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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starting over

STARTING OVER




He drinks down the burning whisky, chokes it down gagging. Sits back in the car seat and feels his stomach warming, his confidence rising. The next drink is easier. He thinks that he will get more whisky, just keep drinking all the way through the killing. He can steal some from her parents. He isn¢t going to miss this town. The stores along the strip are all cheap looking dollar stores and liquor stores and bars. Dead. The Railroad shut down the switching yards that had created the town of Garrett, Indiana, long before he was born. Everyone wanted to live in Auburn, five miles away, where they had a McDonald¢s and Burger King. Garrett refused to let them in, because some restaurant owner was on the board that made the decision, and that had helped kill the place, too. He thought maybe he would miss his mom, but he never had before. His dad never mattered much to him or his family, just a drunk they had to take care of now and then.


They weren¢t going to let him see her anymore. He went over there this morning and her dad came out on the porch looking mean, his hands shaking all nervous, his black steel lunch bucket in one, a huge crescent wrench in the other. His clothes were stained black from the rubber dust at the plant. ?I told you, she is too young for you, dammit.?

?Hell, she told me you was five years, like, older than her mother? When he heard this from her, he figured he would stop at nothing to get his way, because he was right.

?She¢s gonna get nothing but trouble from you, you ain¢t even working or in school. Since it ain¢t legal, I ain¢t letting see her. Get the hell out of here. I see you around here again, I am going to kick your ass, then have you put in jail, where they¢ll fuck your ass.?

He just backed off, got on his bike and rode down the street. He didn¢t want to go to prison, not at his age looking the way he did. What Mr. Fitzgerald said scared him, made his stomach clench ? getting fucked in the ass would destroy something inside of him, he was sure of it. The old man would call the cops; get him sent up on statutory rape charges. He had threatened as much twice now. He might just get all pissed off and go ahead and do it. He could as easy as hell.
He didn¢t like the feeling of somebody having something over him like that. Especially a man who hated him all to hell. There was only one way to stop him for sure.

He gets to his house and locks his bike to their fence, reaches around in his jacket for a mint, has to check most of his pockets before finding some tic tacs.
He walks into his the door off the kitchen; from the living room he hears the television; his mother and sister are watching their soap opera. His mother taped them in the morning, without watching them?no matter how exciting the days revelation was advertised, then his sister came home during her lunch break at the Stern¢s Hardware¢s and watched the damn show. He hated them. They had just wasted their lives. Didn¢t even have boyfriends. He was not going to end up fat and carrying around a black steel lunch bucket all covered in rubber shit. Or working at the hardware store and having to listen to the owner go on and on about his rich ass life?his sister had hated this, same as the other clerks, for ten years and never said a word to the jerk. He would have kicked his ass first day.

He takes his shoes off in the doorway and walks through the den to get to his room, so he can avoid the music on the soap opera?something about it had always depressed him. Above his bead is an oak gun rack, polished to a gleaming blonde shine, with two rifles. Both were gifts from his grandfather. He always came down and took him deer hunting on Thanksgiving. ¡

He had taken down a kill every year. His first year, when his aim was still shit, his grandfather took him out to a ranch where they guaranteed a kill. After that he sat in a blind with the rest of the men in his family, took his shot and downed them. One of the guys cut the deer up into steaks, charging just some meat for himself. His grandfather had the first deer¢s horns put on a plaque; cost too much to do every year.

