Killing the Colonel

Killing the Colonel A short story about a deposed tyrant. By Ian Strome The colonel surveys himself in the full-length mirror. His posture is poor. Behind his drooping head is where the guilt resides.

“Home is where the hatred is, there’s no going back. Fuck them! What’s the point? My war is over!” As far as we’re concerned all war is over! My cadre of well-armed, polished, academy-trained officers were too arrogant. They were vain and shortsighted, caring more to appear gallant with their thin mustaches and ornate military uniforms at parties, then to understand the anger in the provinces, the grievances of the people, and the systemic corruption and brutality that sparked an uprising. The outcome? My army of 100,000, my modern air force, my awe-inspiring armada - all overrun, captured, and crushed by bands of peasants.

The rebels had the greater will and they mostly lied in wait, harassing us just enough for the flaws of our strategy to become so apparent that fighting with a concerted effort would become impossible. “So where the hell do we go now, sir!?” To Iran, China, or that cold northern country that armed us?

To whoever will take us!”

Regardless of who had our backs, exiling in the luxury and safety of their lands will never be the comfort we so sought. No cushion can ease our humiliation. Our seaside dachas...mere consolation prizes for the vanquished.

We will attend more lavish galas attended by foreign dignitaries; this time with anxious smiles and fearful eyes. We will peer around the rooms, over the heads of the beautiful women and drunken diplomats, to see which waiter is looking back, stealthily waiting for their moment to kill us. Perhaps one unknown attendee, bearing the characteristics of our homeland, is here to claim the bounty on our heads. Maybe one of the beautiful women – trained in our ways and those of the insurgents, will woo us into bed with words of solace and feigned admiration ...only to hit us hard in the neck or the back of the head with that ice pick she used to cut up the whiskey.

My hands feel filthy. I just washed them, then a second time with hotter water. They’re covered with the blood and brains of villagers we murdered in decades past.

She will sound sexy and speak with sophistication. A sign that “we must have done SOMETHING right! …To be here…right now.” But alluring, sophisticated, spiritual words of comfort will be the last things we relish before we shut our eyes and descend into a trance of security.

It feels the same as the delusion we operated under at the start of the campaign against the partisans, against everyone. The same spell of confidence I had cast over the capital that resulted in a massacre of my regime’s loyalists on the day I left for good.

Oh God, what fucking fools we were! Idiots! You’re still an idiot. Because once she’s enchanted you with that same ‘hush’, that call for calm that you used for deceit, she drops poison from her tongue. It’s a verse of vengeance, and then sympathy. It’s the long-feared reprisal that she delivers suddenly and gently. Like a lamb slaughtered by surprise to keep its flesh from becoming stiff. Something will awaken inside you. Maybe you briefly open your eyes. But it will be far too late because her hand is swift, steady, strong, RESOLVED. Now you’ve swallowed the ice pick.

Only the normal sensation of gulping started, not at your tongue, but deep in your throat. She made a god-awful mess of you. Now you’re melting all over the elegant drawing room. She sacrificed grace for catharsis. Silly agent. You chuckle in your head. It’s impossible to speak.

You laugh because your demise here in this room, at the hands of this provocatrix, will be a fun read in history books. You accept your fate. She, on the other hand, still has a chance to escape!

Or was this a suicide mission? No, she’s too valuable to her creator to be expended on one mission assassinating an irrelevant colonel with no power or secrets left. ...And you made it so easy for her. You may as well have laid upon the weapon, as though it were a plush cushion. This one does release you from shame. It severs your spine, saps your mobility, and robs you of any last words.

She is victorious, despite leaving a blood-soaked scene. You are silent. Silenced. Perhaps this is a victory for you as well.

You’re finally at peace. No more shame.

You had wondered if that clever spymaster from your superpower sponsor wanted you dead. How much time and energy; money and lives; relationships and memories did he waste trying to prop you up? You were a goddamn disgrace. You fucked this whole thing up.

...He doesn’t like to be humiliated. He must have traded you. Your life for mining concessions, a prisoner exchange, just a consolation prize either way. He said he didn’t like to lose.

You should have listened.

As we speak your comrades-in-exile are likely experiencing the same fate. Those other officers, childhood friends you chose to flee on the last plane out of the capital with you; they’re getting snuffed out. Poisoned, strangled, drowned, thrown off a roof!

Oh God, please! ...Not them, too. Give them a chance to flee once more, exile once more, a new life, a backpack in the desert, a canteen in the mountains.

All goes dark.