The Place in Between

by Reverend Steven Rage

  Sorry about that. The devil made me do it.

  The lieutenant’s mission was a resounding success. Rusty wasn’t the only officer involved, though he was by far the most victorious. The twin tragedies of My Lai and Co Luy were well suited to showcase Rusty’s ruthlessness. He and his sergeant became the Army’s de-facto go-to guys. It enhanced Rusty’s position and solidified the officer’s resolve. He took comfort in knowing that some of those in charge actually wanted to win this pariah of a war.

  Rusty was still deep in the shit when the orders came through to scoop him up. He had killed, depending on accounts, anywhere from 200 to 500 civilians. He probably could have gotten away with it if he hadn’t insisted on the kills being classified as confirmed. Fuck, man. Rusty was just following orders. For My Lai and Co Luy, he really was following orders from on high. Since he was on the ground and the orders came from far away, Rusty got left holding the bag for his superiors.

  The drink, the drugs and the thugs got him started on the path that led inexorably to Pinkville, the shameful stain and beyond. You can’t blame it all on the pieces that make up the complex puzzle. It is the hard heart that kills. It is the unblinking eye that holds the target in place. It is the steady trigger-finger that does not hesitate at the moment of truth. It is the hard heart that kills.

  Rusty and the sergeant had that to spare. And they had a hell of a lot of work left to do.

  * * * * *

  Rusty, the sergeant and their merry band of cut-throat killers herded a group of twenty villagers and corralled them together. They had already burned their huts to the ground and slaughtered the livestock. They had no vehicles and no weapons to speak of. Still they were Viet Cong, unless proven otherwise. The group was crying and pleading and carrying on so much the unrelenting noise was slicing right through the heroin and whiskey. It was giving Rusty a bad tension headache. And that little problem was something Rusty could fix. He would just have to shut them up. Ordering them to strip their clothing off at bayonet point, they separated the women to one side. Taking turns, Rusty and his men raped and sodomized every single one, from the steel-gray grandmothers on down to the smallest of crawlers.

  Rusty, smacked out of his cranium on horse and liquored to the gills, led the charge into the fray. He went all gray and cloudy inside. He was fevered and speaking in tongues. Rusty took his knife from its sheath and began cutting his chest in a grotesquely rhythmic fashion. It helped to fuel his rage garnered erection.

  Even for him, Rusty was getting way out of bounds. Even the killers in his squad were taken aback. Rusty’s ferocity knew no limits. It could not be contained. A tiny, dread-headed girl sat on the cartilage of Rusty’s ear and spoke to him. She encouraged him in his ruthless pursuits.

  One of his men snuck away with a field phone to attempt to call in the crime as it was happening. The sergeant noticed the soldier ducking for cover and preparing to run away. He told Rusty who listened and dismounted, leaving the girl he was molesting to die alone in a pool of her wasted life. Bleeding from the self-inflicted knife wounds and covered in the filth and blood of his victims, Rusty strolled purposefully toward the discontented.

  Get him.

  “You fuck, or you die,” the lieutenant told his man, without preamble. The boy said naught. “You fuck, or you die,” repeated Rusty.

  The soldier turned to run.

  Get him!

  Letting out a battle howl, Rusty charged after the runaway and gave chase. This was perfect. The chase allowed Rusty’s heart to pound and his already hot blood to boil. The kid was running flat out, balancing an army field telephone and un-holstering his sidearm. The soldier was glancing fearfully over his shoulder as he heard Rusty pounding the jungle floor in hot pursuit. The kid was attempting to crank the phone while running flat-out, and scared out of his mind. It was no small feat. The soldier was just getting a connection, when Rusty finally caught up to him. They were deep in the jungle. The canopy here was so thick, only shadows and pencil thin shafts of muted light made it to the spongy earth. The lieutenant clenched the struggling, frightened soldier by his hair and spun him around.

  Gut him, Princess. Gut him like a pretty little fishy.

