GWOT III - You Did Your Best
Oct. 26th, 2023 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT III - You Did Your Best
I don't remember much of that time, the kindness time.
I fell into my routine. Fencing with the patient interrogator, eating as decently as Homeland could arrange (not very), getting the occasional nap, having a nightly 'movie' consisting of reading a Bible story and acting it out.
But I had, in fact, gone literally insane.
We talked philosophy. He kept turning the discussion to killing and murder.
Of course. He wanted some incriminating stuff on file.
(Much later, I got to see some. It was pretty damning stuff, and complicated things in Iowa.)
I really had no choice but to end up bragging about how I'd killed the H1Bs because I hated them.
That was the story. That was the story on my phone, with artfully doctored photos. That was the version I'd given Homeland both before and after my arrest.
They hadn't dragged anyone in to contradict the story.
That meant they hadn't caught Brooke. Of all my folks, she was the one who could do the most damage to my feeble tissues of lies and bullshit.
She'd also woken me up from my nightmare.
The one in which Homeland had caught us, on the Jungo Road, and done exactly what I was pretending to Homeland that I had done. Only quicker and better.
The punchline, when the Homeland officer had sidewalked me - last of course - was that he had said, kindly, "You did your best."
The vaguely patronizing tone. Yeah, you're one of us, but you're kind of retarded and weak and milquetoast about it.
And I killed you for it. And you failed.
So yeah, keeping it straight was getting harder and harder. I'd failed. But I'd succeeded. But I'd failed at succeeding, or succeeded at failing, or something like that.
Homeward Bound was the Homeland policy of repatriating persons not from America. Said right on their fragmentary public Web site on the neutered Internet.
It wasn't repatriation. It was discreet mass murder.
So I posed them a problem. I claimed to have done what they were actually doing, but not what they publicly said they were doing.
I kept admitting things, too.
"How did you keep the others from hearing the gunfire?"
"Silencers."
Ding! Federal felony, do not pass GO do not collect $200. Do collect 20 years.
Homeland was great at making shit up. But now they had enough of my own words to hang me a dozen different ways over.
That wasn't the reason for all this.
"I can't help you anymore," he said one day. "I've stalled as long as I could. But we've now had patrols working Jungo Road for three weeks. They haven't found a single killing site or a single body."
"Coyotes," I said.
"Bullshit," he replied.
Yeah, he got me on that one. Coyotes don't sweep up shell casings. Nor do their jaws disguise bullet damage to bones.
"Last chance," he warned.
The defendant sat mute, chained to the table as usual.
"You will remember this fondly, but it won't be like this for you again. Until you confess."
The extraction team returned me to the hallway near my cell. Propped the door. Took the Bible, the pieces of paper and the golf pencils, the drinking cup. Ripped up the Bible and paper. Broke the pencils and cup. Left the trash in the corridor.
Threw me into the now empty cell.
Due to a change of venue, tonight's movie will be _Saving Private Ryan_.
There was no popcorn.
There had never been any popcorn.
There was no dinner either.
Food is for prisoners who answer reasonable questions.
Sometime in the very early morning, just after I had gone to sleep again after a fitful nightmare, the cell door banged open and the cell extraction team dragged me out.
They effortlessly lifted me up onto a wheeled gurney and strapped me down, as if practiced.
Wheeled me to an elevator.
The team leader was chatty.
"We know how much you like buildings. You haven't seen the lower levels yet. We keep the surgery at minus two and the furnace at minus three."
DING.
Minus two.
This corridor was concrete and the walls also concrete. Brillantly lit. The doors were not standard jail doors. They were stainless steel.
Like morgue doors.
I was wheeled into a room where a second gurney, empty, was positioned.
There were gleaming silver trays full of instruments, a drain in the floor, fresh rivulets of red blood and old rivulets of black blood.
A heavy table with an inset basin and drain.
Autopsy table.
But no autopsy table is equipped with restraints, and this one was.
The person strapped to it was alive. Breathing even.
I could not determine their gender by immediate observation, due to the nature of their injuries.
They were horribly and deliberately injured. A few discarded pieces of them on the floor.
