, consuming the last of me. The blood forms into one river that travels directly into the flames before the melting idol, taking along the burnt ashes of the photo with them.

  Why?

  “Don’t let this war destroy who you are.”

  You are truly gone.

  XXV

  I stagger back to my supplies, reconnect my dosage control pad onto my forearm, insert the tube from my drug distributor back into my chemsack, and shoot up a shitload of DT. I don’t care if they find out at this point. I grab my helmet and dust off Rosa, and follow the tunnel to the surface. As the light greets me, my fucked up reality becomes calm again.

  Tranquil. And I hear her.

  There you go my little soldier. There you go.

  Tears run down my face, stinging my eyes as they clear away the dirt around them. “Yes! Cloud! I love you!”

  I pull myself out of the spider hole I was tortured in, and discover that I am in the middle of Rickshaw village. I’d never guess they had an underground fortress harboring rebels this whole time.

  The village is destroyed. Shacks and huts on fire as helicopters hover in the distance firing at runners. I walk down the street and hear a commotion that draws me to a mango tree grove. A group of marines have formed a circle around a native girl slicing open mangos while others hold her limbs outstretched. They take turns raping here. Her screams carry out over the burning crackling wood and distant gunfire.

  Whatever.

  “What is going on here!” says a voice. The marines rise releasing her and come to attention. I turn to see Blake and Tarnus walking towards us. Tarnus walks over to the weeping woman that is now holding her naked body close to herself in the dirt. “You all know this is a fucking crime.” He looks around at the marines. “Next time you’re going to fuck some local, do it where I can’t see it!”

  The crowd of marines leaves back to their ordering officers, and the girl limps away to her burned down hut where corpses lie strangled about in the doorway.

  My hands are tied and my shins kicked in as I fall to the ground. “What is happening?” I say.

  Tarnus checks my vitals. “He’s high as fuck on DT.”

  “I’ll prick him first,” says Blake.

  A needled meter takes a blood sample from my arm. “You son of a bitch,” says Tarnus.

  “Private, you are by here discharged and under arrest for drug addiction while on duty,” says Blake. “You really did take all of the fucking morphine. Do you know you killed Vick because of it?” Blake pushes me down onto the ground, kneels beside me, and raises me by my collar a few centimeters from the earth. “Vick died from shock, because all the morphine was gone. You killed him.”

  “Tie him up in the center of the village then give him some NorTab to make him sober,” says Tarnus. I am carried away and tied to a pole shirtless as my unit gathers around me.

  I am sober. What have I become!

  A helicopter hovers in, and lands nearby as the rest of Love forms around me in the center. Commissar Herus appears, limping towards us, and holding a black whip in his hands. “Love Platoon,” he addresses the group of marines watching. “Today a brother was lost in Easy. Because someone shot up all the morphine causing the injured man to die from shock.” Herus walks behind me. “That was this man. Our own Medal of Honor war hero. Nothing more than an addict that would rather put his selfishness before his own brothers. I do not need to even explain the sins he committed against the Party, against all of you, here today.”

  The air cracks as the whip comes down with the first cut into my back. “Ah! I’m sorry!” My tears fall to the dirt as the whip keeps striking me. I look around in between bursts of pain at my unit. They look at me with hatred.

  Even Isaac.

  I call out to him, “Please!” Isaac lowers his head. The whip comes down and my own blood splatters the ground before me.

  You deserve it. Maybe you’ll finally die.

  But the pain! I can’t take it. Please make it stop.

  The whip cracks again. “Stop!”

  The whip cracks again. “I’m sorry! Please stop! Make it stop Cloud!”

  The whip cracks again. “Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop! Cloud! Cloud!”

  The whip cracks again. “I’m sorry mom! Creon! Mom please take me away!”

  The whip cracks again. “Please mama! Please I just want to go home! Take me away. I’m sorry!”

  The whip cracks again. “I didn’t mean to kill him! Just make it end. Mama! Mom, mom! Take me away…”

  The whip cracks again. “MAMA!”

  The whip cracks again. My world turns sideways and becomes blurry and distorted. I hear the crack of the whip against my body. Watch as the blood pours into a puddle around my feet. But I don’t feel anything.

