“Come out, Charlieeee, wherever you aaaare,” taunted Mr. Jackson. I heard the bone-chilling ca-clack, the explosion of buckshot as he fired blindly into a closet in an adjacent room. “Ching-chong-ching-chong, you little demon!” he cackled. “Come out, Charlieeeeee…I got some cold rat meat for ya…” The words were colder and blacker than the rolled steel of the shotgun. Then another explosion, the screaming of women over all of it—Dad, are you crazy? Gerald put that gottdayum gun down. What are you doing? I’m gonna call the po-lice! Don’t call the po-lice…cain’t have no po-po over for Thanksgiving! It was the weed. Naw he drunk! Somebody do somethin’, he gawn kill Brad! Naw Dad, keep goin’, I’m gettin’ all this on Tik-Tok live!

He had insisted on calling me Charlie, the epithet for Viet-Cong. Thing is, I’m not Vietnamese. I’m not even Asian. I’m a white guy—Balkan on one side, Scotch-Irish on the other. Got black hair, and maybe my eyes are a little squinty—I mean, what a nigga gone do, I got bags. Whatever it was, it had sent Mr. Jackson into a PTSD-fueled homicidal rage. Ever since, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, sweaty, breathless, reeling from a recurring dream in which I’m fighting for the North Vietnamese. My comrades speak to me in a language I can’t understand. I don’t know how to operate my AK-47. I get lost in the tunnels. And as I bolt upright in bed, choking on fear, I can still hear for a moment the fading, psychotic laughter of Gerald Jackson. “Come out, Charlieeeeeeeeee…”

#

I opened the door of the lavatory to find Alisha’s brother, QuaDarius, standing right in front of me. He was huge, a big-bodied former wide receiver, a drop-out from a division-II school, University of Northeastern Louisiana, not disciplined enough for two-a-days, and so he quit the football team, lost his scholarship, and returned home to live with his parents. He spent his days smoking weed, flexing on Instagram, his nights hanging out with his good-for-nothing homies from high school and getting into trouble. At the time he had a band around his ankle, punishment for assaulting some other drunk dipshit who dared step on his sneakers. Didn’t matter—he didn’t have a job or any place to be anyway.

“You fuckin’ her?” Quad asked. He took up the entire doorway…there was no way to get past him.

Completely taken aback, it took me a moment to find the right response. “We’ve been dating for 3 months. What do you think?” I tried to edge past him but he moved to the side to block me again.

“So you fuckin’ her,” he insisted. He had recently taken to picking out his hair into a massive afro—had been watching YouTube videos about the Black Panthers, which had influenced his stylistic choices, if not his personal philosophy. The black turtleneck was also a bit much. Quad reached down, touched my crouch, leaned in a little more. “We could…you know…before the meal starts,” he said, suggestively. I smacked his hand away.

“Yes, we are fucking, and the pussy is good,” I stated antagonistically, looking him in the eye. Peering into his flared nostrils, I felt like a bullfighter without a cape or a saber, backed into the corner of a squared corrida. I halfway expected him to gore me, toss me through the sheetrock of the ceiling. Instead, he seemed to be in shock at my vulgar admission of coitus with his sister—or at my rejecting his advances—so I was able to slink past.

Back at the table, Alisha’s mom had brought out a huge spread of dishes—pork ribs, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, piping hot cornbread, bourbon-soaked pecan pie…the works. There must’ve been at least five protein dishes and as many carb dishes to match. Three desserts. Wine. Beer. But a curious absence of the things I had grown up seeing at the Thanksgiving table—simplicities like roast turkey or canned cranberry sauce.

“Gerry, why don’t you say grace,” said Alisha’s mom, addressing the man of the house, Alisha’s father, Mr. Gerald Jackson. Everyone bowed their heads and took the hand of the person sitting on either side of them. Alisha held my hand, but her grandmother grabbed ahold of my wrist, her withered fingers, light like naked tree branches in winter, betraying advanced age that could not be so easily detected in her face.

Mr. Jackson took a deep breath with his eyes tightly closed. A baritone note, marked by a beautiful vibrato, began in his chest before exiting his o-shaped lips. The others matched his note as they began to hum a tune unfamiliar to me but distinctively hymn-like.

