The Captain

The Captain was no stranger to the insides of men. He had seen the darkness, the hatred, the heroism, the love. He had seen the intestinal cavity torn about with grape, he had seen the veins spewing the maroon elixir of life onto a field, mixing with shards of bone and brain to create an alchemical concoction that was once a man. He remembers the glistening innards that peppered his moustache, the smell of feces, and the ungodly wails of the dying that would have unnerved God himself. He remembers it all, every night, when his subconscious paints beautiful portraits of blood and death as he sleeps. He claims that his sanity is kept anchored with love and drink, the two things that temper the fires that rage behind his eyes. His drink is dark and oaky, textured with a nutty flavor that burns his throat as it passes his lips. His love is dark-haired and fair-skinned, an Irish beauty with no mortal match. Her body moves with Shakespearean passion, her warmth melts away the horrendous walls of ice that would otherwise keep him locked in bloody conflict with the demons that house themselves within his psyche.

The problem was, the Captain was not a man with the facilities to comprehend our killer. Perhaps many years ago he could have been a match for the villain; but he had kept the darkness blocked out for so long that he was too afraid to peer into the abyss once more for fear he would like what he saw. You see, Our Captain was not the pure moral man that he likes to portray. His courage was validated by the American government following the Battle of the Wilderness with medals and accolades, he was given prime positioning in the New York City police force, his beautiful wife had offered up the warmth of her rose upon his return and he accepted his gifts graciously. Not a man, outside of me, knows the beautifully bloody truth of our heroic captain.

During the final charge of the battle, the manly and mustachioed Captain guided his men into the belly of the confederate line. They fought ferociously, with, quite literally, tooth and nail, scattering the young Southern men and evaporating the Confederate forces. As the hand-to-hand combat raged, the Captain using his saber to cut down man after man, he was charged by the Southern flagbearer. The individual holding the flag was a child, no more than 13 years old. You see, this young warrior had just seen our heroic captain spill his daddy’s insides onto the Tennessee grass. As his father lay on the field, crying like a baby, screaming for the boy’s grandmother, vainly trying to put the linked intestines back into his stomach, the boy summoned what courage a 13 year old boy could and charged our Captain. The hilt of his flagstaff had been sharpened to a point and our young flagbearer held it aloft, screaming with his pre-pubescent voice. Our Captain knew this boy needed to die. Our Captain knew a single swing of the saber to the boys neck would place him in the arms of his God quickly and painlessly, sent there by the necessity of war. He did not need to suffer.

Our Captain, guided by the illusive hatred that carries a man through acts of violent necessity, did not send this boy out swiftly.

Armed with the fiery bloodlust known only in poems, our Captain threw down his saber and ran at this young boy. He deftly deflected the sole poorly aimed thrust of the boy and jerked the flagstaff out of the boy’s hands. Looking up at him with child’s eyes, his pupils marred with dust and tears, the child felt the sharpened end of his flagstaff enter his stomach. He cried out like a baby, screaming for his mommy and his daddy, trying to avoid the furious, seething stare of our Captain. Our Captain, like the child, had his eyes marred with dust and dirt, but there was no tears in his eyes. He stared into the soul of this young boy he had just confined to an hours-long fate of horror and suffering, and smiled. Believing his work was unfinished, he calmly took hold of the flagstaff protruding from this young boy’s intestinal cavity and gave it a sharp twist. Then twisted again. And again. With every cry from this young boy’s throat, the Captain’s smile grew wider and wider. He had either not realized or not cared that his forces had already routed the enemy, and his men stared at him and this young boy with wild, atrocious horror. Some men cried, some men shouted. Not a one dared step towards the Captain as he inflicted as much disturbing pain and suffering upon this child as he possibly could. When the panting and smiling Captain finally threw his head back with a sigh, believing his job was done, his face and body was covered with the maroon elixir that emanated from every artificially created orifice in this young child’s body. The boy was unrecognizable; the Captain had shifted his attention from the intestinal cavity to the face after the boy stopped screaming. As the Captain stood over the boy, panting, not a soul spoke. Not a word was whispered from any of the men as the Captain turned to them and congratulated them on their victory. Some of the men noticed the visible erection in his pants falter as the smile evaporated from his face. Only the whites of his eyes and his teeth were visible through the red fog that permeated the whole surface of his skin. About 15 seconds later, a cannonball came hurtling through the air and crashed down onto the back of the Captain’s thigh, and the rest is history.

Our Captain has never spoken of this event. Some of the more naïve men speculate that he doesn’t even know what he did, and he was simply blackout drunk on blood, but the more realistic men know he remembers. The Captain remembers every single fucking night, he remember the blood, the screams of the boy, the horror in his eyes. And he remember loving every fucking second of it.