Feeding The Inferno

Semi-autobiographical account of part of my life.

 

It's right where I want to be.  Right here.  My whole life has lead up to this and the screams I hear feed what is inside of me. 

 

Maybe it started when I was a kid living with my divorce mother back in the early 70's.  All of my friends had married parents and talked about my "loose mother".  Even her parents talked about her when I would go to visit them.  Those were minor details back them but something inside me didn't like it.  I kept quiet though.  I think about that now as I watch the streets and buildings outside of where we're holed up. 

 

Perhaps it was in the late 70's when my mother married a "n****r" as we called them back then.  I referred to my step-father as a "n****r" before I actually got to know him.  He turned out to be the best man I've ever known but other people didn't see things that way.  I was a "n****r lover" and my mother was still a w***e according to family and everyone else.  I didn't care what they said because every bad thing they said, every time I felt my body heat and my pulse race, it was food for the beast. 

 

[i]Damn it's really dark now.  I can barely make out the rooftops across the street.  That f*****g screaming is feeding me though.  It builds that fire inside of me.  I'm starting to feel alive now.[/i]

Heath was the first kid's name.  Heath.  He and the others used to laugh and call me names on the way home from the school bus stop.  After I didn't respond, they'd run up behind me and push me or hit me with books and run off.  At first I chased them but then I grew tired of it.  I could never catch them and besides, it would always be 4 or 5 of them that fucked with me.  I wasn't a small kid either.  This was during eigth grade when I was 5'10" and 180 pounds.  I didn't give a f**k.  Each time they yelled a name or touched me I felt the heat inside of me and it comforted me.  But, I knew that I was going to hurt on of them soon and it was going to be Heath because he was a shithead and lived right across the street from me. 

 

[i]Time to change position.  I think they're targeting the window I'm crouching beside.  I can't believe we're still catching this much hell with all of the bodies laying on the street outside.  Where the hell do these fuckers come from?[/i]

 

That f****r Heath had it coming.  Every day he and the guys fucked with me but I knew I was going to select the day and time I beat his a*s unmercifully.  The girls used to stand off to the side and watch Heath and the others f**k with me.  I talked to some of them on the phone when they'd call me but they never talked to me in public.  F**k them. 

 

It was a Monday afternoon.  I wanted it to be a Monday because I wanted everyone to see Heath's bruised and bloodied face at school and I wanted them to talk about it.  It was the usual bullshit on the way home from school that day.  They fucked with me and I let the warmth in me build.  It started as usual at the bus stop that morning and I let it build all day. 

 

[i]I can't believe no one has gotten to us yet.  It must be bad as f**k out there.  I think there are only six of us left that aren't wounded.  F**k it, I hope they don't get to us before I get to release what is inside of me on those poor fuckers out there.[/i]

 

After I got home Monday afternoon, I went inside and waited until my step-father got home.  He was a baptist minister and always told me to "let things go" and not hate people no matter what they did.   I wanted him and my mother to see what I was going to do.  I watched from our second floor apartment until I saw Heath walk in his front door.  I was on the phone talking to a girl named Lena that would come over sometimes after dark when my mom and step-father were at work.  They both worked an evening shift.  Both of them had the day off today.  I asked my step-father to go outside with me so we could play some catch.  I was on the baseball team and liked to get in practice when I could.  My mother came down to watch and brought a pitcher of iced tea with her.  I knew Heath had not left his house. 

 

About five minutes after playing catch I stopped, took my glove off and sat it on the ground with the baseball.  I turned and started walking to Heath's house as my step-father asked me what was going on.  I didn't reply.  I had been thinking about all of the bullshit that had happened to me over the years and I was really feeling the burn inside and it felt great.  There was no way I could let it go. 

