Another FGI

“Haz!” A short, sweaty guy with unblinking bloodshot eyes waits outside the cabin.

Meeting up with a crazed little man sweating profusely has all the elements for a bad night in the boondocks. From the moment Harrison shouted at me to get in the car, it was clear there was a bad moon on the rise and I did not have my things together. Not at all.

“Who’s Haz?” I whisper to my brother.

“Me,” says Harrison. “Short for Hazard.”

Oh yeah. Sure. That made sense.

Short, dark and sweaty is Chaos. Another buddy from Harrison’s time in the dessert. They use call signs instead of names still, even months after being sent home. Mad Dog, Doom, BAMF and the ubiquitous Metalass. Back in the world, but mentally still deployed to Task Force Redacted, just South of Kabul.

Chaos squeezes my hand in an impossibly tight handshake. He’s one of those guys who compensates for stature with muscle and breadth. Five foot four and built like a beer fridge.

“How ‘bout it kid? You want to kick the Taliban’s arse like your brother?”

My long blond skaterboy hair and tie dye tee shirt should be a hint. Nope, deploying to fight in a special unit in a town filled with insurgents would not be my first choice. But then, Chaos is not invited to this party for his smarts, he’s Harrison’s blunt instrument in this screwed up batshit crazy plan.

Harrison leads the way into the ramshackle cabin. It stinks of dope and dead animals.

“The guy that kidnapped you when you were a kid. I think we got him. He’s in there.”

Harris points to a closed door that I have no doubt will open to a pit of despair. Bat shit crazy. Exactly the plan. I make a move to run but Harrison grabs my shoulder, expecting it.

 “After Chaos has finished with him, he won’t ever abuse you or any other little kid again.” Harrison adopts a tone of ineffective reassurance.

When Chaos hears his name he gives me a happy wave. He has one specific skill set that now he's returned from the dessert, he generally has little opportunity to apply. But this set of happy circumstances will allow his little light to shine, shine, shine one more time. Happy little blunt instrument.

“Thanks,” I say because I would not want to appear ungrateful.

“He killed someone and you have to stop him. Civic duty, Matty. You make the ID. We’ll turn him over to the cops.” Harrison outlines a plan that is pure horseshit. They have no intention of involving the law. Chaos’ red psycho eyes glowing in the corner confirms these two old boys are pure vigilante.

I read the latest victim died screaming in terror, mutilated and I am certain he was conscious, as his kidnapper described each new pain and indignity he intended to inflict. Just as he did with me. Hearing is the last sense to go. Tibetan monks chant from the book of the dead to ease the transition of the soul. My kidnapper wanted his words echoing into the bardo, capturing his victims for eternity.

The deranged mother weaponised Buddhism.

I still hear him shouting as I escaped. We had unfinished business and he would find me, That was a promise.

Harrison has saved him the trouble.

Harrison gives me a not so gentle slap. “Don’t you zone out on me now. Face your fear, Rapunzel. Get into that room. You need to see him and then you’ll know it’s over.” Harrison’s certain tone conveys he believes he has insight and authority. “Closure,” he says in smug conclusion. “Cruel to be kind.”

When the hell did Harrison ever think he was kind to me? He will slap me into the moment any time he needs to. His medic cross-training taught him how to suck out a bullet. super glue cuts and slap the wounded back to consciousness. It did not cover psychological closure or he would not be the tortured sonofabitch he is hiding behind that energised bravado he displays to the world.

Super glue aint fixing either of us.

“If you have tracked down the guy who kidnapped me, he’s dangerously strong, Harris. We need to run. Now.”

Harrison smirks because in his mind he and Chaos are a two-man elite strike force. My kidnapper was driven by a motivation to satisfy hunger and lust. Harrison doesn’t understand strength only the purely insane can summon. He ignores my warning.

He propels me into the room in a semi hammerlock. The only light splutters from an old-fashioned lamp on a table. Next to it is a half a roll of duct tape. They’ve tied the prisoner’s wrists with duct tape, his legs are tied with rope. He’s sprawled on the floor, although there is a chair nearby where perhaps they tied him down and waterboarded him or whatever techniques they learned in that messed up unit they ran with back in Afghanistan.