“Dear Lord, greetings and salutations,” said Mr. Jackson, as if he knew God personally. “We meet again on this fine Thursday afternoon…an afternoon of thanks and fellowship…an afternoon of sustenance and family…an afternoon that we owe to your sweet graces, oh God.”

“Hallelujah,” croaked Granny, breaking with the humming for a moment.

“And of course, oh God, who goes by the name of Eloyatu, we ask not only that you bless most of us present today at this fine meal you have made possible, but that you also curse the evil scientist Yakub, who made the white man in his image. We ask humbly that you also curse the white race and the other races of men and animals descended from the white race—the cockroach, the rat, the Oriental, the mosquito, the viper…and of course, the Jew.” His voice had gone weak and shaky. He was probably as stoned as I was. 

At this point I thought the prayer had morphed into something purposefully humorous, that Mr. Jackson was going to yell out “gotcha” before getting on with the rest of the actual blessing, that everyone would guffaw like it was Def Comedy Jam. I opened one eye slightly to spy QuaDarius with both eyes fully open, transfixing me like talons. Mrs. Jackson was tenderly rubbing Gerald’s hand. The whole family gently rocked from side to side in time with the acapella accompaniment. “Amen,” Quad yelled out at the request for curses.

“Oh Lord God in Heaven, Eloyatu, we come to you humbly at this time that would normally be harvest for our people, before our lands of this great nation were stolen by the white, to ask for forgiveness for inviting an Oriental to this great, hallowed table under your gaze. Please forgive our eldest child, Alisha, for giving over her heart to the Oriental. As you know, Eloyatu, great creator, the heart is a fickle and flawed organ.”

Alisha, my girlfriend, the girl I thought I knew, exclaimed, “Babba-zah,” or something like that, before her father concluded the incantation. 

I opened my eyes to find Alisha’s mother behind us sprinkling red wine on our heads. It rolled down my scalp, down my neck and stained the white sweater I was wearing. Mr. Jackson wept with his face in his hands. I still have that sweater…can’t seem to be capable of getting rid of it. I also have 15-year-old pairs of holey underwear. Fuck Marie Kondo.

#

We had shown up for Thanksgiving around 11 a.m.—in time for Alisha to help with the preparations. Her parents lived in a stately, 3 story Greek revivalist home at the edge of the Garden District in New Orleans. Jasmine brambles climbed all over the wrought iron gate that surrounded the home, but their fragrant flowers and most of the leaves had newly dropped in anticipation of winter. Where the jasmine was not, the wisteria was and had grown to be wrist-thick. The summers must’ve been quite the show of flowers and an utter profusion of sweet aromas. I was exhausted from the long drive, but I perked up at the sight of the incredible home. It seemed like every other house displayed a plaque from the local historical society. Alisha must’ve seen a look of astonishment on my face when we pulled up—she just giggled and blushed at the tips of her ears and nose. God, she was a sweetheart…so sorry things turned out the way they did.

Mr. Jackson was an impressive man. Came from nothing, as they say. Absolutely self-made. Did well in high school, post-integration, lettering in every sport that he tried his hand at. Graduated as Salutatorian, as well. Went to the marines just as the conflagration in Vietnam was becoming kinetic and found himself on the front lines bearing an M60, being the big guy that he was. He saw it all: fragging of the commanding officer, raping and pillaging, legs blown off, punji sticks piercing every body part imaginable, the burning of entire villages. And then there was the racism. Despite being the largest person in his squad, they always gave him the flashlight and the 12-gauge when it came time to investigate the myriad tunnels that crisscrossed the dirt beneath their feet. He described it as a death-sentence. But somehow he survived. And it was his experience in those tunnels that gave him that love of the shotgun—a noble weapon he called it. And whatever he had seen down there is what also gave him the PTSD. “He’ll talk about anything else,” Alisha had said, “but he will not talk about whatever he saw in those tunnels.”

“Heyyyyy babyyyy,” gushed Alisha’s grandmother as we strode into the kitchen. She was bent over the sink attending to something obscured by a mountain of soapy bubbles. Her thick glasses magnified slightly sclerotic eyes; but other than that and some stooping, she looked great for an old lady. “And this must be your beau,” said Granny, looking at me with her head cocked.

“Gran-Momma, this is my boyfriend Brad,” said Alisha.

