SHITTING BLOOD
Chapter 1
*****FLASHBACK*****
It had been six days since Terry had seen any of the other men from his team. Six blistering days in this unforgiving desert with nothing but scorpions and camel spiders to eat. He remembered the Snickers bar from the care package that Andy had sent him. Terry hated peanuts, and he had told Andy this a thousand times, but his simpleminded brother sent him a whole box of the peanut-laden candy bars anyway. Nonetheless, he had brought it with him on the mission. That was before the IED, the explosion, tumbling down the mountain, waking up alone with a face full of sand. He had no idea any more where the truck was, but he now couldn't keep it out of his mind. It's probably all melted, he thought. Maybe it was tossed out of the truck when we went over the embankment.
-
Day eight. It had been almost forty-eight hours since Terry had seen a single drop of water. He had taken to pissing in his canteen and taking little god-awful tasting sips of it every couple of hours just to keep him going. He knew he wouldn't last long. He had to find his unit, find any other Americans. Hell, even a friendly Iraqi would be welcome.
There was a haze on the horizon. It looked like a truck, but he couldn't be sure. He had been tricked by mirages before. Not having any other options, he started trudging toward it. When he was about fifty yards away and the mirage wasn't disappearing, he knew that he had finally, after eight days, stumbled upon something that might be useful. It was a truck. Unfortunately, it looked like it had long ago been burned out. All that was left was the blackened, twisted skeleton frame. He finally reached the truck and crawled up into the cab, curling up on its floor.
God, what if I don't make it. I'm so tired. I'm so...
-
سيدي، تعال معي. تعال معي إذا كنت تريد أن تعيش.
Terry's eyes cracked open just a sliver and were met with a blinding whiteness. He turned his head toward the noise he thought he heard, and there he saw a brown and tan blur.
هاأنت ميتة تقريبا. من فضلك، تعال معي.
The blur came toward him. He felt himself moving, but not on his own accord, and before he knew it he was hanging over the back of a large animal.
كل شيء سيكون على ما يرام. اسمحوا أحمد يرعاك.
The rhythmic gait of the beast lulled him back into slumber.
-
Terry awoke with a start. It was dark, and he was alone. He started to look around, noting the thin mat he was lying on atop a dirt floor, and the small table beside it. There was very little in the room. Then he noticed a jug of water beside him. He grabbed it with both hands and brought it to his lips, sucking it down as fast as he could get it inside him. Just then, a short, pudgy old man in an off-white robe and turban walked into the room.
"Hold up, now," Terry said, holding up a hand. "Not another step, you hear?"
"لكن لا بأس. لكن لا بأس. لا أحد يعرف أنك هنا" said the man.
"Yeah, I don't speak your sand language, bub. Now, how about you just tell me your name."
Terry pointed to himself, "Terry." He then pointed to the man and waited.
"Ahmed," the man said.
"Ahmed," said Terry. "Well, okay. Me Terry, you Ahmed. I hate to trouble you Ahmed, but do you have any food?" He made a motion with his hand like he was shoveling food into his mouth. "Food?"
"نعم. نعم. زوجتي أدلى الحمص قبل بضعة أيام. فمن كل ما لدينا. آمل أن تكون جيدة بما يكفي بالنسبة لك." said Ahmed, trying to wave his hands around in a way that Terry might understand. Terry was frustrated by the language barrier, but he could tell by the man's enthusiasm that he probably understood, and was willing to share what he had.
"Alright. Thank you, Ahmed. Thank you. You're one of the good ones," Terry said as the little man left the room.
Ahmed returned a few minutes later with a bowl of hummus and a dried pita and handed it to Terry, who immediately started shoving it in his face. When the pita ran out, he used his hands. It wasn't long until the bowl was empty, but by then Ahmed had brought him another bowl. It wasn't until this second bowl that Terry started to notice the sour aftertaste that the hummus had, but he kept eating it anyway. It was still better than eating camel spiders.
After about an hour, Terry felt like he was almost his old self again. The old man had been sitting in the room with him while he ate, as if watching over him to ensure he was going to be okay. Terry suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude toward this man. This simple man, in a dirt house with barely anything of his own, had been kind enough to carry him across the desert and give him his own food. Even though the language barrier meant that the man would probably never understand what Terry was about to say, he felt that something needed to be said regardless.
"Ahmed, I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am," Terry began. "You saved my-"
There was a thundering slam of splintering wood as the front door to the tiny dirt cottage was kicked off its hinges. A Toby Keith song could be heard blaring from somewhere outside the house. Within seconds, four US Marines were in the room pointing their rifles directly at Ahmed's head. Terry was stunned. This was the team he had been separated from on the mountain!