He picks up a black phone a table filled with star wars action figures, dials the number of his grandfather, who he was closer to than anyone, even though he only saw him a couple times a year. His grandfather was a teacher, and always telling him stuff that he didn¢t really understand. Like why he wanted him to learn how to hunt, even though his dad didn¢t care for hunting at all, didn¢t even keep any guns around.
?Hey, grampa.?
He answers in his raspy, breathy voice, ?Hey, Kid.?
?I¢m going hunting.?
?I wish I could go with you. What season is it down there??
?Ain¢t one.?
?You could get a month in jail and a hell of fine for??
?Yea, yea, I know? this is on private property, at my girlfriends. They have like 400 acres.?
?Then hunt well, my warrior.?
?You think men need to hunt, to keep in touch with themselves, right??
?Sort of. Hunting is something humans should do, because we are killers, son. It¢s natural, something we enjoy. It keeps us in touch with nature, animals. That¢s what they don¢t understand. Your dad never did. People don¢t see it like that so much anymore, I suppose? Aw, you don¢t want to hear that. I bet you¢re hunting Raccoons, right? Got a dog??
?I wish I had a dog. Yea, we¢re going for coons. Late tonight. Gonna shine my flashlight up into their eyes, and shoot em. Can¢t sell em until season, so her dad keeps em in this freezer. Talking about dogs, I was thinking of coming to visit you, and maybe getting one or two of them dogs. Now, you know, since you¢ll probably be leaving them to me, right? I mean, I love them dogs.?
?Oh, your mom didn¢t tell ya??
?What??
?I had to sell my dogs. I have this damn problem with my legs now. That¢s why I sent you that gun. I explained all this in the letter that was in the box.?
?I lost the letter that was in there.? He had to sound out words and think about them awhile . . . he only did it when he had to. He just checked the letter for money and then tossed it. ?I¢m sorry. I¢ll talk to you later.? He hangs up before he can hear the old man¢s voice again.

He feels hate for the old man, wishes he could kill him for selling off his dogs. He had loved visiting there and going out to the kennel, playing with the puppies.
?Just makes that new life look all the better,? he tells himself out loud.

He keeps his guns well oiled, polished; they shine in the gun rack above his bed. He takes down a Remington twenty two automatic with oak inlays down the sides. His grandfather¢s gun; a real beauty. He was going to sell it, get some money to buy a car. He still would, he tells himself, just later -- in his new life.

He calls her. The phone rings three times, then before it can switch to voice mail, someone picks up the receiver then sits it back down, breaking the connection.
He throws his phone into the wall, watches it smash into pieces? he wasn¢t going to need it anymore. ?That fucking bitch? she goes first.? He puts on his army jacket, picks up a box of bullets and slides them into his pocket, takes the gun and goes back out into the kitchen and takes his sisters keys off the counter. He looks in on them and they are engrossed, hypnotized, like they got when their food was done and they were just watching all those exciting lives that they were never going to have.

He goes outside and put the car into neutral, then pushes the small Escort down the driveway to the road before starting the car. He waits for a truck to pass, then does a u turn and heads out for her house.

He reaches into the glove compartment, pulls out a black .45 with a scope, slips it into the side pocket of his army Jacket. He has a hunting knife in there, too, in case he has to cut up the bodies for some reason. He will cut up the bodies if he has to. Anything to be with her. They were meant to be, so he figured that maybe everything he did to get her was okay. He had a right to her, and they were almost the same age?

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Young and innocent, moving like a child, and just him knowing she had that little devil inside. She loved to make out, stick her sweet, candy coated tongue down his throat as she rubbed his dick through his pants. She gave him head the first night they met? she¢d never done nothing else wit a guy until him. She let him because she said they were going to be together forever. He loved thinking about her saying that. His silently mouthed the word, ¡forever.¢


He notices that he is speeding and slows down. No cops, not today. The guns would get his ass in trouble. No, not that day? that day he would kill a cop. He hated to do that. He kind of wanted to be a cop.

He comes to her house and turns off the road. The Escort¢s wheels crunch over the rock driveway. He sees the curtain in her window get pulled aside, and then her smiling face, surrounded by her golden hair? she looks all excited, so damned happy ? she knows why he is there. They¢d discussed what they would have to do if her dad tried to put him in jail. When he told her what he might have to do,

She¢d told him that he should kill anyone who tried to stop them from being together.

She said No one could ever keep them apart, anyways, because they were soul mates. He believed everything she said, even though he knew she was like a kid in that respect, always ready to believe the world was full of wonderful shit. He hadn¢t thought so, not the last few years working at Burger King feeling like he never had enough money and nothing to do but drink beer with a bunch of wasters that stole from each other when they could. Now he had her, and just maybe? there was something wonderful out there? he again felt a warmth that came to him sometimes, in his stomach, when he thought of her?

He was going to have a new life. They would go out west, live around a bunch of cows. He had always liked cows. He would butcher them himself. Castrate them. She said she couldn¢t do that, not to cows ? she liked them, too, mostly because he did. She tried to like everything he did. Boy did he like that. She really took him to be the responsible one. So he was going to do this for her. . . and him . . . and their new life.

