Sex and Murder Magazine

By Brad Nelson

Sittin’ in my foxhole,
Sharpenin’ my kni-ife.
Up jumped the enemy.
I had to take his li-ife.

-Army marching cadence


I lived in a tent in the middle of the fucking desert. It was a large tent, big enough for four bunks on each side. We had it sectioned off with five-fifty cord and blankets, four rooms to a side, with a walkway down the middle—eight rooms total. A man needs what privacy he can come by living out there. And, thank Christ, we had air conditioning in the tent; although, the generator always broke down when the weather was hottest. There was another tent, same as ours, set up right beside our tent, about three or four feet away.

My room—if you could call it that, more a living space really—was maybe seven feet by fourteen feet, just to the left after entering the tent, and sparsely furnished. I had a bed, a bunk or a rack as we called it then; a Tuff Box, which is just a plastic footlocker; a set of three plastic drawers that held mostly socks and underwear; and a bookshelf, that one of the interpreters had built for me, filled with paperback books: Stephen King, Brian Lumley, Ken Follet, J. R. R. Tolkien, L. Ron Hubbard, Jeffery Deaver, some Warhammer, and others.

My clothes hung from a length of five-fifty cord strung on one of the steel crossbeams that made up the structure of the tent. From the post on the right-hand side of the headboard of my bed hung my knife.

It was six inches of black steel. My father had given me the knife before I left to go over there.

“The Hedgehog,” he said the knife was called. “It’s supposed to be able to punch through a car door,” he said. Whether or not my father’s claim was true I don’t know. I never tried to punch my knife through a car door.

The blade of my knife was not like the blades of other knives. My knife was short, stubby—six inches from point to crosspiece and two and a half inches at the widest part of the blade. The shape of the blade reminded me of a leaf, a black leaf. On one side of my knife, on the blade near the crosspiece, was stamped KA-BAR, on the other side, USA. The handle was about four inches, coated in black rubber. My knife was solid, heavy; it had substance. Holding my knife, you knew you held a weapon in your hand—not a tool, a weapon.

I worked and lived in a small compound in the corner of the operating base at which I was stationed. My work was inconsequential, but then, everything we did over there after the fall of Saddam was inconsequential. There was a Sunni mosque somewhere to the north of the base and a Shia mosque somewhere to the west. Five times a day, starting around 0320 hours—that’s 3:20 a.m. for you civilians—these people do their call to prayer over the loud speakers from the mosques. I guess they need to be reminded to talk to God, or Allah, or whoever, but I sure as fuck didn’t need to be woken up in the middle of the night by what sounded like the opening number from the goddamn Lion King. And what made it worse is one of the mosques—the Sunni or the Shia, I don’t know which—started about ten seconds before the other, so you got this weird echo effect, only the echo was different from what the first mosque had called out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t actually understand this Hajji devil-tongue, but you could tell that each mosque was saying something different but similar. The terps—what we called interpreters for short—assured me the words coming from each mosque were indeed different. My best guess? The Sunni mosque was probably calling out “Dear Allah, please kill all of the Shia.” The Shia mosque was probably asking for the same thing only in reverse, and both mosques probably finished up with “and if it’s not too much trouble please kill all of the American infidels, Amen.”

If you have never been to the Middle East, it is hard for you to truly comprehend the heat there. It’s oppressive. Every day seems a battle against the elements, and the sun is always there, looking down on you, waiting for you to falter. The closest thing I can think of state-side to this horribly oppressive heat is the air that rolls out of an oven set to four-hundred degrees when you open the door to check on something you’re cooking. That air from the oven only hits you on one side and then dissipates.

Imagine being surrounded by that oven air. Now imagine that heat with yourself in full uniform, body armor, and Kevlar, walking through a town that smells like shit, where everyone wishes you were dead and is thinking about making it happen. Or imagine yourself in a Hummer, driving through that same shit-smelling town. I’m not talking about an H2 or an H3, all shiny and new, with leather interior and A/C. I’m talking about a fucking military Humvee—a vehicle you can barely squeeze into while wearing your body armor, a vehicle that is fifteen years old or more and going to break down at any minute, leaving you stranded in the middle of a hostile town. And there is no A/C in a military humvee.

I had been in the desert for ten months, listening to that incessant Hajji chatter five times a day without fail, enduring the oppressive heat, being mortared and shot at, striving, carrying on, living, and putting up with that fucking shit smell, when it happened.

