Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26908800-20151022060935

A demonic possession story in an unusual setting. As per standard I will post questions after the body of the work. -Seamus

''D.I.A. Memorandum 89-2: RE: Incident at Black Site 23, 05-13-16 CLASSIFICATION- CAVEAT, Directors’ EYES ONLY. In regards to Detainee No. 834756, one Shamash Al-Azrad, suspected Islamic State cell leader, acquired May 6th, 2016. Subject was captured by a Black Ops PMCs working on behalf of the agency after IS destroyed an archaeological site in the western Syrian Desert. Subject was located in the catacombs beneath the structure, in a state of disorientation. Rendered to Black Site 23 he was identified as Shamash Al-Azrad, a Saudi national. The events leading up to Al-Azrad’s escape are presented in this document. As noted in the previous brief (file No. 564738) Al-Azrad remains at large.'' ____________________________________________________________________

“Ah yes, Kings and Generals, always the same. Always blinded by their own limited view as if they are able to top the last generation of warriors before them.”

The man speaks, two interrogators listen, in a plain windowless gray room that is almost clinical. Welts and bruises cover a large part of his body.

He is relaxed and at easy leaning over the top of the table.

The interrogators are two large men, both white, both middle aged with high and tight haircuts. They could almost be twins.

A sharp contrast to their prisoner, early twenties, a dark lithe Semitic man with large eyes that would be those of a dreamer or a poet, if not for their immeasurable hardness.

One of the interrogators peers into Al-Azrad face, “Listen, Al-Azrad, spare us the bullshit and we’ll spare you the pain. We know you are Shamash Al-Azrad, formerly of Riyadh now with the Islamic State. Tell what we need and you’ll be given a nice cozy cell at Gitmo.”

“I was trapped in one cell for a millennium,” Al-Azrad says, unaccented American English, “now I am trapped in another. Date mihi libertatem!” The two interrogators leave the room with Al-Azard still chained to the table.

“Time to up the ante, this fucking prick thinks he’s cute.”

“Take him surfing?”

“Yes.”

They lead Al-Azrad out. He goes willing, head high and spring in his step. There is a room, a table with restraints, a towel, and a bucket of water. Strapped to the table they pull the towel tight over Al-Azrad’s face and pour the bucket over it. He doesn’t fight it, he just lays there motionless as a monk in deepest contemplation.

One of the interrogators shouts, “Are you ready to talk? We can do this all day.”

Al-Azrad doesn’t blink, doesn’t show an iota of discomfort, “Please Sir, may I have some more?”

Sweat beads on their foreheads, “Yeah all day, daily there buddy.” They use up two buckets of water, Al-Azrad doesn’t gag, he just stays as stiff as board. Afterwards they dump him back in the cell. The two interrogators discuss their unusual prisoner.

“No fucking way.”

“We’ve all seen it, for the last week, just the same shit. We work him, he talks gibberish”

“Some sort of freak.”

The site doctor joins them in the hall.

“Hasn’t broken yet?”

“No, if anything I’d say he is resisting stronger than ever. Doc, we waterboarded him three times. In row. Shit I thought he was dead the third time. But he was just as fresh as a daisy coming out as going in.”

“Yeah, in my fifteen years of doing this I’ve never seen anything like this, I mean nothing like this. Doctor, is there anything unusual about him physically?”

“Sorry, nothing out of the ordinary. He is a healthy Arab male in his early twenties. The only thing I could say is he seemed to be in a dissociative state, borderline catatonic. But he has actually improved since we’ve had him. I can’t explain it.”

“We’ve deprived him of sleep, food, bedding. Even resorted to old fashioned beatings. If you give us the all clear we’ll go chemical.”

“Give me an hour to do a check up.”

An hour and half later the two interrogators and Al-Azrad are back to their standoff. The doctor shoots a syringe filled with scopolamine and oxycodone into Al-Azrad. His head nods a few times, some rolling of the eyes, a slackening of the features. A twilight state of sleep takes hold.

