Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20180828001306

This is the first draft of my new story. I had considered putting it in Demon/Devil, Dismemberment, Military and Ritual. Your reviews would be very much appreciated. -

Trayvon Williams followed orders. When he was told to, he walked with a purpose into the office of the base commander of Fort Bragg, Major General Mingus. But he found a Colonel Henderson behind the desk. "Sergeant First Class Major Williams reporting as ordered, Sir." "At ease, Sargent. Have a seat.  Would you like a smoke?" He spoke with a Louisiana drawl Trayvon had only heard from the oldest residents of his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. Yet Williams looked to be younger than he was, with straight blond hair and a mouth of crooked teeth. "No thank you, Sir. I strive to keep myself in optimal condition." Henderson fetched an old style Zippo lighter from his pocket and lit a Camel. "They don't hurt me none, but they sure don't taste like they used to." He opened a file folder as he took a deep pull on the cigarette and let it out slowly. "Just outside Karabilah, Iraq on the 14th of April, 2006, concealed heavy machine gun fire ambushed your squad. You affixed your bayonet to your M4 and moved aggressively into that ditch and silenced a sniper and six gunners.  Out of ammunition, you killed the remaining hostiles in hand to hand combat.  Does that sound correct?" "Yes, Sir. That is how I remember it, Sir." The colonel flipped to another page. "In Asadabad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on August 8, 2008, you were the fire team leader. Your position took heavy mortar fire and then you observed two individuals with a suspicious bulge in their clothing, suicide bombers trying to infiltrate the provincial governor's compound.  When you lit them up, you were assaulted by a platoon of Taliban. When they tossed grenades at you, you threw them back.  When one of your comrades were wounded, you ran through enemy fire to give them first aid and retrieve him." Williams nodded. "Yes, Sir." "On the 15th of September, just a month later, you were maintaining security at a patrol rally point. Other members of your team moved on foot for a pre-dawn meeting with village elders. Your patrol was ambushed by over 50 hostiles firing rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and machine guns. Your foot soldiers were cut off.  You ordered a soldier to drive and took the exposed gunner's position. You disregarded the enemy fire, killed dozens of enemy fighters with the mounted machine guns and retrieved your comrades."

Williams nodded. "Yes, Sir." "Ganjal was just six months ago. Now you want to go back?" "That's where I am needed, Sir." He flipped through several more pages. "You sure are one impressive buck. Hell, men get the Congressional Medal of Honor for a quarter of this." Williams kept a straight face, but nobody had ever called him a "buck." "Sir, mine is to serve. It is not to question." Henderson nodded. "I think you mean that." He took a heavy drag and then snuffed out his cigarette, lighting another. "You ever heard there's only two things certain in life. Death and taxes?" "Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir." "We give the Medal of Honor when we want the world to honor a man's bravery. With it, any officer will salute that medal.  You won't pay income tax neither." Williams grew excited. He fought not to smile. "Yes, Sir." "Army's been watching you real close since Karabilah. Last year at Ganjgal convinced us you are worth something even better.  Instead of never paying taxes, you can never die." Williams stared at the colonel. "Sir, that's …"