“Well, hello, Brad. I would give you a hug, but as you can see, I’m washin’ the chicken. You know, can’t be too careful with all that nasty syrup they put on there.” She smiled with pearly white dentures and tilted her head back to observe me through bifocals. “My goodness, you are so WHITE, young man. Are you okay?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m doing okay, ” I answered, laughing nervously. “Nice to meet you.”

“ALISHAAAAAA,” cried another matriarch, Alisha’s mother, barging into the kitchen.

“MOMMAAAAAAAA,” Alisha reciprocated as they embraced in a bearhug.

“So this must be Brad,” said Mrs. Jackson warmly, as she gave me a welcoming embrace. “Your father is going to be so excited to see you, Boobah.” 

Mrs. Jackson led us up a flight of stairs to the second floor of their exquisite home, to the game room. Boisterous laughter echoed through the hallway lined with prodigious numbers of photographs of close family and ancestors. A black and white, grainy 9×12 of a young Mr. Jackson in boots and fatigue bottoms, shirtless and sweaty, bandana around his head, a 12-gauge slung over his shoulder, standing with some guys from his platoon, all the rest of them white, none of them smiling. More black and white photos of Alisha and QuaDarius as toddlers in various endeavors of horseplay—racing around a kiddie pool, bundled up in the snow, in their bedroom surrounded by mountains of toys and stuffed animals. Myriad wedding day photos of almost unrecognizably young Mister and Misses in frilly 70s garb and picked-out hairdos. And then there was the one that still haunts me. An elder black man in overalls standing with a pitchfork beside an elder black woman in a sack-like dress, something wrapped around her head…an unheralded American Gothic in celluloid. “Gerald’s great-grandparents. Freed slaves. Share-croppers,” said Mrs. Jackson over my shoulder, reverently. She pointed to another photo beside it—”That’s him, not even five years later, hung in the town square.” A throng of simple-looking country people in overalls and big hats, little kids even, staring into the camera with questioning eyes, were gathered around the hanging tree where a limp, dark figure had been executed, fixed to a tree branch by a thick, white rope. Some of the on-lookers smiled like it was Christmas morning. “A stomach sickness had been going around town…food poisoning…a couple people even died. They blamed his crops that he had been selling to the local markets. Arrested by a posse. Hung. No judge. No jury other than the white rabble that had come for his life.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. She rubbed my shoulder. “Come on, let’s meet Gerald,” she said, softly.

The acrid funk of marijuana smoke greeted my nose as we entered the game room. Alisha held my hand for introductions, steeling my nerves, but the look on everyone’s faces was an unwelcoming mix of disbelief and maybe a little disgust. Mr. Jackson’s mouth hung open as he sat frozen in place, patting Alisha as she hugged him around the neck. It was easy to see that Gerald was a large man, even as he was slumped over his dominoes. His hair, still mimicking the flat-top he had sported as a young marine, and close-cropped beard, had both gone the color of ash; but despite his years, the jaw retained a visibly sharp edge that poked out of creeping pudginess. Could still see a fearsome jarhead inside the old-man costume. But it was his eyes that told the story of the jungle, of his time in ‘Nam. They were dark like red wine. Dark like congealed blood. And even upon the first moments of that initial meeting, I saw pain in there…and something disturbed that intensified when the eyes set upon me.

Gramps shook his head, kept his eyes on his dominoes. QuaDarius at first said nothing and just observed, looking all around my face. Then he blurted out, “Yo, my nigga, you play dominoes?”

“Don’t use that word, goddammit,” admonished Gramps. “I might be damn near a hundred forty, but I can still put you over my knee.” His voice was like a fire crackling somewhere in the distance.

I pulled up a metal folding chair between Quad and Gerald as everyone threw their bones back into a pile to restart a game. Gramps took a surprisingly large draw off the blunt that was going around, began to cough his ancient lungs out before passing to QuaDarius. But just before Quad had a solid purchase on the blunt, attempting to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger, Gramps released the stogie, dropping it into his grandson’s lap. 

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” QuaDarius squealed, leaning way back, slapping at his crotch. After much bouncing up and down, slapping and screaming, Quad finally bent down to pick up stomped-out, brown shreds of tobacco skin and marijuana. “Damn, Gramps, you clumsy, dawg,” he complained disrespectfully before chucking the remains of the blunt in an ashtray on the table. “But I got some new shih that is fiyuh. They call this shih The Nigga Sweat.” 