Someone knew how to use nerve blockers. Someone knew how to do partial anesthesia. And I could see the handles of hemostats that had been used to control bleeding. Otherwise shock would have killed them.
Homeland wasn't as clumsy as all that. But infection would get them sooner or later, hopefully sooner.
"Care to trade places? We can do that, you know," the team lead mocked. "But no, I think it's time to show you minus three."
The team loaded the barely breathing victim onto the empty gurney, and the two of us were wheeled together, on our separate gurneys, to the same elevator.
Minus three.
This was an industrial basement. No gleaming here. Dirty. Sooty even.
Originally this had been oversize storage and likely a fallout shelter.
Now a corner of the basement was taken up by a large blast furnace, an industrial crematorium.
The hatch was open. There were runners that matched up with the gurney's frame, like an ambulance loading gate.
"So, who goes first?" the team leader asked. "Volunteers?"
Then started laughing.
Because I had raised my hand. And so had the badly injured victim, who hadn't otherwise moved the entire time.
"I should make you two flip for it. Or maybe fight for it? No matter. We'll get to you both. In good time."
The hatch was warm. Other empty gurneys were nearby.
And a cut down baseball bat, the striking surface matted with blood and hair and brains.
A mercy bat. To knock you on the head before you rolled into the flames.
If you earned it.
I wasn't fighting yet. I was conserving my energy. There might be a time that the strap was not tightened properly.
It had happened once, with the belly chain and ankle restraints.
The surgical victim was too weak. It had taken nearly superhuman effort to raise their hand.
Coming attractions.
We were approaching the middle of the game.
Losers whine about their best.
Winners go home and fuck ... no, that was the quote, but it didn't fit.
I wouldn't be able to do my best.
I would have to dare Homeland to do their worst.
"Sir. Excuse me, sir?"
"Yes," he said with elaborate patience.
"I'm not sure how this works. Can you go first and show us?"
Two members of the team tittered.
He almost hit me, but stopped himself at the last minute.
Damn.
"Soon," he promised. And started to wheel me out of the room.
Behind me, they wheeled the other gurney to the furnace.
I heard a THUNK as the bat crushed their skull.
At least someone here was having a good day out.
I don't remember much of that time, the kindness time.
I fell into my routine. Fencing with the patient interrogator, eating as decently as Homeland could arrange (not very), getting the occasional nap, having a nightly 'movie' consisting of reading a Bible story and acting it out.
But I had, in fact, gone literally insane.
We talked philosophy. He kept turning the discussion to killing and murder.
Of course. He wanted some incriminating stuff on file.
(Much later, I got to see some. It was pretty damning stuff, and complicated things in Iowa.)
I really had no choice but to end up bragging about how I'd killed the H1Bs because I hated them.
That was the story. That was the story on my phone, with artfully doctored photos. That was the version I'd given Homeland both before and after my arrest.
They hadn't dragged anyone in to contradict the story.
That meant they hadn't caught Brooke. Of all my folks, she was the one who could do the most damage to my feeble tissues of lies and bullshit.
She'd also woken me up from my nightmare.
The one in which Homeland had caught us, on the Jungo Road, and done exactly what I was pretending to Homeland that I had done. Only quicker and better.
The punchline, when the Homeland officer had sidewalked me - last of course - was that he had said, kindly, "You did your best."
The vaguely patronizing tone. Yeah, you're one of us, but you're kind of retarded and weak and milquetoast about it.
And I killed you for it. And you failed.
So yeah, keeping it straight was getting harder and harder. I'd failed. But I'd succeeded. But I'd failed at succeeding, or succeeded at failing, or something like that.
Homeward Bound was the Homeland policy of repatriating persons not from America. Said right on their fragmentary public Web site on the neutered Internet.
It wasn't repatriation. It was discreet mass murder.
So I posed them a problem. I claimed to have done what they were actually doing, but not what they publicly said they were doing.
I kept admitting things, too.
"How did you keep the others from hearing the gunfire?"
"Silencers."
Ding! Federal felony, do not pass GO do not collect $200. Do collect 20 years.
Homeland was great at making shit up. But now they had enough of my own words to hang me a dozen different ways over.
That wasn't the reason for all this.
