SILENT CONFESSIONS

SILENT CONFESSIONS








He sits in a six by nine cell looking out through the bars at a blonde haired eighteen year old NATO soldier from a small town in backwater America. He said that his family had been poor, his father a drunken factory worker His mother would never have even spoken to the man. He leans toward where the guard is standing and asks him, ?Know what you can do when your dad is the dictator of a country??

The soldier looks at him and answers, ?No.?

He waited a moment after the soldiers spoke their often one word answers, expecting them to go on more, make a quip, perhaps some change in the direction of the conversation, as he was used to among the urbane crowd that he had surrounded himself with? none of them did. They were polite enough, tried their best to converse with him ? if for no other reason than to pass the time on a long, boring shift, but still their answers were almost always ¡yes,¢ or ¡no.¢ He told himself that their stupidity was another horror of incarceration that he would just have to deal with until his release was negotiated.

?I¢ll tell you what you can do when you are the dictator¢s first born son? Whatever the fuck you want. The papers you people show me try to make it out like I am some monster, but who wouldn¢t get a little out of hand with that kind of power? You would and you know it . . . so, why does the world demonize the child of a dictator who takes what is rightfully his ? which, according to the law, is everything, pretty much that I decide to take for the use of the state??

?I don¢t know?? The young blonde haired Nebraskan looked genuinely puzzled.

?You know, I am sure, that my dad is responsible for thousands of deaths --- I personally have seen him kill two butlers -- one over spilling some milk, and the other over a present of a tie that my father thought was ¡cheap and common looking.¢ He also gassed a bunch of rebels who got outside money to challenge our benign rule, beheads two prisoners of war every morning before breakfast to keep his killing edge, and takes any woman or young boy that he wants back into his bedroom for some kind of sex that ends with them dead. He truly is an inspiration to all who would rule ? a real man who takes what he wants, like all your western commercials are always espousing.?
?Sounds like one tough mother fucker.?
?Oh, yes? but Mom, Mom is the butcher. She is of course responsible for what happened to all of the hairdressers, which got the world¢s gays up in arms and perhaps led to your little commando¢s illegally snatching me off the streets of Amsterdam and putting me in this little private prison. I have no complaints about the food, mind you, or anything of the sort. Still, it is prison, and I will be glad when I leave.?
?Your Mom ordered them to cut off the hairdressers? dicks and tits and clits? Man, she was some kind of psycho.?
?Yes, the killing lists were hers, too. She is the daughter of a dictator, so she has been exercising power since long before dad, so she is even more open to the idea of mass killings, and such. Anything to stay in power is sanctioned. Anything at all. She considers everyone who is not related to us scum, of course, and I think this helps her to look at the deaths she causes as if they were vermin in her garden. I guess her psychic told her we are the sons of the Pharaohs and space aliens, so you know it is true. And yes, you know, about the hairdressers, I think it was a little excessive what mom did,
but that one guy did make her red hair look ? .What did she call it? Red. Yeah, her red was too red. I couldn¢t tell, but she could? She was so pissed. We spent weeks tracking down all the hairdressers and cutting up their genitals. And the kill lists, I don¢t know how many times she sent the army out? she has people on there from way back, kids who didn¢t pick her for their soccer team in first grade. Her mom taught her to make an enemy list as soon as she could write.?

