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Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
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 Weathered
Snuff

A. McIntyre

        The years go by, and Johnny Scotland and I settle in Kabul. We see the city grow. Gone is the pile of rubble we moved into after the war. Now there’s a financial district, the stock exchange is power housing Central Asia, and former Talibs in Ralph Lauren T shirts and pleated pants are mowing their lawns, cleaning their SUVs on Sunday. Tourists come, for the climbing, the pot, the archaeological ruins, the porn. That’s how Johnny and I made our money, we got in there early. Johnny was Mayor for two terms, he helped renovate the streetcars. We meet for a game of golf, we’re members of the Armed Forces Club, and sometimes we sit with our Highballs talking about old times.
    We both married local women, several of them actually. Our wives still wear burkas, for their own safety and ours, because they are so incredibly gorgeous underneath all that cloth that, if they didn’t wear these garments, society would go mad. Like looking at the Shield of Athena. First time we ever saw them Johnny and I looked at each other and whistled. At that moment, we knew why the Taliban fought so hard. They didn’t want outsiders shooting their muck into these broads.
    And another thing, no-one could ever understand why the women didn’t struggle to be liberated. We had gender experts, lesbian theorists, female cops, people from San Francisco working day and night to liberate these women to no avail. They simply did not want to be liberated. We began to understand when we started hanging out with the Talibs, the guys we were fighting, these guys told us everything. Finally, when we’re hooked up with some of these gals, we understand even more. The women never go out because they like to stay at home. And when you marry a whole bunch of them, you suddenly find you are not the head of the household, the broads are. They run everything. They shop, cook, control the money, they argue you to a standstill because they never let up. You try arguing with seven or eight broads in burkas.
    So the wealthier you are the less powerful you are because you have more wives than any man. It’s a trap you’re in before you know it. The average Joe thinks, Hey, I can have lots of women, therefore I’m a real man, so he goes out and gets himself a harem. But lo and behold, he has to satisfy them too, and that ain’t easy, and if he doesn’t, well, they never leave him alone, or they’ll find other men and destroy his life. Then there are feuds, duels, it’s happened between harem endowed Americans here, but isn’t Texas like that, or Utah? Hasn’t it always been like that pretty much anywhere? But there’s a sweet side too. The more powerful you become the more women you have, the more you can be a little boy in shorts again.
    Hey, welcome to the history of Afghanistan. We’ve been absorbed, we’re living it, the history of the country in a nutshell. Who’s conquered who? It might explain why Afghan men have always been happier in the mountains killing each other. And these broads, they hang out together smoking hashish in the cool of the house, lounging about listening to the peacocks and the mina birds, watching the fountain. They don’t have to go through all the shit of having to go the mosque. And who’s out there doing all the work in the cauldron of midday? Who has to go to the mosque all the time? The guys of course, the losers in this whole damn thing. Maybe we should have been liberating them. Tell that to the Army boys in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi. When I realized this, I shed tears. We’d been fighting people for nothing. And why were the Taliban so tough? Well, they had nowhere to go, nothing to do, except loose off their guns and get rid of all the anger either because they didn’t have any women, or else they had too many. Johnny and I woke up to this way late, when we both had harems. Now we seldom go home except to fuck, eat, and sleep. And we’ve got so many kids I only know the names of a dozen. And yeah, Johnny and I like to roam around with machine guns shooting at stuff now and then.
    The movies are what made us rich. We cornered the market, got into niches at the right time, porn, all types, fetish, regular, teen. We did other stuff too, ads for soap, cars, shaving cream, you name it. But the snuff movies made us the big bucks. With our background in torture, we were poised to dive into the perfect market. Here’s how it goes. Real snuff movies are, for obvious reasons, hard to come by. The true connoisseur knows the genuine article, they horde them like gems. And when you encounter a really good one, a work of art, as opposed to the crap the Russians produce, it will cost you a hell of a lot. Making them’s easy enough. Especially with a war. People are free, you just go out in a limo, find someone you like, feed them, coax them with dollars and a story about Hollywood, take them back to the studio, get the camera ready, do the biz. Now it’s a tad harder, with all the peace. You have to look around, and we only do beautiful people.
