If I Only Knew (Part 2) by Steven D. Queen

If I Only Knew (Part 2)

by Steven D. Queen

We out-number them, one hundred to one. My perception of time changes and everything seems to slow down. No one moves. I know everyone has the same feeling I do. I’m searching for a place to run. The Drill Sergeants have done this before and they expect such a thing. More Drills run from the trucks and surround us. A black sweaty hand appears from nowhere and grabs my shirt. I turn around and look at his face. It’s then I realize this man isn’t human. I can’t see his eyes. The large green Drill Hat makes his face look as if he has nothing but eye sockets. “Are you deaf or just retarded, private? I said get on my truck!” He pushes me hard to the ground and other hands grab me. 

If I get on this truck, I may never come back the same person. There isn’t much choice. Kicks in my back force me to climb the ledge into the truck. More soldiers are pushed inside and the old trailer fills within seconds. We are packed in tight, it’s hard to breathe, and more of us are being shoved inside. I’m in the back corner with my face shoved into the boards lining the inside. I can’t move my arms. They are pinned between two men that look exactly like everyone else here, bald and scared with sweat dripping down and stinging our eyes. 

Five Drill Sergeants climb into the truck, stepping on top of the poor soldiers that happen to be in their path. I make the mistake of looking a Drill Sergeant in the eye. “What the fuck do you think you are doing! You can’t look a Drill Sergeant in the eye. That’s a direct threat, and it gives me the right to defend myself! I’m scared in here, can’t you tell?” he mocks, “Everyone get your face into your duffel bags. If I see your eye balls I’ll personally rip them out and serve them to you at the chow hall!”

The side door locks shut and the trailer is dark. I can smell sweat and fear. My chest is tightening. It takes every bit of self-control to keep from screaming. I get quiet and regulate my breathing. The trucks start to move and I feel the world spin.

The ride is quiet except for the occasional sound of someone crying. The Drills stifle it instantly. Their screams are loud and reverberate throughout the trailer. It’s as if they are super-human. Large muscular bodies and dark sunken eyes are only the things I noticed at first; it’s their innate anger and hatred that weighs heavily on my mind now. I can not grasp how the Drills can possess such hatred toward others. What fuels this deep animosity, and do they enjoy the pain they inflict on us?

The trucks come to a stop with the sound of air escaping the break lines. The doors open and sunlight stings my eyes. Some soldiers are asleep, indicating the trip was longer than I first thought. I squint and look out the door where I behold the horror that is to be my new life. 

If I only knew. 


About the Author:
Steven D. Queen doesn't like to brag, but he did win All-State creative writing and a scholarship in high school. His favorite word is palindrome. Check out information about his mission trips to Nicaragua.

If I Only Knew (Part 1) by Steven D. Queen

If I Only Knew (Part 1)

by Steven D. Queen

“Man, what the hell are we doing out here…it’s two in the damned morning!” 

“I heard Anderson crying for his mom. What a baby!” 

“Shh! Shut up, they’re going to hear us!”

I have been here two days and I already think I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. My mother bawled when I left. Her pleas for me to stay bring tears to my own eyes, and I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. Right now, what I want more than anything in the world is sleep. 

It’s mid-June and still 90 degrees. I’ve been awake for 20 hours and now they have our whole company standing in formation at two in the morning. It’s impossible to conceive my situation as real. It’s almost like this is all a dream. The lack of sleep makes my vision blurry, and my head is spinning with sounds I know do not exist.

Our Instructor roars, “Tomorrow, ladies, your Drill Sergeants are coming to pick you up.” He sounds evil. “I’m glad, ‘cause that means I don’t have to look at your ugly-ass faces anymore. But I guarantee you’ll wish you were back here with me, when those Drills get a hold of you!”

His long-winded speech does nothing but eat away at the precious time I have for sleep. He finally releases us after thirty minutes of destroying what little hopes we have of surviving Basic Training. It’s time to try and get some sleep, but I’m not sure if I can calm myself enough to even close my eyes. Bound to my fate, I walk back to the barracks with the first friend I’ve made since my journey to manhood began. “Joe. What do you think they are going to do to us tomorrow?”

“I hear they come in cattle trucks and shove us in there like sardines. Then they drive us out to the country and run us into the ground.” He says this as a tear forms and runs slowly down his cheek. He wipes the tear away with the back of his shirtsleeve and walks away. This gives me something to dream about for the next two hours.

The next morning I wake to the cackle of the instructor. “Get your ass up ladies. Pack your duffel bags. The trucks are here!”