“What I just tell you?” admonished Grandpa.

Quad turned a mylar baggie over in his hands, reading the back of the package slowly as if it were a passage from a biology textbook. “The Nigga Sweat is a mind-bending sativa cross of Vietnamese Black and Nigerian Haze. Clocking in over 30% THC, this pure landrace sativa is not to be trifled with. For experienced smokers ONLY.” He giggled like a little boy, “Uh oh, Dad, this shit say it got some Vietnamese in it.” 

Gerald pursed his lips, rolled his eyes.

“Ching chong ching chong wing wong,” QuaDarius repeated over and over as he ground up the pot and loaded up a fresh sheaf of tobacco, laughing intermittently at his own stupid joke.

And so we proceeded to a game of bones and a fresh blunt. I guess they hadn’t expected a white boy to be so experienced in such things, but I grew up playing basketball and twice led my high school team to the state finals. I wouldn’t say that I had been a full-on wigger, but when basketball is your life, let’s just say that one absorbs, via osmosis, certain aspects of blackness. So yeah, I played a lot of dominoes and smoked a lot of weed for a good number of years. But this stuff that QuaDarius had gotten his hands on was some kind of the devil’s lettuce, let me tell you. After a couple rounds of passing the swisher, the shit had started kicking in, and none of us had even realized it. That creeper weed—sneaks up on you on tiptoes before putting the barrel against your temple.

Time seemed to slow down. Or maybe it sped up. Made my brain like an accordian under the operation of a drunk Frenchman sitting at the street corner at 2 a.m. I looked at Grandpa, we locked eyes, we both start laughing—his dentures came flying onto the table, scattering dominoes in their slobbery wake. Quad recoiled, started talking a hundred miles an hour, said something nigga-this, nigga-that, and I guess Gramps had had enough of the n-word, didn’t even bother putting his teeth back in, pulled out his pocket knife, unfolded the blade, took a swing, albeit a slow one, at QuaDarius, who somehow retained enough wherewithal to lean backwards just out of range, Matrix-like. I looked over at Gerald. His head was down, chin resting on his barrel chest. He was mumbling something…couldn’t tell if he was praying or dreaming.

Alisha appeared at the door. “Food’s ready,” she announced cheerily. She winked at me, proud that her man could so easily bond with the males of her clan. Gerald looked up quickly, shook his head as if he were chasing away a stiff jab that had landed square on the chin. Gramps folded up his knife but kept his watery, wary eyes on his grandson, the edges of his mouth pointing straight down in a shaky grimace.

#

At the table, uncomfortably stoned, my plate loaded up 6-inches deep with as much food as Mrs. Jackson could heap on there, head and neck sticky with drying rivulets of red wine, I suddenly really did not want to be there. I looked over at Granny gnawing on a rib, smacking with her mouth open. Grease wetted her lips and chin along with generous amounts of barbecue sauce. I thought of an elderly lioness with the last kill it would ever make before slinking off into the Kalahari sunset to die under a Baobab tree. She bared her teeth and snarled at me as if I were an invading hyena. Circle of life coming to a close. Great success—in Borat voice—after raising many cubs, slaughtering many gazelle. And Grandpa staring me down. Wtf? Did he think I was trying to move in on his African Queen? Pocket knife coming out under the table. I didn’t say the n-word…your grandson did. Speaking of grandson…

“He fuckin’ her,” said grandson.

“Language!” admonished mother. But he repeated the vulgarities. Papa-lion looked up. Who is fuckin’ whom? White oriental guy is fuckin’ Alisha? Repeated the vulgarities—he fuckin’ her. Fork drops to plate. No more talking. Can’t shake image of white oriental penis penetrating youngest member of tribe. But I thought you were a virgin, going to save yourself for marriage? That’s what we taught you. What will Reverend Charles think? White oriental took virginity of baby girl. Eloyatu sending jive-turkey intergenerational curses. Ching chong ching chong wing wong. Slanty-eyed negro babies maybe too short for starring role in basketball. Not good enough at organic chemistry for top tier medical school. Caught between worlds—expelled from both, disloyal to both. And loyalty most important. Loyalty to family. Loyalty to tribe. Loyalty to country. Loyalty to leadership. Loyalty to hierarchy. Otherwise it all falls apart—battalion descends into mutiny, order succumbs to chaos, Communism reigns in southeast Asia and beyond.