Harrison is disappointed at my lack of enthusiasm facing the man who tried to kill me two years ago. He kicks the prisoner viciously provoking a muffled wordless bellow of a cry through the duct tape.

“Is it the same guy?” Chaos calls from outside the door.

 “No.” Those noises from behind the duct tape could be pleas for his life but I know they’re not. He’s spewing rage and anger. “You need to let him go. We have to leave. Leave now. Go.”

Harrison calls to Chaos. “Lock the door. I don’t want Matty making a run for it.”

Click.

“Did you just lock us in here?” My voice shakes with terror and amazement. This is beyond any level of bad I expected.

Harris strips the duct tape from the prisoner’s mouth. “Say something.” Harrison knows if I hear that voice he’ll see in my face that I know him.

The prisoner rubs his mouth, wets his lips. No he licks his lips as if staring at a human smorgasbord.

“Well this saved me the trouble of hunting you down.”

I’m back writhing in pain, soaking in my own blood in his torture room.

The prisoner sits, flexes his hands, bringing them together, almost in a prayer like gesture and opens his hands again. He repeats the move, over and over.

“Get me out,” I choke. My attacker breathes in the scent of my fear with an expression of bliss.

Thinking it will reassure me, Harrison draws out the knife he received on completion of his training. That same damn knife he is forever sharpening in the basement at home. I used to wonder why he needed to keep it sharp in civilian life. I suppose he always held that there was the possibility he would kidnap a serial killer and require a sharp knife.

“I remember you tasted like blackberries,” says the voice I dread.

I have scars from bitemarks. Harrison’s face contorts with rage. That will send my brother beyond any threshold of control or rational thought because in his own twisted way he loves me and will do anything to keep me safe.

He punches the prisoner full in the face with his fist. Spitting blood and a tooth from his mouth, the prisoner reaches forwards, flexing his hands in that same gesture he has been practicing since we got in here, He pulls his elbows back fast against his chest and the duct tape rips and in the same motion he leapfrogs to his feet, legs still tied. He is freakishly graceful, snatching the lamp from the table, hitting Harrison on the side of the head with the grace of a dancer. I can’t tell if Harrison is alive or dead.

“Chaos!” I yell, “Get us out. He’s got free.”

Chaos runs up to the door in the other room. “Where’s the key?” He shouts.

Jesus! “You had the key,” I shout. “You locked the Goddamn door. Where is it?”

They conceived this misadventure high on speed and convinced each other it was a master plan. Did they forget there was no Goddamn air support here?

Chaos jiggles the door handle then in desperation, charges the door like a battering ram. Oh my God. How inept is this?

My kidnapper stoops to pick up Harrison’s knife. He cuts the ropes that ineffectively bound his legs, then turns the knife over scoffing at the insignia on the handle. With his legs free, he kicks Harrison, aiming for the ribs. He will kick and keep kicking until Harrison drowns in his own internal bleeding.

I pray to the entity that clearly has no investment in my existence. If You are to intervene at any time, please let it be now.

Either Providence has influence or Harrison is dead already but the kicking stops and my kidnapper turns to me. The nightmare I have had almost nightly for two years is real.

Chaos continues to batter the door with his beer fridge body not understanding if he breaks in, his prisoner, my kidnapper will kill him too.

“This is going to be slow,”

I back away. I am a weak, fragile nerd. My kidnapper at full height resembles Lurch Addams, square jaw, focused stare. His eyes glint as moonlight bounces off his insanity

Flight is my only option. I bolt towards the window, but he catches me easily, expecting me to try to run. He wraps my hair around his hand and yanks me close. I feel his breath on my neck. I prepare to feel cold steel cutting into my throat. Instead he licks my cheek.

His plan is to cut me up slow using my brother’s knife. Enough to inflict pain, not enough to pass out. No escape. No reason to struggle. Wait for the end.

The knife slices into my back. Pain ignites white heat inside me. Use the pain. Use that kick start of panicked energy that Pain gifted. Groping blindly, twisting in all directions like a fish on a line, I shake my head trying to wrench free my hair that binds me to him.