It was a night in late July, reported to be the hottest of the year. The daytime temperature had risen above one hundred thirty-five degrees according to AFN weather. Our thermometers in the compound capped out at one-twenty. I don’t remember what woke me up—the 0320 call to prayer or the bursts of AK fire coming from right outside my tent. The two seemed to blend together with the screams of men in a symphony of horror and revulsion, but at the same time, the sounds had a sort of harmony to them.

I was shocked awake, heart racing, adrenaline rushing through my veins.

My knife, I thought. It was my only option. Our weapons were kept locked in the arms room inside the facility where we worked. What chance was there that I could dash unhindered across fifty meters of open space to the facility with Hajji outside killing everything in sight? And even if I did make it to the facility, the arms room was locked. No, my knife was my only chance.

I unsheathed my knife and rolled off the bed onto the floor and under the bed, where I waited, listening.

Silence.

Not a single sound came from outside the tent, no AK fire, no yelling, no running feet.

Silence.

No sound came from inside the tent either, not even the gentle hum of the air conditioning unit, which had, of course, shut off sometime in the night. I strained my hearing, trying to catch the smallest hint of sound, but there was nothing other than my labored breathing and the rapid beating of my heart. Sweat dripped from my body, naked but for a pair of boxers.

I waited.

Nothing.

Silence.

Sweat began to pool on the floor under me; my hair was soaked; my eyes stung.

Move, I thought. They’ll be kicking down the door to the tent any minute now. Where is everyone? There is no way Hajji could have already killed everyone—is there? What about the people who were in the tent with me, sleeping? Why is it so quiet?

Just then, I heard a noise from outside. It sounded like the soft tread of sandaled feet on the wooden slats we had screwed together as a walkway outside the tent, followed by Hajji cursing in Arabic.

Move, goddamn it!

I low-crawled out from under my bed, under the hanging blanket that marked the boundary of my small room, into the walkway. Near the door, I rose to a kneeling position. There was still no movement from inside the tent.

What the fuck is going on? Where is everyone?

I pressed my ear to the door and tried to still my ragged breath. My pulse was loud in my ears. The tent was pitch black, scorching hot and humid like a sauna. Judging by the humidity in the tent, the A/C must have gone out a little over an hour prior. Wiping the sweat from my eyes with my left hand, still gripping my knife with my right, I listened.

For what seemed like long moments, I held my breath, lungs almost bursting, before I could make out the sounds of two male voices speaking Arabic, and the voices drew nearer as they spoke. One of the men chuckled, and I was filled with white-hot rage, imagining Hajji laughing at the carnage he had wreaked among my closest friends.

A few more words were exchanged just outside the door, before I heard one of the two men shuffle off down the slat walkway. The door handle turned as I rose to a crouching position beside the door. The door opened, casting dim illumination into the walkway in the tent. I was shielded from the light by the door, but I could see Hajji’s outline in the dim light as he turned to close the door.

I struck as the door snapped closed. From behind Hajji, I thrust my left arm over his shoulder, covering his mouth with my left hand. I stomped as hard as I could on the back of Hajji’s knee, driving the knee hard into the concrete floor of the tent. Jerking up with my left hand at the same time, I exposed Hajji’s throat. Hajji let out a terrible grunt of pain muffled by my hand, and I smiled.

As I brought my knife slowly to the left side of Hajji’s throat, I had only a moment to consider anatomy and wonder what I was actually going to cut. The thoughts flashed through my mind: What am I supposed to cut? The jugular? The carotid? Which side are they on? Is there one of each, with one on each side? Or two of each, with two on each side?

Fuck it, I thought. I’ll cut both sides.

I drew my knife from one side of Hajji’s throat to the other—not around the curve, but straight through. I remember hearing the metal grate against bone and gristle, as my knife slowed for the merest fraction of a second before continuing on through. Warm, viscous blood gushed from the wound. Hajji’s last protests came out as a whistling sound from his severed windpipe.

In the split second it took for Hajji to slump to the ground, I replayed the kill in my mind, watching from a cinematic viewpoint. I saw the cold fear register in Hajji’s eyes as I clamped my hand over his mouth. I saw Hajji’s face contorted in pain as his kneecap shattered on the concrete floor, robbed even of the small relief a vocal exclamation might have brought. I saw the surprised look in Hajji’s eyes as my knife sank into the flesh of his throat—in my mind there was a slight pause before the steamy red liquid burst forth. But what interested me the most was the expression I saw on my own face. I smiled with savage joy and lust, the kind of smile that never reaches the eyes—dead expressionless eyes.