By this point it had not been lost on me that QuaDarius did not care for me in the least, and that he was a complete and total prick and a closeted homosexual. In my head I had begun spouting my own profanities to supersede his. Yeah I’m fuckin’ her. I even fuck her in the ass and she loves it…cums every time. Did you know that the clitoris shares a system of nerves with the rectum? But my real favorite is the face fucking—irrumatio if your dumbass needs to study for the SAT again to go to some 4th-rate historically black college without a football scholarship—Grumpling University or Hoe-tard College or whatever the fuck. Maybe you could major in being an illiterate dickhead. And I always, always, always cum in her mouth…and of course, she always swallows with a smile…laps up every drop.

Gerald let out a howl unlike anything I had ever heard come from a human being, slammed his hands on the table sending plates into the air and toppling wine glasses. I expected everyone to gawk at Gerald, wondering why in hell Father had suddenly erupted. But when I looked around, they were all staring at me. Alisha would later tell me that I had not just been rattling off vulgarities silently, in my head…oh no, I had said them all out loud. Everything about the ass-fucking, the cum-swallowing…everything. Guess the weed had crossed my wires up and it wasn’t all just semi-catatonic mentation.

Gerald swiftly withdrew from the table, almost toppled backwards, began screeching and slapping himself in the face, disappeared into the penetralium of the home. “Ayo, nigga, we about to have problems,” yiped QuaDarius. “Yo white ass in for it.” Quad started coming around the table; but before he could close the distance to put his hands on me, Gerald called him off. “Back off, soldier, this gook is mine!” he barked, as he stepped through the door of the dining room. He racked the shotgun and leveled it. “I’m not a gook!” I remember screaming, defensively, before rolling out of my chair onto the floor just in time. The first 12-gauge blast incinerated the platter of ribs. Gran-Momma was showered with BBQ sauce, meat, bone-shrapnel, and spent gunpowder, glasses knocked askew. I wasn’t waiting around for the next blast, and as my surging adrenaline propelled me out of marijuana-induced catatonia, I made the curious decision to run up the stairs instead of out the front door.

I sprinted all the way to the end of the hall and into the farthest bedroom. Locked the door behind me. Thought at first maybe I could jump out the window, but my logical faculties were working well enough to compute that it was much too far. Another stoned decision—I got under the bed. Like wouldn’t that be the first place he’d check? I could feel each heartbeat reverberate throughout my entire body. My breathing was much too fucking loud, but I couldn’t steady it. I thought I might puke. All of it to the dreadful noises of Gerald going room to room, calling out for Charlie and obliterating closet doors with buckshot. 

BLAAAAAMMMMM! Gerald blasted the door open. Dad, are you crazy? Gerald put that gottdayum gun down. What are you doing? Women screaming. Quad laughing maniacally, egging the whole thing on. I could see his house slippers shuffling towards the bed. Then another pair of shiny shoes appeared. “Put the weapon down, NOW!” bellowed a man’s voice. Thank God, Alisha had called the cops. And thank God, again, that the Jacksons lived in the wealthy part of town. “Don’t do it!” the cop commanded. Then a loud popping noise. A thud as Gerald’s body fell like a plank of wood onto the carpet. And there we were, face to face, practically eye to eye, Gerald lying on the rug, TASERed, me flattened out like an avoidant house cat due for vaccinations. “There you are,” he croaked. “Ching chong, motherfUUUUUUUU…” as he received another jolt of electricity.

#

We didn’t last too long after that. How could we? Alisha’s father tried to murder me. I mean, we tried to make it work. I didn’t press charges—perhaps stupidly—and the DA dropped the case, given Mr. Jackson’s prominent position in the community and all. I tried to convince Alisha that everything was fine, and she tried to convince me that she didn’t care what her family thought of me. We both knew the other was lying. The day she left I actually told her that I loved her. She said, “I know,” as her eyes filled up with tears. And thus with a kiss…we died.

I floated around lifelessly for a few months, feeling all hollow and lonely as one does after a major break-up. I thought I saw Alisha from afar a couple times—once at a Starbucks and once at the movie theater. Took all my willpower not to run to her, pull some kind of Say Anything bullshit. Hell, maybe I should have.