  The kid tried to bring up his gun and Rusty gutted the boy like a catfish. The boy seemed too surprised to be holding a handful of his own guts. Rusty retrieved a mess of the boy’s inners and shoved them deep into the dying soldier’s mouth. He let the boy fall to the jungle floor, a long strand of intestine quivered in his grip as the boy fell. He let go of the boy’s guts and grabbed his tags.

  Standing now with a handful of wet, warm bowel, Rusty looked down to his blood-drenched hands for a moment. Then he reached up and, with his hands, Rusty smeared the dead kid’s blood all over himself. Just as quickly as it happened, Rusty forgot about killing one of his own men. In his mind, the soldier died in the line of duty.

  Rusty made his way back to the unholy skirmish. When he got there he told his men, “Kill one man, the right man, and you can terrorize a thousand.” He tossed the sergeant the dead soldier’s dog tags. He looked into their staring, startled faces. Then they all agreed vocally with their lieutenant’s sentiment. As any man would when your boss is wiping some of your colleague’s blood on his pants while smiling such a ruthless and satanic smile.

  This motherfucker is truly unhinged, they thought, killing one of their own. That’s not right. And speaking of not right, what was it with Rusty anyway? Why did the lieutenant make them fuck the wrinkled ones? Fucking sick, that’s what it is.

  After the ferocious festival of fun was over, they herded all the gooks still breathing into a ditch.

  “What do we do with them, Sir?”

  Rusty looked at his sergeant and said, “You know full well our standing orders, sergeant. We shoot anything that moves. Don’t ever forget. It will save your life someday.” Rusty’s goons mowed them all down with machine gun fire. They left none standing. As they were walking away, Rusty’s sergeant asked him how they should report the incident.

  “Hell, we only suffered one casualty,” he said. “What do you think? I call that victory.” Rusty wiped his blade clean on the bright green ground and smiled. “Besides, if it’s Vietnamese and it’s dead, well shit, it’s VC. We got twenty confirmed kills, Sarge.” Rusty plastered his best thousand-watt smile on his gore-stained face. “Call it in.”

  Del’s father did exactly that.

  The tiny dancer in Rusty’s ear watched these atrocities with glee from the vantage point of her front row seat. He never disappointed her. He could always be counted on to deliver the goods.

  Lieutenant Rusty was a preferred customer.

  STATESIDE, 1962

  Everyone knows that the shit rolls downhill. Year after year and generation upon generation it does. Sins of the fathers, you know. Sins of the fathers cannot ever be forgotten and they cannot be forgiven. No-one can escape gravity. No matter how hard we try. Round and round and round it goes.

  Where it stops, nobody knows.

  * * * * *

  Sergeant Rusty was sitting on a barstool when the young-looking girl came into the tavern. He had just been denied Officer Candidate School for the second time. His psych evals were lacking the necessary bottom to lead, they had told him. His conduct was also considered unbecoming.

  Rusty was nursing his beer and brooding into his shots of Jack. He had just the one last chance of getting into OCS before he would have to decide on remaining in the Army as an enlisted man or just get out.

  There was a war ramping up in Southeast Asia and he didn’t want to get out of the Army. Rusty wasn’t good at anything other than being a soldier. He felt he belonged there. It was all he knew. Rusty knew he’d make a fine officer if the tight-asses would just give him a chance.

  “Why so glum, chum?” the girl asked him as she plopped on the barstool next to him. Rusty turned to look at her. She was adorable with her soulful brown eyes and crazy dread locked hair. Rusty didn’t think he wanted to talk,
but there was something about her that made him open up.

  “My career is tanking, and there’s not a God-damned thing I can do about it,” he divulged. “So I think you and I should sit right here and help me drown my sorrows. What do you say?”

  “Sure,” she said. The bartender brought them both another round of the same and they tucked right in. They chinked their shot glasses in a toast to his dubious future. The girl was trying to convince Rusty to not give up on OCS. “I can help you,” she told him. Rusty didn’t believe a word she was saying to him. Plus she gave him a bad feeling, like his heart was being crushed in a coldly frigid vice-grip. The pain in his chest was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t stop looking at her. She told Rusty that he should take her home. She was inviting him in. Rusty thought he might just do it. He was randy as all get-out and she sure was cute. She was jail-bait, though. He could tell. Rusty eyed her critically.