"Impossible? That's the word I used when LeBlanc came to me. Let me prove it." He pulled a long, old style bayonet out of his briefcase. "Jap type 30. Got it on Guadalcanal.  But you're probably thinking I bought it on eBay." He rose from his chair, putting his left hand palm down on the general's blotter. With a smile, he stabbed his hand with the bayonet. He stiffly held his hand up and forced the blade through up to the pommel. "Shit that hurts!" In shock, Williams stood. "Sir! Let me get a medic." The colonel turned his hand around and presented Williams the bayonet's grip. "Pull it out. That's an order." Henderson winced as Williams wrenched the foot long bayonet free. "You watch that hole real good." It was a long, jagged tear in the colonel's palm. It should have been bleeding profusely, but wasn't. Instead, the wound became smaller until it vanished. The colonel smiled, flexing his hand. "You got the stones for this?" Trayvon thought they would take him to Area 51 and plug him into the machine that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America. He couldn't have been more wrong. They took him deep in a cave in Fort Polk to a small base. He saw only four people there. One was Henderson. Williams could understand why they sent him. He could almost pass for normal. LeBlanc was a small, middle age man with pockmarks. He spoke with an impossibly thick Cajun accent and seemed to be from another world. "He's had a real bad time adapting to the 20th century," Henderson explained confidentially to Trayvon. The Baron was black as an M4 carbine. His clothes clashed with his cadaverous face. He spoke words that almost sounded like French but somehow wasn't. He was the one in charge. Brigitte, his wife, was as fair as her husband was dark. Her hair was fire red, and her eyes were emerald. Her Irish brogue was laced with profanity that would make a soldier blush. She and LeBlanc translated for the Baron. Growing up in the Miss-Lou, Williams had heard of the loas, mambos, and voodoo from his grandmother. He always thought they were just scary bedtime stories. Du Bois said he must serve the loas with both hands. Henderson and LeBlanc drilled him as if his life depended upon it. How to recognize loas, which to avoid, which to ignore and which to bribe with dancing and coca cola. None of it made any sense. But Colonel Henderson had made it clear that either he went through with the ritual or his parents would die in a training accident. Like a good soldier, he followed his orders. One day, or maybe it was one night, LeBlanc asked him "You reckon you are ready?"

The first part of the ritual was simple. Trayvon drummed. Henderson said to drum like it was a machine gun. As he drummed, he concentrated on the spirit of the nkisi. It was a cork standing with the use of a needle that had two forks coming from its sides. The nkisi balanced on a coin sitting on the mouth of a wine bottle. The bottle was on an altar crowded with images of the loas. Trayvon drummed and drummed. For days he drummed, and nothing happened. Finally, the nkisi moved, just a little. Then it moved again and again until it whirled. He was bathed twice after that. The first time was naked. For the second, he wore his dress military uniform. As he lay in the bathtub, they held his funeral. Brigitte even cried. They took him to a large circular room with a high ceiling. It had been hewn out of the solid rock. The only light came from smoking oil lamps. After hours of ritual singing and dancing, the Baron put palm leaves on a throne. Trayvon scooped paste that looked like chocolate and cornmeal from an iron pot and fed it to the palms. As he fed them, he saw that the fronds were chewing and swallowing. He fed them more until finally they curled up and made themselves into giant feathers. They burst into hundreds of flaming pieces and vanished. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. They laid him down on a silken cushion. He relaxed. They left and slammed the door. Trayvon was alone in the quiet room, watching the flickering of the lights. His rest was interrupted by the smell of tobacco and dog breath. He was too tired to look. Then something poked him in the back. Trayvon turned and saw an old man in a red skirt. He had a cane and a broad brimmed straw hat. Instead of a shirt, dozens of keys tied to a string hung from his bare chest. Two large dogs patiently sat behind him. "You reached the crossroads of decision," he said, puffing on a big bulldog style pipe. "Hurry up now. Which way do you choose?" "What are my choices," Trayvon asked, raising himself up to his elbows. "You can go to sleep. You wake up, same person you were." "Henderson will shoot me."

The old man nodded. "You will die. Just like they died." The room filled with the people Trayvon had shot, bayoneted, stabbed or beaten to death. There were enemy soldiers who fought him and the women and children who got in the way. Trayvon saw the wet, sticky blood on his hands. They never gave him the Medal of Honor. He had no honor. He was a criminal. If the god he learned as a child judged him, he would be damned. He had done horrible things. "And the other choice?" "You live." "How long?" "As long as you want. A billion years or more.  Never one day older." "What happens if I want to die?" "I only read the signs at the crossroads. I can't tell you what's at the end of your road." The dogs leaned into him and whined. He stroked their chins and ears. "I ain't forgot. You hush now." He looked into Treyvon's soul. "They're saying times up. What path do you choose?" "I choose life." "Done." With that, everyone faded away. When Trayvon woke, he felt ravenous. He opened the iron hatch and stepped out. He found Henderson reading a book. "Well, sleepyhead. You're finally up now.  Hungry?" He gestured to a table with cereal, bread, fruit, and jam. "Want coffee?" "Where are the others," Williams asked as he unwrapped and bit into a Wheaties biscuit. "LeBlanc's taking a nap. The Baron and his wife disappeared soon as we shut the door on the djevo.  They are done with us, for now."