I look outside, and it takes a few seconds for me to catch my breath. Huge 18 wheeled trucks line the parking lot. Each one has a trailer engineered to carry human beings. It is sickening to think they are going to shove me into those trucks. It’s even more frightening to think of their destination.

PSHHHTT! Air locks open the doors on the side of the trailers, and there stand the most intimidating figures I’ve ever seen. I am wide-awake now. My heart is almost pounding from my chest and these figures just stand in the dark doors like stone statues.

They jump from the doors in a rage. The Drill Sergeants come at us from all directions, unprovoked, driven by nothing but the pure hatred of the sight of our bald heads and sun burned faces. “Get your monkey ass on my truck! You belong to me for the next eight weeks of your life…if you live that long!”


About the Author:
Steven D. Queen doesn't like to brag, but he did win All-State creative writing and a scholarship in high school. His favorite word is palindrome. Check out information about his mission trips to Nicaragua.

Never Buy a Used Jeep Grand Cherokee by J.S. Lawhead

Never Buy A Used Jeep Grand Cherokee

By J.S. Lawhead

Kyle's car had just died, and the only man he knew of selling any other cars within walking distance was an old farmer who lived way up on the mountain. The farmer was a reluctant eccentric - he had a reputation for the strange that he certainly didn't earn. When Kyle came calling for the car,  the farmer was delighted to get rid of it, but he didn't mince words on warnings.
"As we discussed before," the farmer said to Kyle as he produced the keys, "the car runs good, that's why I'm asking $2,500 for it. The problem is that it's cursed, and that's why I'm only taking $1,300 for it. I want to be rid of it, but I'm only giving it to you to use it for getting to a different car. It nearly ruined me, and I don't know what it will do to you. Take it, and may God have mercy on you, sir."
But Kyle did not listen. He drove his cursed 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee as far as the road could take him. He drove by many other used cars without even a second glance.
Then one day, just a quarter mile before he got home, Kyle's car stalled on the road and began making a long, drawn-out, wet and bubbling sound.
Then he felt something in the car move and what sounded like the world's loudest fart. Kyle got out to look and could not believe his eyes. His car had somehow managed to defecate an enormous mound on the street. Birds in the sky dropped dead from the smell, and Kyle nearly did the same.
Then he heard something move in it. Kyle didn't dare go any further, but he watched in continued horror as a door swung open from inside it. He could now see a coffin with a half-flesh skeleton inside begin to rise up through the putrid sludge. What he couldn't see was the inscription underneath  it that said "Rest In Loving Peace, Kyle Seaton."
The skeleton sat up in the coffin and turned his mutant head to stare directly at Kyle. The man immediately jumped back into his car, but the key was not there anymore. The skeleton came up to the passenger side window and started banging on it to crack it open. In his rotting left hand, jangling as the revenant pounded, was the car key.
Kyle kicked open his door and ran towards his house as fast as he could. The skeleton followed behind and matched Kyle's speed perfectly. "What do you want!?" he called to the revenant, but the corpse refused to answer.
Just when he thought his lungs would burst, Kyle came to his house and was able to get inside and lock the door before the skeleton could get in too. In fact, the revenant stopped on the front lawn. Kyle peered out the window, and the two watched each other for what seemed like an eternity. The skeleton meandered around on the lawn like he didn't know where he was going.
Finally, he came to a part of Kyle's lawn that had a large hole in it, he squatted down over the hole, made some grunting sounds, and itself expelled something rude and evil into it. It looked like a spiked ball that was set on fire. Then the skeleton took a couple steps forward, collapsed onto the ground, and faded away.
The next day, when he felt it was safe, Kyle went outside to look what was in the hole, but there was nothing. He went back down to find the car, coffin, and mound, but all he saw was a burned out wreckage of what used to be there.
Six months later, Kyle was found dead on the toilet in his bathroom. Something did not pass through his system correctly, and it ruptured his lower digestive organs beyond what his body could handle. He was buried in a coffin much like the one he saw on the road months ago.


About the Author:
J.S. Lawhead is a child of the mystic Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee. Marketing administrator during the daylight hours, part-time computer musician in the evening hours, adrenaline soaked apocalypse maintenant in the darkened morning hours, and sometimes finds time to write hard to publish stories in between.

He is the author of "Vulgarity For the Masses" by Burning Bulb Publishing, a tome that has inspired new generations of readers to take up libricide, and many short stories from one venue or another. Born in 1984 and completely ignorant of his blood type. A practicing Lutheran to the surprise of some.

Check out more of his work at www.meteoxavier.com.