  “How old are you, anyway,” Rusty asked her. She smiled.

  “Don’t worry, I’m much older than I look,” she assured him. Then she tossed another shot of whiskey back, slammed the empty glass on the bar and laughed uproariously. Rusty joined in, starting to feel real good. In the end, it was the heavy throb of what she must look like naked that sealed the deal. Oh, yeah, that and her eyes. They were magnetic, drawing him in, like a moth to a flame. He found them irresistible.

  Rusty just loved the way her eyes turned red when she laughed.

  BAD NOTION TRAVELING POTION

  This one is for Steven Scott.

  Constructum vestri professio per diligo.

  “I beheld the wretch, the miserable monster whom I had created.”

  Victor Frankenstein

  Mary W. Shelley

  PRO TERMINUS

  We remember so clearly his body fluids. As We stared, enraptured, they dripped down nicely into the collection pan. The big commercial fish dehydrator was leaching out every tiny liquid jeweled drop of Elron Hunt. We watched it drip, transfixed by its drop by drop progression. We waited patiently for the pan to fill. We had already selected a large soup bowl and equally spacious spoon. Elron moved slightly, startling us out of our revelry. We rose out of our chair and made sure that his airway was open and secure and that Uncle was still breathing; for just a little while longer, anyway. Then it will no longer matter. No, Sir; not one tiny bit. Then he cannot be. Elron Hunt does not need to live forever. No one does. No one except for Us, that is. We also had a clear line tubing of icy water trickling down his gullet. The extra fluid infused will aid to force more of Us out of him, and retrieve some more of ourselves. Eventually, We will be made whole for the very first time in our collective experience. In a sense, We shall be born anew.

  Elron Hunt opened his eyes and he stared, helpless, at his own ceiling. We added a minute dollop of Downtown Leroy Brown into his line of water. His eyes soon clouded over as he turned his head and tried to focus in on Us. The uncertainty stamped on his face was a bit distressing. Elron recognized the meat puppet We were using, but he did not know Us. We were way too deep down for that. As the pan filled, the thick wool of darkness was pulled over his eyes, allowing Elron to die rather peacefully and in his sleep. We need to reclaim from him, but We’re trying to be nice about it. A part of him, We could tell, wants this. Even if he doesn’t know who or what We are exactly, he wants to let Us go.

  There is no reason for Elron Hunt to suffer. He has to die so We can grow and become, but We don’t have to be a huge Richard about it. Going to the Next serenely is just fine by Us.

  We went back to our chair, tableside. The collection tray was flush. We tipped the tray into our bowl, slap-sloshing lumps like a loose stool. It was cooling down to a nice, warm body temperature. We spoon it up and savor the salty goodness. The bloody lumps were first-rate and substantive. We squashed the lumps between our tongue and the roof of our mouth. They explode with flavor like the greased juices of cooked burger meat. We can sense some of our presence; maybe even touch a taste of Us as well. The compulsion to rejoin is instinctive and intense. We can already feel, as We scoop and swallow, scoop and swallow, ourselves thickening and gaining substance. We were attracting and accepting our lost essence. We’re manifesting this, our coalescence.

  We finished the bowl, feeling better already. We wait for more. And when the fluids of Elron Hunt are completely consumed, We still have the jerked meat to work through. That will take some time. The fluids and bits are gobbled directly, but our puppet can only consume so much meat a day. We also have to get him to skin the carcass, do something with the bones…

  Elron Hunt’s fluids resumed exodus. We have to wait for the collection pan to refill, before We can eat some more of ourselves. We will become whole. We can feel it. It will plainly take more time and labor. And more people.