 

[i]Damn there is a lot of screaming and moaning.  The medic must be out of morphine.  I can smell the blood.  I can taste it almost as if I were bleeding myself.  I can feel the heat beginning to rise in my body.  It's feeding again and it's enjoying it.  They getting brave across the street.  I'm starting to see some of the stupid ones silhoutted against the night sky on the rooftops across the street.  Nice...[/i]

 

I walked up to Heath's front door as I heard my step-father from across the street asking me again and again what I was doing.  I knocked on the door.  Heath's mother answered.  She was a cocky b***h and dressed in a sun dress with big a*s sunflowers all over it and brown sandals.  I could smell her perfume before she answered the door.  His father was a dickhead that used to ask me what it was like living with a n****r and eating fried chicken and drinking Kool Aid all the time. 

 

I asked Heath's mom if I could talk to him.  She looked puzzled but said "Sure" and called Heath to the front door.  As soon as he stepped into the doorway I grabbed by the neck with both hands and threw him out on to the sidewalk.  His mother yelled something but I didn't really pay attention.  Heath was on his hands and knees on the sidewalk trying to stand up.  I stepped up and punched him in the back of the neck so hard that I was sure I broke it.  I was hoping I had.  He flopped down on his belly yelling as I grabbed his hair in both hands.  I slammed his face onto the sidewalk a few times as I felt his mother grab me.  I swung my fist back and connected with her face and she dropped like a sack of wet s**t.  I rolled Heath over onto his back and saw him crying.  That pissed me off and fed me even more.  This piece of s**t that was so eager to bust my balls in front of his friends was crying like a f*****g girl.  I punched him in the face making sure I hit him around both eyes so they'd be swollen and bruised for the next few days.  I hit him in the nose once just to feel it break.  I had never been in a fight in my life and wondered why I had waited so long.  I heard a yell that sounded like a bear.  I turned and saw Heath's father running up to us from his garage.  I stood and faced him as he ran up and kicked him as hard as I possibly could in his right knee.  He let out some kind of scream and crumpled forward.  I then felt myself be thrown aside.  My step-father had ran across the street and grabbed me.  I looked at Heath and said "I'm sorry I didn't get to kill your sorry a*s but I will the next time you even look at me wrong." 

 

[i]I've never seen so many crazy m***********s before in my life.  They all have rifles and can't shoot for s**t.  F**k... time to move again because they're shooting at this window like crazy.[/i]

 

The cops showed up at our house a while later as my step-father was lecturing me.  I didn't care because I had never felt this good in my life.  F**k what he says.  The cops talked to me and said charges may be pressed but since my dad was the local preacher they'd try to do what they could.  I don't think I responded because I was reliving ever second of that fight in my mind and enjoying it.

Heath didn't show up for school for the entire week but everyone knew what had happened.  No one said anything to me or touched me after that except for one guy named Tony.  It was that Friday at school.  I was standing at my locker when I felt someone push me from behind.  I turned and Tony was standing there.  He was a couple of inches taller than me but not very muscular.  He yelled "You think you're a bad a*s because you beat up Heath?  Why don't you try that s**t on me."  I was holding my algebra book in my hand so I hit him across the bridge of his nose with it before he knew what was happening.  I then proceeded to kick the s**t out of him and punch him in the face until coach Newsome came running down the hall and pulled me off.  Tony laid there bleeding and crying but it was anticlimatic because it was so sudden and I hadn't built up to it.  What a piece of s**t he was. 

 

[i]I can't believe I'm thinking of all of that s**t right now.  I'm sure they're going to hit us with RPG's or heavy guns soon.  F**k them.  I can't wait until I can get out there and wade into those m***********s.[/i]

 

Tony was the last fight I had until high school.  I was in my senior year when some f****r started talking s**t.  No one had said anything to me in years and many had become my friends but it didn't matter.  They were spineless shitheads anyway.  Some how I had pissed off a guy named Corey who was our All-Star track, football and baseball player.  He was a black guy that always had a couple of his friends with him.  He came up behind me in the hallway and shoved me and yelled something at me.  I don't know what it was.  I didn't care.  I didn't even think about it.  I stepped to the right and swung my right fist and caught him dead on his left ear.  While everyone looked on in shock I hit his friend behind him in the throat.  WIth both of them down I then started kicking the piss out of them.  I wasn't really into it but it felt good in a minor sort of way.  I made sure to stomp on Corey's right hand so hopefully I'd break his fingers and he couldn't carry the football or play baseball for the rest of the season.  I was kicked off the team of course and ended up spending the rest of the year in "alternative school". 