But I buried myself in work and video games, leaned heavily on my good friend Tennessee whiskey. My brother only had to listen to me cry on the phone twice. Day after day, I woke up with less and less pain until I was finally myself again after 3 or 4 months. From all my hard-work, got promoted into the managerial ranks at FedEx. Even started dating again and met someone that had long-term potential. And then one day after work, sifting through junk in the mail room of my apartment complex, I found the letter. Sender’s address was New Orleans—Gerald Jackson up at the top. I sat at my table with the envelope in front of me for what seemed like forever. Was afraid to see what was in there. Anthrax spores? A tiny explosive—just enough to maim the hands so I’d have to learn a new method of tying my shoes?

I opened it. It was just a letter. Hand written, exceptionally neat for a man’s.

 

Brad,

 

I hope you don’t mind, but I got your mailing address from Alisha. I am deeply saddened to hear that the two of you split—especially so because I’m sure “the event” (as I’m calling it) had a lot to do with it. Anyway, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive this old jarhead. You will find, with age, that the world does things to you—many things good, some bad—and that the good things become like badges, the bad like scars, with much of it resting on the outside of a man for all to see. The event has become one of those scars, and I wear it with shame.

 

I’m going to write something here that I’ve never divulged to anyone, not even my own family…not even my own wife. It’s that painful…that bizarre. But before I do, I wanted to let you know, not that it excuses my behavior, that for a couple months leading up to the event, I had been struggling with anxiety and depression—my PTSD had begun rearing its ugly head again. Loud noises would make my blood pressure spike. Sleeping had become an impossibility. Even familiar faces at the grocery store had grown ugly and menacing. If I’m being honest, I have to admit that my PTSD careens into the closer edges of psychosis. It’s scary to even write that. But again, not an excuse. Maybe just an explanation.

 

Anyway, here goes…

 

You know I was a marine. You also know (all too well) that I was the “tunnel guy”—the grunt given the blunderbuss to go down in them tunnels to see what the fuck. Well, it was a particularly rainy evening in the Central Highlands in ‘Nam, and some serious what the fuck was about to go down. I was fresh off the Battle of Dak To. Could still smell the blood and guts and exploded ordnance from that fight. When I closed my eyes at night, I didn’t see black like most normal people…nah, I saw red like blood. Jesus, that fight was something practically demonic…it’s actually indescribable to anyone who hasn’t seen serious combat. Getting out of Dak To without a scratch—well, without any physical scratches—I thought I was invincible. Thought I was some kind of black Iron Man, or that Eloyatu had annointed me The Holy Negro—He Who Shall Be Impervious To The Projectiles of Man.

Anyway, one day, lo and behold, we found a tunnel…another one. They handed me the shottie. I loaded her up—alternated slugs with buckshot. I name all my weapons. And I still remember the name of that particular shotgun—Big American Penis, which was carved into the buttstock. I put new batteries in a flashlight, but I never used a flashlight going down—was part of my secret sauce, how I was so successful. And by “successful” I mean never killed. It was probably my 20th or so. Most of the time you’d find jack shit—just a couple empty dug-out rooms. Sometimes there’d be some good intel like a fragment of a map. Eeeeevery now and then you’d find Charlie. He’d usually be sitting at a little table around a lantern, eating rice or playing cards. Those motherfuckers were quiet even when they were relaxing, though. They used sign language instead of speaking. They had mastered the art of laughing silently. But I had mastered the art of squeezing through a tunnel silently…while heavily armed. A couple grenades rolled down the pike was usually all it took. Maybe, infrequently, I’d have to finish a guy or two off; but by then they were mortally wounded anyway and a 12-gauge pointblank was an act of mercy.

This particular time seemed like all the others…only it was raining heavily. And at one point, as I inch-wormed in the dark, the tunnel began to slope precipitously downward. I started sliding in all the mud and couldn’t stop myself. Down I went at greater and greater speed, down straight into hell. 