Something has changed. The giant of my nightmares is …. less. I’m not eye level but I’m up to his chin. I’m not the insect I was when he abducted me two years ago.

I tear away from him, leaving clumps of golden blonde hair in his fist to retain as a keepsake of this night.

Tenkai-Kote-Hineri. The rotating wrist twist. Fast movement unbalances your opponent. Harrison’s insistence on teaching me akido has stuck. Although I thought the impromptu lessons were more an excuse to slap me around when he was bored, it seems he was drilling in some basic lessons for self-defence. In autopilot, I execute the practiced move. Raise his arm, sidestep and twist, feel his surprise when he goes down. I am not surprised to see him bounce up again as if the floor is a mattress.

Inside, I am ice, his rage is terrifying. The move is to buy me time but he retrieves the knife before I can even reach for it and all I’ve achieved is igniting his rage at my insolence.

I lean against the chair, shaking, sweating, my shirt wet from blood leaking from the cut on my back.

I got tall. So what. I surprised him with a move. That won’t happen again.

He tells me I will watch my brother die when he slits his throat. He threatens to cut my eyelids off so I cannot look away.

“Fuck you. You don’t touch him.”

He will not give me the new nightmare of watching the person I love more than anything in the world die.

I scrubbed my consciousness clean in an effort to survive. I was like a sleep walker, numb, barely living in the world. But now, locked in a room with the man who bred my nightmares, anger is back. Two years of reliving that night in my dreams has led to this point. I’m more alive than I have ever felt. This is my moment.

The moment I figure, screw it, if I fight back he might kill me quicker.

The moment I pick up the chair.

The chair has no weight. The compressed force of anger does the lifting for me as I register his confusion. That’s right motherfucker, I’ve thrown your script away. This is my ad-lib. Get ready for a rewrite.

I smash the chair into his face. He stumbles, no grace now. I hit him again and he falls to the floor.

He won’t stay down. I have to keep hitting him until I know for sure he will not get up again. Each time I strike him, I feel a satisfying vibration go through the chair, reverberating along my arms as I lift the chair again. The metallic smell of blood fills my senses. Anger paints the room crimson.

He grunts. Maybe surprise, maybe pain. Irrelevant, because the only thing keeping Harrison and me alive is swinging that chair. Smack, draw back, smack.

I see nothing, the world is the sound of repeated blows and the shudder of wood hitting flesh, Bones splinter and crunch and the grunt slides into a gurgle and my world is scarlet anger.

Eventually the gurgle stops. The vibration is now a spongy rebound of wood against tenderised flesh.

 Only when I see he is not getting up, do I feel it safe to drop what is left of the chair.

Chaos has found the key a little late to be of assistance. I hear my fast-paced breathing and rub my arm over my wet face. Wet with sweat and blood and probably other more sinewy stuff too. The world takes form again, the red filter fades. My kidnapper is satisfyingly dead. Nobody can look like that and still be alive.

Chaos hauls up Harrison’s limp body and slaps him. Harrison is immediately revived enough to slap Chaos back He puts a hand to his head unsure of what he’s woken up to, then a look of horror crosses his face and he spins around frantically looking for me.

“Holy Jesus,” he whispers taking in what I’ve done. “Where did that come from, Matthew?”

I hear Chaos saying excitedly. “He really is your brother, huh. He beat him to death with a chair. With a damn chair, man.”

Running counterpoint to Chaos’ delight and excitement at the carnage, Harrison is silent. A whisper of pain, regret maybe, embedded in his expression. He looks at me as though I’m lost.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he whispers. Maybe the only time he has ever apologised to me.

Classic Harrison FGI. Another fucking good idea.

“Don’t…” he starts. I stare through him wondering why he thinks he is still in a position to offer me any advice after tonight.

Don’t worry I’ll fix this? 

Don’t tell Dad what happened tonight?

Don’t regret this, it had to be done?

He never finishes his sentence.

Don’t turn into me, maybe?

“Closure,” I say finally.

“And how,” says Chaos enthusiastically while Harrison for once, says nothing.

I walk past them out of the deathroom, bloody footprints trailing to Harrison’s car. 

When I start to cry my tears are bloody.