After breakfast, Henderson said "There's one final test, the brule kanzo. Now we can go through the whole dancing on glowing coals show, or do it the quick, modern way.  Which do you prefer?" Williams smiled. "I have had enough voodoo weirdness to last me a lifetime." "Good." Henderson opened the desk drawer and took out a propane torch and a GI .45 pistol. "Tradition says to burn your feet, but the Baron doesn't care." He pointed the weapon at Trayvon. "Light it up and put your finger in until it glows red." "Why don't you just shoot me?" "Great idea." He squeezed the trigger. The world went black. Then it slowly came back. The pain made Treyvon spew vomit. He managed to hit Henderson in the face. The side of his head felt crushed. His ears rang. Something big rattled around in his mouth. He spat it out and saw it was a flattened .45 slug. LeBlanc rushed in as Treyvon repeated "Fuck" over and over. "Williams here is now an official graduate," Henderson said, wiping himself off with a napkin. After eight tours of duty, Williams lost count of his headshot. Afghanistan had turned into Groundhog Day. Every day was the same. He used to enjoy himself when an IED blew him up, destroying his uniform and body armor. He would rise from the dead, grab a weapon and keep on fighting. That scared the Hell out of Johnny Jihad. Now, he wanted out.

The Army promised to commission him as an officer. Every time he asked, they said he was too valuable an asset. Instead, they gave him money, $100,000 a year under the table. They offered a $250,000 signing bonus and $50,000 a month. He refused. It wasn't only the years of boredom, heat, bad food, dirt or watching his friends die around him. His soul was tired.

Williams was a single-digit midget. His contract would be up in less than nine days. Henderson and LeBlanc and the spooks behind them knew it. He had applied to divinity school. A few centuries of serving God's children instead of killing them might make him clean. On the drive to the FOB, he thought Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin would put the same squeeze on him. He didn't. "Last week, Haji ambushed a patrol from Charlie Company outside Kandahar," he said. "Two killed and three captured. We located one of them, Sargent Martinez.  He used to be in your platoon. Intel found him using mobile phone interception technology.  He is in a cave in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. We need you to lead the rescue." "Yes, Sir. I will be honored." Williams couldn't be able to stand himself if he didn't go for broke to get Martinez back. They helicoptered his squad and four others to the entrance. Afghani warriors had used these caves for millennia in fighting their enemies, at least since the time of Alexander the Great. They entered in waves. The tunnel split in three directions a kilometer from the entrance. His team went in first and followed the rightmost branch. Williams took the point. He always did. Well past the fork, he heard voices. They found a complex of rooms. Using hand signals, he told his squad he was going in. Williams located the source of the voices. Martinez was alone in the room. The sounds were a recording. Martinez was duck taped to a chair and gagged. When Williams pulled the gag off, Martinez shouted "It's a trap. Run." "Where's Ali Baba hiding?" "No. It's Baldwin. The whole mountain is …" Just then, tons of TNT exploded. The cave collapsed. The world turned black. It didn't stop being black, but he felt the agony of being crushed to death with each resurrection.

What hurt even worse than the indescribable physical agony was the loneliness and absolute nothingness. Trayvon couldn't see, hear, smell, taste or feel anything except pain. Soon hunger and thirst joined the list of tortures. He became weak. They buried him deep. The Army didn't want an immortal priest confessing their sins. He wondered how long it would take for the granite mountain above him to erode.

"About one hundred million years," said a marvelously elegant voice. Trayvon found himself in the circular room in the Fort Polk cave. The living image of a Bible School angel appeared. His hair was spun gold, and his eyes were pure cornflower blue. He wore a gown that was even whiter than his perfect smile. "Are you an angel," Trayvon asked. "Don't be insulting. I left that horrid operation long ago.  Now I am in business for myself." "Then you are the devil? But the devil..." "Did you seriously believe I had horns? That whole red goat thing was created by ignorant medieval Catholic priests.  But enough of them.  I came here to talk about you.  You can be alone forever, living as a tortured, crushed heap, hoping that an earthquake or nuclear apocalypse frees you.  Or you can come with me." "What will happen to me?" "Could it be any worse than this?" 