He stood up, "You guys! You found-"
Just then Ahmed also stood up, grabbing something from atop the little table next to the mat on the floor.
"DIE YOU CAMEL-FUCKING RAGHEAD PIECE OF SHIT!" screamed one of the soldiers as he opened fire. Before he could react, Ahmed's head was sliding in pieces down the wall next to Terry. As Ahmed's lifeless body collapsed onto the floor, the hummus bowled rolled out of his hand, landing at Terry's feet.
Terry stuttered, "What the.. He was... You.. I had..."
The soldier turned to address Terry, "Dirty sandnigger was going for a weapon. You're lucky we made it in time. We've spent over a week looking for you, bro." With one arm, the soldier embraced Terry, who was still visibly shocked. "Look, we're pretty sure this guy was part of that Al Qaeda cell we've been hunting," he said. "Hell, he could have even been the one that planted that IED! We tracked the rest of 'em down to a mosque about an hour south of here where intel says they've been storing chemical weapons. Terry, we're this close to completing our mission! After all you've already been through, we'd be proud to have you along to go end this with us once and for all! What do ya say, bro?"
Terry stood silent for a moment. He felt nauseous, but he eventually nodded his head in agreement.
"That's the stuff, bro!" said another soldier.
-
About an hour later, they arrived on the outskirts of a small town.
"Alright, this is it," said one of the other soldiers. "I say we make this quick. We lost the rocket launchers on that mountain, so we'll have to sneak in and plant these explosives. You'll each have five minutes to get in and get out. If you're not out by then, I'm hitting the detonator anyway."
Terry was still feeling quite queasy as he picked up a satchel full of the explosives and headed toward the back side of the mosque. He hopped a wall into a courtyard, checked to make sure the area was clear, and then slipped through an open door. The mosque wasn't large, but it wasn't small either. It was definitely larger than most of the other mosques Terry had seen since he arrived in Iraq.
After placing all the explosives in the most strategically destructive spots he could find within the building, he checked his watch. He had about a minute and a half to get out of there. He headed back for the door he had come through. As he was about to cross the threshold, he stopped. There were Arabic voices. He hid in the shadows and peaked into the courtyard from a window. Two men with assault rifles slung over their backs were walking slowly through the courtyard.
Shit, shit, SHIT! he thought. Just then, he felt something shift dramatically in his bowels, causing him to double over in pain. Fuck, he thought, it's got to be that hummus! Time was running out. There was only one thing to do. He had to make a run for it though the mosque.
He turned around and bolted deeper into the building, passing arches and columns ornately decorated with gold and lapis. Just as he was rounding a corner, he ran smack into an old man, tumbling to the floor on top of him. Still having his wits about him, he clasped both hands over the man's mouth. "Scream and you die," Terry said to the man. From the look of him, Terry thought that this man was probably the imam of the mosque. Before he had time to act on this thought, a pain shot through his intestines, causing him to clutch his stomach and double over. He felt an immense pressure from within his anus, and prayed to God or Allah or whoever was listening that he would be able to hold it.
Surprisingly in English, the man he had fallen on top of spoke, "Sir, you go now! No trouble! I no trouble! They see you they kill you! Please, they kill me too they see you here!"
As Terry realized the implications of what the man was saying, he looked down at his watch. Ten seconds.
"I- You- Get out now!" he said. He felt his butthole being forced open. He knew it wouldn't hold much longer. "IT'S... GONNA BLOW!"
At that exact second, a torrent of shit came gushing out of Terry's ass, quickly filling his pants and seeping onto the imam underneath him. That's when the first of the explosives started to go off. Terry lept to his feet, half in disgust and half in terror, leaving a shit-stained imam sprawled out on the floor. He was covered in feces, and if he didn't run like hell he was going to be crushed to death by a falling mosque. On top of that, he could feel a pressure like a fire hose about to burst through his backdoor again. He knew there was no point in holding it.
He ran for the front of the mosque, fiery, burning shit spitting out of his ass like a machine gun, leaving a slimy brown trail across the holy building as he fled. Everything was crumbling around him. For a fraction of a perverse second, he contemplated whether someone might have had this exact problem at the World Trade Center as they were trying to escape it on 9/11. As he reached the front entrance of the mosque, he could barely hear a voice over the rumbling of the collapsing building. It was the imam.
"Curse you, American shit dog! I swear on my son, Ahmed, Allah will shit on your life! I curse y-"
As Terry jumped into the waiting truck, he could hear the voice no more.
*****END FLASHBACK*****