?All the shit you pulled, that would get you put in jail in Nebraska. How the hell people let you go ahead and lead them is beyond me. And I¢d of shot your ass dead if you¢d tried to cut up my dick, man.?
?Oh, lots of soldiers were killed during that operation. Sure. No one of importance, God be praised.?
?Man, I¢m a soldier.?
?That is just how it is. How we stayed in power was the easy part, my friend? Not getting poisoned by your brother is the hard part. Everyone wants to rule the world. Usually, I just laugh it off when one of them tries to kill me, though I did cut one of their tongues out, blinded another, and had a couple killed. We keep power by offering the poor a lot of incentives to vote for us, basically cheap ghetto housing with free heat and water, ball fields and fireworks displays == any kind of carnival that makes them forget their lives. Like the Romans before us, we know that entertainment is more important than policy. Keep the people entertained and they don¢t care what else is happening in the world ? like the Americans and their televisions.?
?Aw, that ain¢t like America, buddy.?
?Prisoner 489. The number they make you call me, so that you don¢t associate me with the butcher in the trial, and have a hard time reconciling my open, friendly manner with what the lying, Zionist press tells you about me. To stay in power, you kill off your enemies. You don¢t run in elections against them, for god¢s sake. Stupid democracies. One day, your open voting policy will lead to a Muslim world. That will be the dream of Democracy¢s dying Irony. You also have to kill the malcontents, the seeds of rebellion. Professors and lawyers and journalists and a lot of other fucking egg heads. Dad hates anyone he thinks is an ¡egghead,¢ by the way. I¢ve seen him shoot men for the books they were carrying. I mean, look at him, he got kicked out of school in sixth grade, and now he runs the fucking the country??? I mean, I didn¢t even go to any school. I didn¢t need to learn anything, man. I didn¢t have to look for no job, or do anything, really? I was going to run the country, so no one could tell me otherwise? My dad was proud that I believed I could learn all I needed from him.
. I once made a professor wipe his ass with a book and then eat the pages.?

The soldier guarding him has changed without his noticing. This one looks a bit more aware than the last one. He looks at him with what could be hate. ?That¢s just sick, man.?


?No, that was funny.?
?You just took things too far, man.
?He wept as much as those librarians, when we burned the books. The poor were happy though, since they had plenty of books to burn in their fireplaces all that winter. None of the illiterate masses much cared at all about the books. The international press though, they had to stick their damn noses in and say all sorts of unkind things that really hurt my feelings. And of course no one cares about my feelings in this big old bad world. Except for the people of my country, who damn well better care about my feelings/ I have a press secretary to convey to the people how I feel about all sorts of things, and they damn well better care or they are beheaded, along with their family, and then the gaping holes in their throats are fucked. You ever fuck a throat hole?? are followed by all/

Anyone care out there in that big old world, beyond the borders of my country-- where they damn well better care or I will behead them and their family and then fuck their throat holes? I like to fuck throat holes, so sue me? ?

?Are you serious?

?This is not one of your traditions, eh? Sometimes it is hard to understand why other cultures do some things. For instance, hot dogs ? what the hell? You know what goes into them, but still you Americans eat them?. Throat fucking, Dad says, is just what killers do sometimes when they are away from sheep for months at a time. Not that that ever happened to me though, not with dads harem of long haired, angora sheep, but I still get the urge sometimes after a good beheading.?

?You are seriously twisted, dude. Can I take a picture of you with my phone and send it home to my Mom??

?Sure. My friend. Let me just comb my hair first, and put on this fake beard of mine. Okay.?
?Thanks.?
?That¢s it? You have the picture??
?Yes.?
He turns away from the soldier and looks at his rusty commode and remembers the marble Jacuzzi he was used to bathing in, complete with prostitutes brought in to clean and service him?

?When I take over my country, which I will, when this little war is over and I go home again? I want the people of my country to fear me above all else. I tell dad that this is why we take our nightly rides, where I have my guards abduct any women that I see on the street. My personal physician is always with me, so he shoots them full of what I call ¡fuck em¢ juice,¢ so she will lay there and take my seed. When I¢m done with her, my guys dump them on their front yards, so they can get medical attention? we are not animals, just borrowers of flesh? one day, afterwards, when we dropped the fuck off, I thought I heard one of her brothers yell something as we drove off. I sent a swat team in later to kill the whole damn family. You can never be too careful when you are searching out counter-revolutionaries? I mean, when I was learning to shoot a gun, this one instructor told me that I would never be a great shot unless I devoted myself more. I told the shooting instructor that as the perfect being, I was as devoted as humankind can be. The psychic told my mother we were perfect of course, and thus it is irrevocably true. I had him cut down to a head and a torso Off with the legs and arms.?
?While he was still alive??
?Of course. I had my doctor sew up his stumps before he could bleed to death, so he could feel the pain screaming at him from all sides. Then we tossed him down into a muddy, dirt pit, where we threw down shit covered bits of food that he had no choice but to eat.
I go there when I am feeling a little down and force him to make animal sounds for food. The other thing I do is snatch brides and fuck them in front of the wedding parties. That makes my guards laugh so hard. I am joker, a funny guy. What can I say, I live for the laughs??