  XXVI

  What’s happening? My face rests against a soft surrounding with an opening for my nose and eyes. In front of me is a checkered tile formation—a floor?

  “More sedation, please.”

  “Can it be performed while he’s awake?”

  “He’ll be out in a few.”

  “As you know, we have made it clear that military personnel are not to administer field stimulants, primarily Buzz as they call it, to themselves.”

  “I’m not in academy, doc.”

  “Of course. But why do we give them ability to easily break that rule?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They can use their control panel anytime to shoot up, completely bypassing any authority figure.”

  “Yes, but the punishment is grave…”

  “But it’s there. And you know it’s there for an experiment being conducted—”

  “Yes…that. I have been debriefed.”

  “Well then this specimen speaks for himself. The authority experiment passed on him even though he broke the rules, something we never even thought of as possible.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “Private Peter here has been reported to have administered Buzz multiple times on his own initiative. We found it peculiar that he was not indicted on criminal activity and investigated ourselves, even before he ended up here. He is resistant to Buzz—”

  “Impossible. Doctor—”

  “Please, let me finish Marshall…Somehow, some way, he is. He is the fluke in it all, but get this. Despite being resistant, being able to essentially phase between sobriety and Buzz induced high, he chose Buzz. He chose to follow our authority, the authority of the Party, of the State. By breaking the rules we laid down, he instead self-directed himself to stay aligned to our authority. He could have been our greatest threat, but instead stayed obedient, and our greatest servant. He broke the game, but chose to still follow the rules…it’s rather amazing.”

  “He’s squirming.”

  “He has been conscious and will remain so till the surgery near his skull is finished. I need to make sure I don’t damage any part of his brain.”

  “It’s time?”

  “Yes, take a seat.”

  “Once this is done, he will go through a phase of psychosis, encountering mental breakdowns and buildups till he is regulated and completely under our control. The beta drugs afterwards are crucial in his psychological therapy for the implants to operate. He will require routine refills like he did before on the field.”

  After a few more slices from the cold knife, and pressure build ups around my head, I enter a blank world. Blank like a paper sitting before a writer before they commit any words. This is also how I feel, o
r don’t: empty, vacant of anything.

  The hill in the center forms, but the grass is brown and dry. The weeds on the top have completely withered away and turned black. And the petals from the beautiful roses in the middle have all fallen off, decomposing back into the mound around their collapsed stems. The naked lady sits crisscrossed in front of the dead plant. Her body looks healthy, her hair combed and clean, but it still drops down covering her face. She laughs quietly to herself, as her wrists, free from the vines, relax on her knees.

  “Hello? Is anyone out there!”

  “Ah, look Mind, he has caught us on our way out.”

  “Pity, let us leave quickly Soul, before more harm can be done.”

  “Wait! Stay please, I need you to help me.”

  “Body, begging is useless. The fact we have stayed so long already shows how much you have corrupted me so far. I fear the other Souls won’t even accept me now.”

  “Or I,” says Mind.

  “Don’t go! I need your help! You’re a part of me, remember?”

  “We were. We were, Body. Before you became a monster,” says Soul.

  “Hey! Stay, please!”

  Nothing.

  “Where are you? Come back!”

  Nothing.

  “Please.”

  I am on my cot. The room is dark as I look around still tied to the bed.

  “Peee-teer.”

  “Who’s there!”

  “Oh Peee-teer.”

  “St—stop! Who are you?”

  “Oh Pee-ter, you don’t know?”

  A horrible face appears on the ceiling above me. Scarred and twisted. The very essence of terror!

  “Pee-ter, look at me.”

  “Stop, leave me alone!” I try to turn away from the face.

  “I said look at me!”

  The face glides down to within a few centimeters of my face. The darkness of the room exemplifies, only showing the horrible face.

  “LOOK AT ME!” it shrieks into my face.

  “Stop!” I close my eyes to try and escape it. Something rips at my skin. A cold piercing pain! I feel my warm blood trickle down my neck. I open my eyes in panic and see it. It’s a gigantic black owl!