Her mother comes out onto the porch with her arm up pointing back toward the road screaming something he can¢t hear. The sight strikes him as comical and he starts laughing as he takes the looped driveway up to right in front of the house. He stops, pulls the .45 out of his pocket, pushes open the car door, steps out, brings the gun up to his shoulder, sees her face in the scope -- a cross intersects just over her brow as her face goes from puzzled to shocked to scared. She starts to turn back toward the door. He pulls the trigger back slow and smooth. A red dot appears between her eyes. She falls out of his sights. He lowers the gun and looks at her all crumpled up on the porch. She was dead as hell. He laughed and started up the porch, stepped over her.


She comes into the living room and embraces him, then kisses him fiercely on the lips, her tongue probing down his throat. He grows hard and she notices, starts rubbing him as she says, ?That bitch said we could never see each other again. I hope she¢s in hell.?

He takes the whisky out of his jacket and hands it to her.
?Well, she ain¢t in hell, I bet.? For the first time he kind of wonders what he is doing. He doesn¢t like the idea of sending someone to hell. He¢d been raised in a church with a fundamentalist preacher who had convinced him, when he was a kid, that Satan was everywhere. He had given up on most of that shit when he started partying and going to whores and stealing and shit. Still, he kinda believed in the lord, and the thought of Satan just sort spooked him. When he thought about it at all, he figured that he would repent sometime, when he was older, and still go to Heaven.




They made crazy love right there in the living room, on her dad¢s Lazy Boy. There was a big wet spot that made them laugh on and off for the rest of the day. They made love there again later to make sure the stain was permanent. Her dad wouldn¢t even let anyone sit in it. Kept it perfectly clean.

They take the hose and spray the blood off the aluminum siding by the door and the porch, drag her mother down into the basement and hide her in an old coal bin. They didn¢t want anyone to know about the crime for weeks. They¢d have a whole new life by then, new names, be from a different place.



?Let¢s let him see the chair before you shoot him.?
?Okay.? He looks around the room and decides to hide in the kitchen, then step out and kill him while he was yelling about her chair. ?If he asks, you go ahead and tell him that it¢s from fucking me, alright??
She laughs so hard that she bobs her head up and down and jumps up and does a little dance. I bet he has enough money on him for gas?. We¢ll go see the mountains, the desserts, the oceans? Hollywood. Everyplace. I think we should just drive around robbing stores. Just never come back to this hell hole.?

At four twenty, they heard him pull into the drive way. They went to the window of her room. He whispers to her, ?Stay naked. That will freak him.? She laughs so hard that she spits out her gum. He picks it up, kisses it, and hands it back to him.
?Ew, no. I always keep a lot of gum around. It¢s diet. I ain¢t never gonna get fat on you.?
?You better not.?
?You either.?
?Men can get fat.?
From downstairs they hear her fathers¢ voice. ?What the fuck happened to my chair??

He laughs, leans down and picks up the .45, and pushes her toward the stairs. ?Go on down there and tell him.?
?Now I don¢t want to.? She looks scared as hell all of a sudden. She spins around, grabs a garbage can and throws up. The old man hears her too. ?Honey, you up there? Something happened to my chair. Where the hell is that daughter of ours? She did this because?? He comes to the doorway and looks in at them standing there naked.
?You are going to jail, and you are going to juvenile hall.?
He has the .45 hidden under a sheet draped over his arm. She stops puking and looks up at him.
?Your mother raised a whore.? He hisses the words. ?Put your damn clothes . . . ?
The bullet blasts through the sheet sending white flakes fluttering into a sunbeam coming through the window. The old man stumbles back to the steps and falls backwards. They listen until he is at the bottom of the stairs, then he takes her in his arms and hugs her.
¡Don¢t kiss me until I brush my teeth.?
?Okay. We gotta get him in the basement and get out of here.? He feels some weight somehow start pressing on his chest, keeping him from breathing, and for a moment the walls in the room seem to be wavering, coming in on him. He takes a deep breath, grabs his underwear and starts getting dressed. ?We get caught, what you gonna say??
?It¢s my plan, so I remember it all stupid. I¢m gonna say they were touching me.?








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