    Johnny and I work for some high rollers who want their snuff movies tailor made. We get an order from one of our regulars. He stipulates, I want you to make me a snuff movie with a 1920s setting, nice young French girl, then he specifies the statistics he wants, blonde, nice titties, bobbed hair. And the background, It has to be in a hotel, he continues, Plush, she has to be dressed as a maid, she has to be murdered with a cutthroat razor, a slick of arterial blood has to be in her hair etc. Or whatever the punter wants. Johnny and I get on our merry way to seek out the fair maid and put the whole shebang together. Down the line we get it right, no second chances, you only get one chance at killing, and the experts can spot a duff snuff movie like jewelers can tell a fugazi diamond. There are duffs out there who fluff it, they try to kill a corpse twice, then it’s just comedy. No escaping the punters, they get wind of this and the duffs get snuffed. When it’s all set up, the customer gets the movie with rights of copy, we keep another for the archives. Johnny and me, we’re the top of the Pyramid, but there’s one eye.
    One of our best customers is the General. He’s the guy who won the war here. He got his five stars, he went into politics, now he is a big shot in the National Security Council. Forget the President, he’s the patsy, if he doesn’t behave he’ll get snuffed. It’s the NSC boys who run the show. The General never forgot us. We get Christmas cards from him, occasionally he’ll visit for a little R and R, play a game of golf, indulge himself in some live stuff. He loves to kill little girls, after having his way with them. Nothing under the age of eleven, mind, he abides by his codes. Everyone respects his restraint. Boys, he drawls, If it weren’t for you, I’d still be living in a barracks in some far place, Guantanamo Bay maybe, yearning for the big time, longing for home. I’ll never forget you, any time you need something, just give me a call. Johnny always jumps straight to attention when the General says this. Stiff as a ramrod, Johnny’s kept himself in shape, it’s a wonder to see. Yes sir, General, sir, he snaps, saluting. At ease, soldier, says the General.
    Oh, the time goes by, easy street, and Central Asia’s ours, we’re the first people to control the region since Alexander the Great. The money rolls in, everything as good as it could ever be, the years pass. Investments grow, the USA is the biggest empire the world has ever known, the people are happy. Too damn happy, complains the General, If anything ever goes wrong they’ll be too damn soft to defend themselves. This country’s starting to remind me of a pond in summer. We need violence godammit, some evolution. Not like the old days. I remember when . . . and he goes into a monologue that can last for hours, seems like the General lived the entirety of US history. People drop off to sleep, or fetch themselves another whiskey, JJS of course, like medieval England where all day Sunday church attendance was obligatory, but you could slip out for a pint now and then, why so many pubs are within walking distance of a church. I found this out when Johnny and I were based in East Anglia during the Cold War. We were working on East Germans using tricks their fathers taught us . . . And that’s how this country became the greatest country on earth, the General concludes, having compared the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, lambasting the British, lampooning the Turks, diminishing the French and the Germans, ridiculing the Spanish and the Italians, let alone the Russians, the Portuguese, and the Chinese. How the Red Indians were a bunch of primitives who needed to be wiped from the face of the earth, My great great Granddaddy was a sergeant under George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn, he drones, Tragedy we didn’t finish them off, godammit, the sons of bitches, I could use for hunting some of that prime reservation land those alcoholic savages own. The General pauses for a sip of JJS. Yes sir, General, sir, everyone shouts, Absolutely sir.
    Then one day on the edges of the empire, in a distant land named Balustan, the natives topple the king. We see shaky footage of the mob invading the palace, the king seized along with his family. We see the mob setting fire to the palace, lynching the royal family, dancing in the streets. Naturally, some of the natives do not agree with these procedures, very soon a civil war erupts. Johnny and I watch events with mild interest, more for entertainment than anything else. The royalists are put to death, the revolution is complete. The revolutionary government builds a new palace, enforces new codes of behavior, new dress codes, everyone has to wear pajamas, not Maoist pajamas, rather striped pajamas from British styles of the 1920s, the trousers with drawstrings. They start to rebuild. These people are hostile to us, but they pose no immediate threat. However, I’m starting to think, and I feel Johnny’s on the same radio channel, we start to look at each other in strange ways. He looks away and simpers, I wonder what’s up. I blush. We get confused, down the line both of us admit that we suspected we were going gay. Then the General calls, and puts us straight.