"I can't help you anymore," he said one day. "I've stalled as long as I could. But we've now had patrols working Jungo Road for three weeks. They haven't found a single killing site or a single body."
"Coyotes," I said.
"Bullshit," he replied.
Yeah, he got me on that one. Coyotes don't sweep up shell casings. Nor do their jaws disguise bullet damage to bones.
"Last chance," he warned.
The defendant sat mute, chained to the table as usual.
"You will remember this fondly, but it won't be like this for you again. Until you confess."
The extraction team returned me to the hallway near my cell. Propped the door. Took the Bible, the pieces of paper and the golf pencils, the drinking cup. Ripped up the Bible and paper. Broke the pencils and cup. Left the trash in the corridor.
Threw me into the now empty cell.
Due to a change of venue, tonight's movie will be _Saving Private Ryan_.
There was no popcorn.
There had never been any popcorn.
There was no dinner either.
Food is for prisoners who answer reasonable questions.
Sometime in the very early morning, just after I had gone to sleep again after a fitful nightmare, the cell door banged open and the cell extraction team dragged me out.
They effortlessly lifted me up onto a wheeled gurney and strapped me down, as if practiced.
Wheeled me to an elevator.
The team leader was chatty.
"We know how much you like buildings. You haven't seen the lower levels yet. We keep the surgery at minus two and the furnace at minus three."
DING.
Minus two.
This corridor was concrete and the walls also concrete. Brillantly lit. The doors were not standard jail doors. They were stainless steel.
Like morgue doors.
I was wheeled into a room where a second gurney, empty, was positioned.
There were gleaming silver trays full of instruments, a drain in the floor, fresh rivulets of red blood and old rivulets of black blood.
A heavy table with an inset basin and drain.
Autopsy table.
But no autopsy table is equipped with restraints, and this one was.
The person strapped to it was alive. Breathing even.
I could not determine their gender by immediate observation, due to the nature of their injuries.
They were horribly and deliberately injured. A few discarded pieces of them on the floor.
Someone knew how to use nerve blockers. Someone knew how to do partial anesthesia. And I could see the handles of hemostats that had been used to control bleeding. Otherwise shock would have killed them.
Homeland wasn't as clumsy as all that. But infection would get them sooner or later, hopefully sooner.
"Care to trade places? We can do that, you know," the team lead mocked. "But no, I think it's time to show you minus three."
The team loaded the barely breathing victim onto the empty gurney, and the two of us were wheeled together, on our separate gurneys, to the same elevator.
Minus three.
This was an industrial basement. No gleaming here. Dirty. Sooty even.
Originally this had been oversize storage and likely a fallout shelter.
Now a corner of the basement was taken up by a large blast furnace, an industrial crematorium.
The hatch was open. There were runners that matched up with the gurney's frame, like an ambulance loading gate.
"So, who goes first?" the team leader asked. "Volunteers?"
Then started laughing.
Because I had raised my hand. And so had the badly injured victim, who hadn't otherwise moved the entire time.
"I should make you two flip for it. Or maybe fight for it? No matter. We'll get to you both. In good time."
The hatch was warm. Other empty gurneys were nearby.
And a cut down baseball bat, the striking surface matted with blood and hair and brains.
A mercy bat. To knock you on the head before you rolled into the flames.
If you earned it.
I wasn't fighting yet. I was conserving my energy. There might be a time that the strap was not tightened properly.
It had happened once, with the belly chain and ankle restraints.
The surgical victim was too weak. It had taken nearly superhuman effort to raise their hand.
Coming attractions.
We were approaching the middle of the game.
Losers whine about their best.
Winners go home and fuck ... no, that was the quote, but it didn't fit.
I wouldn't be able to do my best.
I would have to dare Homeland to do their worst.
"Sir. Excuse me, sir?"
"Yes," he said with elaborate patience.
"I'm not sure how this works. Can you go first and show us?"
Two members of the team tittered.
He almost hit me, but stopped himself at the last minute.
Damn.
"Soon," he promised. And started to wheel me out of the room.
Behind me, they wheeled the other gurney to the furnace.
I heard a THUNK as the bat crushed their skull.
At least someone here was having a good day out.