“So Al-Azrad, let’s start simple. When we found you, you had cut off your beard and hair. Why?”

Al-Azrad lulls his head side to side trying to focus his eyes on the questioner, “Do you like to be fucked in the ass with a strap-on.”

Ignoring the insult the interrogator continues, “I thought all you hajis kept the traditional Koranic manner of grooming.”

Al-Azrad neighs like a horse, louder and louder until the wall seem to shake. His voice drops into a deep bass, “I’ve been around longer than that book. They opened the seal, then came my friends the flies, the smell of old, so old, corruption. They all ran, all except this one.”

The interrogator asks, “Why? Why did they run? Why were you left behind.”

Al-Azrad says, “Because even with all their belief, all their fanaticism, they knew. They knew it was I their ancestors feared in those long desert nights. It was I who rode on the winds with them when the Arabian tribes stormed the walls of Ancient Ur, when Sargon heaped the heads of the vanquished to the sky. It was I, always me. I grow tired of your questions, you bore me, no matter I will not be here much longer.”

Nostrils flaring, spittle flying the interrogator shouts, “Tell us what we need to know. How are you being supplied, who is fronting the money, where are your team’s safe houses.”

A change shifts over the room, ripples pulse through the air, Al-Azrad stands, “Does it make your dicks hard? Holding power others? Yes, maybe it does, you pathetic fucking sacks of shit and guts. Always mixed up. Kill for your ‘ideals’ then go home and give the wife a slow boneing. Oceans of blood driven on the tides of time, your pathetic lives starting and ending at the cock and the cunt. Juices flow, blood, cum, piss and somehow they become a sacrament. Fucking pathetic, meat, MEAT! That is all you fucking shitheads are! You do not have vision, you do not have clarity. Let me show you.”

He looks up to the ceiling, “Judging by the stars we are somewhere just north of the equator, Djibouti? Yes, even though the stars have shifted in the last two thousand years, and the names of countries have changed, I know where we are.

Still you refuse to believe?

Right, Sergeant First Class Robert O’Donnal? Born in 1978 in Wilmington Delaware to John and Rosemary O’Donnal. Yes, you wanted to live up to daddy, the Vietnam war hero. Wanted to show the asshole who used to beat your ass to make into a man, that you would be a bigger deal than his ass would ever be. So you enlisted in the US Army. Made into 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment- Delta. But the anger is still there, even after all you have accomplished, it still roils and kicks in your belly. Oh, it has led to some outbursts, those little secrets you keep locked up where no one can see, or so you think.

Shall I share them here with the present company?”

O’Donnal’s face goes pale, he stumbles backwards towards the door and leaves the room.

Al-Azrad/Apollyon smiles and sits down, then pisses himself. He keeps emptying his bladder until a gallon of urine covers the floor.

“What a fucking relief,” he says, “Major Evans, Doctor Chang, do you mind leaving? I need a break, or do you want me to read your fortunes too, maybe some tarot cards, tea leaves, or perhaps I can just read the shit stains on your underwear?”

Eyes wide the Major Evans and Doctor Chang beat feet to the door.

SFC O’Donnal sits in the main control room nursing a cup of Irished coffee, Major Evans stares fixed at the feed from the interrogation room, Doctor Chang runs his fingers through his hair mumbling, “...maybe, uh yeah, maybe he…”

Major Evans peers closer at the monitor, a radio crackles to life, “Major, the men you posted at the door are complaining the stink from the room is getting worse.”

Major Evans grabs the radio, “Fine tell them they can stand as far away as they want, just keep the entrance to the interrogation room in sight, until we can get some respirators.”

Major Evans returns to his vigil over the security feed, a moment of surprise, the room is covered in blood, dark, thick, congealed. Al-Azrad’s face split by a wide grin taking up the lower half of his face. He stares into the camera.