My body was dripping wet—from sweat or blood, I couldn’t tell in the dark, but likely some of both. The spray of blood had been angled away from me. Plus, Hajji’s body had shielded me, but my hands and arms were starting to feel sticky.

What next? I thought, standing in that dark, humid tent.

Silence.

The sound of my own ragged breathing.

Blood rushing in my ears.

The violent beating of my heart.

Silence.

How many were there outside the tent? What should I do? Where do I start? Why is no one else responding? I can’t risk shouting to wake up my buddies. What if everyone else is already dead? I’ll just be giving up the only advantage I have, the element of surprise. Act, damn it. Now. Move!

I left the body where it fell and crept through the tent, looking for some sign that my buddies may still be alive. I was hindered by the darkness, but I dared not turn on a light for fear of giving away my position. I managed to look inside each room within the tent. I could not see, but there were no sounds of sleep coming from any of the rooms—no deep breaths, no snoring, no tossing and turning because of the heat. This task seemed to take longer than it should.

My buddies are dead.

The rage burned white-hot once again, as I felt the lunatic smile return.

I moved quickly back to the door where I had left the body. Hajji would be watching the door, expecting any survivors to come out that way. Proud now that my emotions had not clouded my reason, I went into the room across the tent from mine. The room belonged to one of the terps, I think—Muhammad, his name was. Muhammad’s room was on the side of the tent with the three, or four, foot gap between our tent and the next.

I cut a slit in the tent wall with my knife, from above my head down to the ground. Dim light spilled into the tent. Muhammad’s room was empty. I looked down at my hands and saw the blood for the first time. It coated my arms from elbows to fingertips. Not bright red like you see in the movies, it was dark crimson, almost maroon in the light that spilled in through the slit tent wall.

Move.

I flashed through the slit in the wall, covering the distance to the neighboring tent in one quick bound. I made two quick slashes in the shape of a cross in the tent with my knife and dove through, tripping over a low shelf and bumping into someone. That someone let out a surprised exclamation in Arabic.

Hajji. Damn, they’re already in this tent, I thought.

I recovered my balance quickly and grappled with Hajji, while Hajji screamed something at me in Arabic. A commotion started outside and at the other end of the tent in which I was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Hajji. We fell over the bed into floor on the other side, with Hajji on the bottom. I wrestled for a moment more, but Hajji was no longer fighting back. I suddenly noticed that my knife was no longer in my hand. Gripped by sickening, gut-wrenching fear, I scrambled on the ground, searching for my knife.

The commotion from outside was coming nearer, as was the sound of footsteps from the other side of the tent. The door to the tent opened, and I heard voices but could not understand the words. My hand brushed over Hajji’s body, where I found my knife buried hilt-deep in the center of Hajji’s chest. I gripped the handle of my knife, tensed my body, and steeled my mind for the task ahead.

On the other side of the blanket-wall a light came on. I could see the silhouettes of several people. How many I could not tell—five, six, seven? One of the silhouettes was reaching up to grasp the blanket at the opening where it met the tent wall.

Smiling, I stood, ripping my knife from Hajji’s chest with a wet squelch and a scraping sound that set my teeth on edge. I sprang at the silhouettes on the blanket-wall knife-first, shrieking with rage, my vision clouded red.

The last thing I remember clearly from that night was my knife plunging through the blanket into, and then ripping sideways through, the stomach of the Hajji who had been reaching up to pull the blanket aside. Something heavy and wet spilled onto the ground, and the tent was filled with horrified shouts as the smell of shit filled the air.

The rest of the night passed in shattered images of blood and gore, seen through crimson lenses and punctuated by the screams of the dying. I kept the faces of my slain buddies uppermost in my mind as I, in turn, slaughtered Hajji for what he had done to my buddies. I killed and I killed, until finally I blacked out.

The military police entered the compound the next morning and found me sitting in a field chair in front of the tents, still wearing only my boxers, my body covered in congealed blood and streaked with bits of torn flesh, gristle, and hair. My right hand hung limply over the arm of the field chair, where it gently gripped my knife with thumb and forefinger, swinging it, ever so slowly, back and forth with the barely perceptible movement of a pendulum meant to tick away minutes instead of seconds. Around my neck, hung with a length of five-fifty cord, were the ears of the men I had slain—white ears, black ears, brown ears.

The MPs advanced on me with drawn pistols and tasers.



















































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