?You making all this shit up?? The soldier sounds like he doesn¢t want to believe him.

?No. We were wild. Of course we used lots of drugs and drank whatever we wanted, even though our Muslims religion doesn¢t exactly back this kind of thing. Dad says that as long as you keep it out of the papers, it never happened; and since we control the papers, most of my life never happened. Including this conversation, this will never be seen by our citizens, or those of any dictatorship that is allied with us, probably.?

?I read some more about you in the paper, today. Did you real kill all them people? They say you raped women, too, and stole shit all the time?.?


?I am getting so tired of the international press criticizing my family for shit that they would love to do. Who wouldn¢t like a license to kill? Think about that arrogant clerk at the coffee shop who pisses you off to no end and destroys your afternoon for no real reason at all. Now picture yourself just pulling out a .45 and blowing his brains into grey and red splatters on the wall. You would be surprised by how quick the other employees take care of you when you¢ve proven to them that you will kill if they drag ass on your latte. I get all kinds of flack from people for these kinds of killings in the international press, though they have made me quite popular with my own people, who hate rudeness on the part of clerks as much as anyone. It helps that we brand them revolutionaries and kill off anyone who could claim otherwise.?
?You know they record every damn word you say, they told you that? so why do you go on like this, man? Not that you should shut up, I like listening.?

?That tells me you have been ordered to listen.?

?They sent soldiers in who would be interested in listening. You have led a pretty outrageous life, man. So, you did, like, whatever you wanted?


?The international press has accused me of being a murderer, a rapist, and a thief. None of this is of course true at all. First off, murder, by me, is not illegal in my country. No, it is not even possible. No one in my family can murder. We merely have enemies destroyed. It¢s all in the constitution. As far as the rape goes, like I explained, this is a means of finding counter revolutionaries, like that girl¢s brother the other night. And further, I have never been charged with rape, so do not judge me ? let the jury do that, should anyone ever have the ridiculous urge to arrest me. The American president has been sending us aide since we declared that there would be no elections (which the fundamentalist, weirdo religious types would win), and it is time that the rest of the world follow George Bush¢s example. He is a good man, like his father. They have both visited here, and unlike some heads of states, they had no problem following our family tradition of strangling a cripple before lunch. This saves us a lot of money from not having to house the cripples and nuts anymore --we just use them for all the ritual killings that mom has us doing. It is true, like she says, that it is much easier to kill when you do it every day a few times. ?

?You are one sick bastard.?

?A bloody car wreck on the highway. That is why you listen.

?Maybe.?

?You hate me. The others just seem . . . curious. I am like a TV star to them. That is where they know me from.?

?Does it bother you that I hate you??

?Oh, of course not. In fact, when this is over, I will welcome you at my castle, where it is not my plan to place you in a hole with no legs or arms and feed you goat feet dipped in shit.?

?Yeah, right. Don¢t hold your fucking breath. So, go on, tell me more about your wonderful damn life.?

?Do you have orders to listen to me, to get me on tape??
?No.?
?Do you have orders to lie if I ask this question??
?No.?
?I talk to amuse myself, to kind of . . . revel in my glory. These words will not matter in the end, no matter how many of you know about them. They are an infection that we will not allow to invade our press, believe me. ?You got them all living in some story that ain¢t true.?
He looks at the soldier again. This one looks older than the others, more crafty. The young infantry men had just stood around silently, seemingly bored, anxious for their duties to end. He had just begun speaking to them this morning, after three weeks of complete silence, so they had probably changed his guards, sent in intelligence agents.

?I will nap now,? he tells the man. ?Have your slaves to bring me oranges with my dinner, or I will quit talking. Period. Whether I am speaking or silent, makes no difference to me? well, it makes an oranges worth, I guess.?




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