The radio crackles, “Soon, you Major.”

“Did you hear that!? See that!?” the Major croaks.

SFC O’Donnal asks, “No, what?”

The monitor shows the plain gray room with Al-Azrad sitting quietly.

“Nothing, tired I guess,” Major Evans responds, “we should have an answer back from Virginia within the hour. I hope they give us the go ahead. I’d prefer kill the fucker and be done, screw the intel.”

SFC O’Donnal says, “We have some serious problems. We need to find the leak divulged the information on us and this operation.”

Sgt. Gonzales stands well away from the stench coming from under the door.

A reek like a thousands septic tanks fills the hallway. He wonders, why not just gag and bag the fucker like any spaz?

He hears a voice, soft, feminine, familiar. His grandmother.

“Por favor, hijo mío. Déjame salir. ¿Qué hice mal? Ayuadame. Su propia madre.” Please, my son. Let me out. What did I do wrong. Help me. Your own mother.

No. He thinks. The murmurings continue from Al-Azrad’s room.

Sgt. Gonzales answers, “Shut the fuck up. You haji piece of shit!”

His partner on guard duty, Specialist Winthrop, shouts, “Yo, are you alright there? Chill, I don’t hear anything.”

Sgt. Gonzales still hears his grandmother’s voice still speaking, “Usted va a morir, muy dolorosamente. Entonces el verdadero sufrimiento comenzará.” You are going to die, very painfully. Then the real suffering will begin.

SFC O’Donnal catches some Z’s in the control room, Doctor Chang has retired to his sleeping quarters. Major Evans is focused intently, watching the feed from Al-Azrad’s room. He hears water dripping somewhere, between each drop he can hear faint whisperings. Images intrude in his mind’s eye: men with shaved heads and curly beards naked to the waist, they are rushing somewhere among a colonnade by torch light muttering “Aba’don, Aba’don, Aba’don.” The men keep running, Roman Legionaries follow after them, swords drawn.

Major Evans shudders awake back to the present. Something triggers in his memory, ‘Abaddon’ the Destroyer, ‘Apollyon’ in the Greek translation of the Hebrew.

He looks at the monitor, Al-Azrad isn’t in view. The room is empty.

Radios spark to life all over the site. Code Red, attempted escape, all personnel report for weapons.

At Central Control six men cluster around a table. Major Evans, SFC O’Donnal, Doctor Chang, Lieutenant James, Specialist Browning, and Specialist Web.

Major Evans addresses them, “This is the situation: about 10 minutes ago We have no visual confirmation of Al-Azrad. The men posted at the door report he hasn’t exited. He may be laying in wait, he may have escaped through other means. We will be breaching assuming he is still in situ.”

Submachine guns are loaded, bolts racked, the velcro of body armor being fastened cuts the silence, tactical vest and helmet buckles click.

They make their way to the holding rooms, lights flicker.

“What a time for electrical problems,” Spc. Web says.

“Murphy’s Law, man,” Lt. James tells him, “checking right!”

Lt. James slices the pie at the entrance of an empty room, “Clear! Moving.”

In the distance there is a lowing of a bull, then the tittering of a jackal's bark.

They arrive at the holding cells without incident. There is a maelstrom of animal noises. The smell of vomit and shit is overpowering.

Sgt. Gonzales and Spc. Winthrop are waiting facing the door to the cell.

What sounds like a cat’s yowl amped up a hundred times is coming from inside over the voice of an old lady saying, “...fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou…” Over and over again.

Sgt. Gonzales says quietly, “Someone else volunteer for point. I ain’t doing it.”

Lt. James answers, “Sure thing, back of the line.”

Major Evans motions for everyone to huddle, “O’Donnal will blow the lock, Web, Browning toss flash bangs. We go in hot.”

The noise changes to something like a rough sex orgy in an insane asylum. Screams of pain and groans of pleasure mix in unequal parts. One overtaking the other in a pandemonic polyphony.