 

[i]I hear the LT talking on the radio.  Maybe reenforcements are on the way.  I hope they don't get here too f*****g soon.  The moon is up now and I can see at least 5 of those fuckers on the roof across the street.[/i]

 

[i]F**k.. I hit two or three of them but I should have hit all five of those fuckers.  Now they're keeping their heads down.  One of the ones I missed will probably be the f****r that gets off a lucky shot and nails me between the eyes.  I can really feel it now.  The screaming of my wouded buddies is feeding it.  The rage is growing into a forrest fire.  It's finally starting to feel really good now.  I can't wait to pop some more of those fuckers across the street.[/i]

 

Antebellum.  I heard my step-father use that term when I was in the seventh grade and asked him what it meant.  He told me "Look it up."  Back then we didn't have computers and information at our disposal like we do today.  We did have a set of Encylopedia Brittanica though and I looked it up.  And I kept reading on and on.  I read the entire set of encylopedias and the glossary and the index and reread them over and over.  I then found myself at the library reading everything I could find.  I didn't have any friends so it didn't really matter anyway. 

 

I graduated high school at sixteen, hit college and then the army.  I could answer any question and remembered everything I ever read.  I won "Soldier of the month", "Soldier of the quarter" and ultimately "Soldier of the year."  I attended college in the Army and easily obtained a bachelors degree in history.  It was boring though.  Even our training exercises were boring.  I read and read everything I could get my hands on.  The other soldiers started calling me "Billy Webster" after Websters Dictionary.  None of that really matters now because this is all I want.  Right here.  I won't say this is the culmination of my life because I plan to live on further but if I don't, I have no fear of death at all.  I welcome it whenever it wants to try and take me.  I don't believe in an after-life or any bullshit like that.  I don't blame God or ask "why" when something gets fucked up.  It's life.  If you can't rely on yourself you damn sure don't have any right relying on some invisible force.

 

[i]They're getting brave now.  I can see a couple of them creeping up the street along side the buildings. I hit that f****r as he looked back to his friends.  Stupid a*s.  If the fight is in front of you, you don't have any reason to look behind you.  Burn you son of a b***h.  No they're taking shelter in the buildings again.  I bet there are thirty of those fuckers in the building across the street. [/i]

 

Airborne school.  What a f*****g downer.  Everyone talked about how no one in their right mind would jump out of a perfectly good airplane.  I figured a few million people had done it before me so it couldn't be [b]that[/b] bad so I signed up.  At the least it should be an adrenaline rush and I missed those blood pumping rushes of energy.  The instructors "black hats" did the usual busting of your balls, pushed you to your limits physically and in the mean time they managed to teach you how to jump out of an airplane.  I was the number eight man in my stick on my first jump.  By the time I got to the door everything was moving so fast I didn't have time to think about being scared or nervous.  I was out the door in a flash and by the time I realized it, I was looking up at the fully open canopy of my parachute and thought "Well f**k.  Now all I have to do is land.  Where the f**k is the thrill in this?"  The black hats were walking around the landing zone with bullhorns yelling at us to make sure we executed a proper PLF (parachute landing fall) and I did.  We had been over it so many times in training it would be hard to f**k that part up. 