    Boys, he says, I’ve got a job for you. We sit in the VIP room of the Kabul Hilton sipping our whiskey, and the General starts to explain. We need this country, boys, Balustan I believe it’s called, a fine god fearing country and we’re gonna get it. Hell, we could go in right now, take it in a few weeks. We need it because if we don’t get it, the Russians will, or the Chinese, who knows even the British. We’re going to do these monkeys a favor, invade them before they get invaded by someone else. I heard they have to wear 1920s striped British pajamas, with the drawstring. Isn’t that reason enough, fer chrissake? Donate them everything American, all the trimmings, all our values, everything free of charge. Problem is, how do we get the great American people to support the project? I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with everybody. He stares, one eye twitching.
    The General is right. This has got to be the laziest goddamn empire in history. But why should the American people want to participate in such a project? The problems are thousands of miles away. Things are going fine, everyone’s rich, who wants fine young sons going off to fight in some lousy swamp, when they could be going to college to study business, maybe even get an MBA? But if we don’t get this country, someone else will, and that’s how empires start to collapse. General, sir, says Johnny Scotland, Excuse me for interrupting sir, I’m thinking Czechoslovakia, 1938.
    Shaking, the General ejaculates, Exactly, exactly, you took the words right out of my mouth, son. And that’s where you boys come in. You’re going to make a movie. A movie, sir? asks Johnny. A movie, the General repeats grinning, What you boys do best, a snuff movie. With a star cast of select US military personnel. Special Forces dressed as Balustanis. They attack our borders, you film the action, we show it to the American people, they get mad enough to support our project, we invade. As simple as that. Just like the Germans with Czechoslovakia. You hit the nail, Johnny Scotland. Get working boys, we need results fast before those goldarned liberals get the upper hand in Congress.
    The mechanism starts rolling, the cameras in the exact same spots we’d place machine guns, we know our terrain Johnny and I, we capture events. It’s always odd to see our own people getting blown to smithereens, machine gunned, bombed, but it’s all on film, it’s a movie after all. Hey, it’s not the first time we did this, it sure won’t be the last. One of the oldest tricks in the book, and it works, part of the game. The Great Game, the Brits called it. And these martyrs will be heroes, they’ll be immortalized, like the boys at Pearl Harbor, the folks in the Twin Towers. Every year their names will be honored, we’ll have shaped another keystone of the great American myth.
    Headlines around the world explode. The liberals fade into the background, they go into exile in Holland, or they jump onto the roller coaster of war. The American people are motivated all right. Furious grandpas try to enlist, flexing biceps, dying their hair, thousands of young men rally to the flag, girls only date a fellow if he’s wearing a uniform. Sports stars motivate the masses. Oh there are pockets of protest, the usual places, San Francisco, New York, the peaceniks forgetting, as usual, that they are just as invested in this as we are. It’s in our interests to leave them alone. They have the joy of their illusions because we’re so fucking strong the barbarians are very far from the gates. I mean, how many people in history had the luxury of voting, and protesting, and planning their retirement?
    “Evolution Not Revolution,” is the General’s motto, and he’s content. The USA is strong in its resolve, we’re worth many millions more. It’s going to be a long war. We’ve got stakes in companies linked to military supply, we’ll make a killing. And we’re directing The Movie. Along with the General, Johnny and I are among the most powerful people on the planet, the Eye in the Triangle. E Pluribus Unum. Reform school boys made good, Johnny and I are living the dream. We meet the General in his New England retreat. The butler takes us down the long polished corridors of the labyrinthine manor to the parlor where, as he is accustomed in his leisure time, the General is dressed as a 17th Century English Civil War cavalier. He offers us JJS, on the rocks of course. With boys like you, the General enunciates, This country will always be great. We salute, shouting, Yes sir, General, sir. At ease, soldiers, he growls. He takes a little silver box from his pocket, opens it and, placing white powder between his thumb and his forefinger, he sniffs it up one nostril then the other. Johnny and I look at each other amazed. We haven’t seen the General doing coke for more than twenty years, not since the Central America business. He observes us then, in Queen’s English, with a touch of Old Etonian, he says, Snuff, old chap, snuff. Fancy a pinch?



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