They stack up along the walls leading to the door, O’Donnal places a charge on the door’s lock and counts down with his fingers, “Three… two… one.” He makes a fist and pulls, a sharp bang, the door flies open inwards. Flash bangs clatter inside, a deafening blast, a sharp brilliance. Web and Browning file in, weapons leveled, followed by Major Evans, Sgt. Winthrop, O’Donnal, and the rest with Sgt. Gonzales last.

The cell is empty.

A moment’s pause, flashlights illuminating every corner.

No prisoner.

Nothing.

Silence.

“What the fuck!” O’Donnal shouts and fires a burst at the ceiling. Al-Azrad drops like a spider and grabs O’Donnal’s weapon and neck. A thick cracking sounds, O’Donnal drops to the floor, head turned 180 degrees looking over his shoulder.

A blow catches Sgt. Gonzales right in the gut and propels him of the room. The door slams shut, screams and gunfire erupted. It is over in three seconds. Terror gives way to guilt for Sgt. Gonzales. He focuses his front sight at the door. He rushes it kicking the door off its hinges.

Everyone is dead inside, Al-Azrad’s bullet riddled corpse, a shotgun blast obliterated the top half of his head, lies in a pool of blood surrounded by the remains of team.

Chests punched through, head’s ripped off, bullet holes, knife wounds.

He backs out of the abattoir.

“Fuck me,” he says.

“Yes, indeed,” someone answers, “yes, indeed.”

O’Donnal’s face has a leering grin, facing over his back. O’Donnal’s corpse shuffles to its knees, “The body, so fragile, so ephemeral. It certainly beats the fucking void. Wouldn’t you say? Oh that’s right, you wouldn’t know. You consciousness couldn’t handle it, the endless darkness, the yawning nothingness. Your soft pink fluffy existence, conceived, born, mother’s milk. Sickening really.”

He unhinges his jaw and effluence of bile spills out onto the floor with a metallic clicking sounds.

There are bullets in the vomit.

Sgt. Gonzales remembers something, a holy card his mother had given him before his first deployment to Iraq, with the patron Saint of soldiers going into battle. There was a prayer on the back.

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle..” Sgt. Gonzales begins.

The O’Donnal/Apollyon being roar and shouts in clipped metallic tones,

“The fuck you mention that traitor, that lacky!”

Sgt. Gonzales continues raising training his weapon on Apollyon, “Defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and the snares of the devil. May God rebuke him.”

O’Donnal’s shoulders dislocate and his arms force themselves to reverse, fingers twitching and clawing, “You worthless spicmonkey, peon, you son of a whore, you call upon them?” the voice of a small child, “Fuck you, murderer!” then an old Iraqi woman, “Fuck you, killer!” then in the deep hollow tones of something inhuman, “Fuck you, bloodstained son of Cain! You think the Son of Man will come to your aid? Do you forget Sadir City? What you did there?”

Tightening his finger on the trigger Sgt. Gonzales finishes, “and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”

A blast shakes the room, red mist bursts from O’Donnal’s neck, he is thrown back. Sgt. Gonzales holds down the trigger until the mag runs empty. Apollyon finally shuts up.

Amid the smell of blood and burning cordite two sounds emerge, the quick change of a magazine, and a sick gurgling from O’Donnal’s shredded throat.

Sgt. Gonzales prepares to fire.

O’Donnal’s corpse shoots to its’ feet and takes off, head flapping side to side and dives through the window at the end of the hall in a hail of bullets.

Deep into an African night Apollyon escapes in O’Donnal’s corpse shouting in the distance, “We begin.”

1) I thought I would try for an action/horror setting. Does this detract from the creepy aspects of the work?

2)Is there any muddlement in the progression of the story? I switch POVs a few times.

3) Are there any grammatical, continuity errors?

4) How does the memorandum at the start work. does it add, or does it make the succeeding story confusing? 