 

[i]Yep, airborne was a let down but this has promise.  I can hear them yelling now.  I can't understand the f*****g language but I bet they're regrouping for an attack.  Bring it.  Lets get this game going.[/i]

 

I wonder how people get off sitting at home in front of a television.  What is there to it?  Sit on the couch and watch a show and you ultimately know how it's going to end from the plot line.  You can figure it out a minute or two into the show.  Where is the entertainment in that and who gives a f**k about some celebrity on some talk show talking about some upcoming movie or T.V. series?  Come here to my world and get some real entertainment.

 

Skinnies.  That's what we call the bad guys here.  I had only read about this part of Africa in a book some years ago.  Somalia. It's filled with nothing but a bunch of skinny thugs.  We can't call them "n*****s" but who cares.  "Skinny" will do just fine.  You have to refer to them by some name either way.  "N****r" is such an idiotic term anyway.  Of everything negative in me, racism and prejudice aren't there.  If people want to hate someone because of the color of their skin or their religion or their politics then go ahead.  Feel free to be a f*****g idiot if you want.  People are people just as these fuckers I'm about to kill are people.  I don't care what they believe, who their mother is, where they come from or the name of their dog.  All I care about is that they have weapons and want to see my lifeless naked body pulled through the streets.  F**k em'. 

 

[i]It's amazing.  There are so many of them and they are so f*****g stupid.   They must be scared to die or they would have charged us by now.  Sure, a few would die but what the f**k, they're probably going to die anyway.  The very least they could do is show some balls and come at us full on.[/i] 

 

[i]Two more down.  I took one and Bobby took one.  Again, the rest run and hide.  They outnumber us twenty to one.  What the f**k is wrong with them?[/i]

 

You would think my brain wouldn't ramble on like this but there really is nothing to do but wait.  Wait for reenforcements or wait for those fuckers to come at us and kill us.  I can hear the radio going like mad right now.  The LT is talking excitedly and I can hear some engine noises.  There are a few choppers flying over now laying down suppresive fire. 

 

[i]The game is almost over.  Either we'll be dead or alive but it's going to be over soon and I don't want to leave this right now.  I need to change position again because they're once again targeting the window I'm at.[/i]

 

One day we're sitting on our a*s after a few weeks of training and the next day we're here in Somalia.  A few days later and we're up to our a*s in world of hurt.  I don't see why anyone would be pissed about it.  After all, we joined the army and we are doing what we're supposed to do.  Sure, some of the poor b******s that came here with me are dead, dying or wounded but it's the way war goes. 

 

[i]Finally more choppers coming in.  It will be dawn in an hour or so.  A rescue mission must be under way.  Hopefully I'll get to kill a few hundred more skinnies before we get "rescued".  F**k it, lets get it on.  Lets draw those fuckers out and see what happens.  The small fire has been fed into a raging inferno now.  Just like a long time ago.  Sit and feed it and let it grow.[/i]

It's life and the thrill of living is decidedly based on your chances of dying doing whatever it is you're doing at the moment.  Who wants to die at home on the couch watching Oprah?

Reviews

[Violet Rose]

This was a great piece. The f-bomb is droped quite frequently, a little too frequent if I may so humbly say. It does add the rough, raw emotion, but it also robs the piece of some of its value.

I definitely liked the alternating settings. The italics didn't exactly come through, as this isn't BCC code but is instead RTF. That can be fixed, though. I understood. At first I thought the narrator was in some gang shooting or was in trouble with the police for his future violent behavior. I was surprised. This had an unusual happy ending.

No drag. All action. Thumbs up!

[Ron B]

I really liked this Bill. The transitioning between the firefight and high school works well. The story is powerful as well as credible.

On a personal note, both fear and anger produce adrenaline, and mine came from fear as well as a desire to survive. I only knew a few guys who really got angry and I thought it impaired their judgement or made them act too impulsively.

Good job, man.

[Berserker[Diktator Von ..]

Wow..this is a powerful piece..Great job..I really enjoyed reading this..it is a good read..I will recommend it ..Great job..keep writing and look forward to more...=0)