I came flying out of that muddy vaginal canal, birthed into the rest of my life. I unprostrated myself. Brought up the shottie, ready for action, expecting my own death. And then I saw it. That enormous head all covered in pulsating veins, gigantic reflective eyes, nose like a damn bull—wide, nostrils flaring. I can only write these words because I took my meds just a little while ago. It…he…whatever it was, was seated cross-legged, but that nigga must’ve been 12 feet tall—biggest dick you ever seen in your life resting in the mud like an elephant trunk. It looked up at me and just smiled with complete and total disregard, like a man urinating in front of his dog. Then it went back to what it was doing—scooping up big handfuls of mud, slapping them onto the carcasses of dead animals—rats, chickens—piled up on one of side of him. He tossed these effigies into a pile on the other side. And at the bottom of the pile, they were maturing (I guess you’d say) into people. Little people with jet black hair and almond-shaped eyes, bucked teeth and a bad fucking attitude. The Viet Cong in other words. This motherfucker was literally making Viet Cong soldiers out of clay and animal carcasses.

Fuck, Brad, I don’t know if I can finish the story; but I feel like I gotta…so you know what really went down. Eloyatu, give me strength!

Children, Brad. Five of them grown from those little dolls of mud and bone and fur. Looked to be between 6 and 10 years old. They rushed me. It only took a moment to get over the shock of what lay before my eyes; but once I came back into myself, I let the Big Penis take charge. Just remember clackin’ and crackin’, vaporizing little Viet Cong demon heads like it wasn’t no thang. They all fell except the biggest one, who managed to get a shank in my side. I grabbed him around the throat and squeezed with all my might. When he finally went limp, his hands slowly slid from around my wrists as his eyes closed. I can still see his beatific little face like a sleeping angel. His hair damp with perspiration. Those long eyelashes. Upper lip smooth without even a whisper of facial hair. I kept looking at his lifeless body, expecting, hoping for it to turn back to mud and rat bones. But no such luck. It was just a dead child staring up at me with lifeless eyes. Children, Brad. They were just children. Or were they demons? I don’t know anymore. Just know that I killed them all with extreme prejudice. I became ill afterwards. I feel ill right now.

After I wiped the puke from my chin, I turned toward Mr. Elephant Dick. Racked another round and blasted him dead of center. Fucker didn’t move. No sign of damage. I racked again and pointed at his face, but I was out of ammo…that sickening, empty click. This big ass fool opened his mouth, started moving his lips, trying to speak to me. The sound…oh god, the sound. It was sickening, like worms squirming in jello, a hog with a slit throat screaming over all of it. It burrowed into my brain, felt like those worms had gotten into my head. I dropped my weapon and put my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. Next thing I know, I’m waking up lying flat on my back on the jungle floor, my boys standing over me. They say they had to send someone after me, found me passed-out in the mud down there in an empty room. No sign of a fight. No 12-foot tall hydroencephaly demon. No dead mud babies. Nothing.

Had to go have a good cry before I could finish this. Yeah, yeah…I’ll admit that I cry. I cry all the fucking time. But there you have it. That’s what finally did me in…finally got me honorably discharged with an ODPMC. I spent the next 12 months as a civilian living off the G.I. Bill and trying to figure out what the hell that thing was down in the tunnels—we didn’t have the internet back then and it wasn’t as easy to find out about seriously fringe shit. Then, one day in a radical bookstore in downtown New Orleans, I stumbled upon The Message to the Blackman in America by Elijah Muhammad. It described what I had seen in perfect detail. It described the evil scientist, Yakub. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t get down with being a Hotep, so I kept digging. Found out that Eloyatuism, a Christian group that splintered from the Nation of Islam, shared a belief in Yakub. I sought out the organization, and I’ve been a child of Eloyatu ever since. Actually, I’ve always been his child…we’re all his children.

Thought I owed this to you, given everything. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about those kids down in the tunnels. When Alisha was born, I was shaking so badly I could barely cut the umbilical cord. When I saw her there pressed against her Mom, her little eyes swollen and scrunched closed, all I could see was the baby I literally asphyxiated with my bare hands.  

But don’t feel sorry for me. I made my bed and I’m man enough to lie in it. I am, however, sorry for what I did to you. And I’m sorry for what it did to your relationship with my baby girl—I know she liked you. So please, again, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells Peter to forgive a brother “not seven times, but seventy by seven times”. Well, this brother is asking for a lot less than 490 times of forgiveness. I’m just asking for one, Brad. Just one. 

Semper fi…and may you and yours always receive blessings from Eloyatu.

–  Gerald