  We shall go backwards…

  UNUS

  The Good Doctor stepped out of the teleporter and into his office. He was below ground, in a sub-basement level of Hell’s Mouth Determining Hospital. The Good Doctor held his large coffee and his newspaper, and he had his over-sized travel slippers on. He went to his spacious desk and laid the items down on its face. He turned to the closet behind the desk. The door recognized his voice and opened smoothly and nearly soundlessly. The shoe racks came forward. They spread open like a fan.

  “Suggestions,” The Good Doctor said. A red eye of laser light scanned him from the top of his majestically long and regal looking salt and pepper dreadlocks, past his dove gray Nehru suit, terminating at his stocking feet.

  The first of the three pairs of soft, clone-leathered loafers slid to the front. They were all custom-made out of necessity, for The Good Doctor had six toes on each of his feet.

  He removed them all from the tray. He placed them, one pair at a time, onto his feet, checking to see which one worked best with the fall of his pant legs. They all fit perfectly, but he liked the way the last pair looked with the whole ensemble. He put the other two pairs of shoes back on the rack. The whole contraption snapped back together and re-folded itself into a closed fan. Noiselessly, the doors slid shut.

  The Good Doctor made his way back to the big desk. It covered a fair portion of the hospital’s Chief Medical Administrator’s humongous office. He unbuttoned and removed his suit coat, hanging it on a nearby coat rack. He had his double shoulder holster on. The Good Doctor pulled the two old-fashioned 9mm handguns from the holster and placed them on the desk. He sat down.

  The Good Doctor sipped at his cup of java while perusing the day’s caseload. He liked to schedule his surgeries in the late mornings, so he could be finished by late afternoon. The Hellbound made quite a long list today. It seemed as though everyone wanted to work on their score cards at once. They were all bucking for a better position in the eternal underworld. The lower the scores, the better and more peaceful eternal Damnation will be.

  The Good Doctor scanned the long sheet of procedures he would be personally involved in. His own score was already a very respectable and comfortable seven below par, but he truly enjoyed helping others. By torturing them.

  It is good to give.

  Old Man Misanthrope was The Good Doctor’s first case of the day. The geriatric patient was ancient like dust and had a score of still just par. He was close to the end, so the patient was getting understandably nervous. If he was to enter the Afterlife with his present score, he could count on an eternity of torment by the demons and the Damned that inhabit it. Why the geriatric patient didn’t address this issue much sooner was not for The Good Doctor to say or concern himself with. What did matter greatly was that he was going to have something big done now to make up for lost time. The Good Doctor will get to surgically crack open the old guy’s chest and slice directly into the heart’s protective pericardial layer. Once inside, the surgeon will drop an awesome nosocomial infection bomb directly into the heart muscle. He was thinking of an E Coli. Old Man Misanthrope will suffer much from the operation and will probably die because of it. It was the high price that
must be paid. The Good Doctor didn’t make the rules, he just followed them.

  My goodness, The Good Doctor thought as he smiled. What a wholesome day to be alive! He hummed “What a Wonderful World” to himself, seeing fields of green and red roses too. His satisfied smile twisted up in a curl.

  The Good Doctor placed the surgery schedule on the desk blotter directly in front of him and between his two guns. The Right to Bear Arms long overturned, The Good Doctor’s firearms were licensed for carrying and concealment by The Harbor’s Village Council. Since he was an influential member of the Council, The Good Doctor didn’t have any trouble acquiring this privilege.

  The 9mm on his right was as black as death. It held a modified 20 shot clip. Its silver fraternal twin was modified too, but not with an expanded shot capacity. This 9mm was hard shiny silver in the light. It glowed with a deep, rich purple in the darkness. This color change kept The Good Doctor from accidentally placing the wrong gun in his mouth when inebriated. The finger grip and trigger were designed to face backward.

  Noting the schedule, The Good Doctor pulled a small, cooled cylinder from the desk freezer and unscrewed the top. Inside were soft frozen plugs of Downtown Leroy Brown. The plugs were the solidified ear wax of Trudge & Drudge. The conjoined twins were genetically altered clones, designed and grown by The Good Doctor with a small, but usable bit of Adam’s Rib.