The kill team- members of the 5th Stryker Brigade
The kill team- members of the 5th Stryker
Brigade
You are barely fifteen when your
home becomes a hunting ground,
For the creatures
inside the Kevlar
coffin. Staring out
of an armoured
machine, bodies half-hidden like a
mongoose, coloured only by their
Hazel uniform and jet-black riffles.
Several handfuls of candy are thrown from
the vehicle: Airheads, Hershey’s, M&M’s.
Like confetti or locusts cutting through the
Afghanistan sky, sending clouds of dust to
rise from the ground. Warm, sticky breath
fills the air as they take aim. And children
come running, as children do, with arms
outstretched and smiles as deep, wide and
colossal as the valleys of Grand Canyon or
the Band-e Amir. Yet, whenever their small hands
grab at the treats resting in the sand, as children do,
small bodies drop and their mothers can only watch.
You do not know of this, of course, you are working
with your father in his poppy field, tending to crimson
flowers. Their dark centres resembling negative spaces
between the infinite stars you would lie under as a child,
crickets sounding out an overture as all-encompassing as
the flowing tapestry of the night sky. Then, the hollow
eyes of Andrew Holmes and Jeremy Murdock
meet yours. You could run but running won’t
do much. You could kick up sand behind you,
As your legs do all the thinking. Because your
mind has abandoned you the second they call
out for you, with voices as fiery as the lungs
in your chest. You could turn corners and try
to throw them off your trail or let them hunt
you until the Afghanistan heat melts them down
like candle wax. but you can’t, because you are
fifteen years old and unarmed so running won’t
do much. They order you to stand still and your
body is not your body anymore, it’s a playground.
Sweat collects in your coal-coloured hair as they
crouch behind a mud wall. the sunlight is a shadow.
they throw something. a flash of light and heat. You
can only watch as they begin to aim. Then you feel
Jeremy Morlock poses with your body, Gul Mudin. Blood
in his hands and teeth like a hound; it gave him the same thrill
as burning his wife with a cigarette. Sergeant Calvin Gibbs cuts
off your right pinky finger with a pair of shears; medics shears.
Pruning an orange tree. Andrew Holmes is gifted the appendage;
A trophy for his first kill. He would keep it in a zip-lock bag, to
‘dry it out’. They will share photographs of your corpse with each
other, like a pack of cigarettes and they will laugh until their throat
turns raw. Joking about how your ‘little cap fell off’ As your body
collapsed in the sand. Gul Mudin, I am sorry, you are one of many
15 year old child.
5 month kill spree.
5th skylar brigade.
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