1001 Nights Cast

NukeEm3 angles his phone to get a good frame on the dead Iraqi prick. Eight of them. Eight of them all around this place. Had them busy all morning until they called in air support. Four 500 pound bombs from an F18 took care of YOU YOU DEAD MOTHERFUCKER FUCKED YOU RIGHT UP. We have the weaponry required to produce a decisive fucking victory. I SAID TRY KILL MY BOYS AND SEE WHAT YOU GET. YOU GET DEAD. He said that out loud. No one cares.

He wishes he had brought his Canon 5D. Beautiful pictures from that. Big files. Worth every megabyte. The phone pictures are shit but hey, it’s all he’s got on him today. By the time you get all your gear on: the jacket, backpack, helmet, set up the comms, M16 over the shoulder, strap the Glock on the thigh and he always likes the classic, the ever popular, USMC bayonet slid down the side of his boot just in case, there is not a lot of room. And he took the Canon out on patrol one time last week and swung around too fast and it hit the edge of a humvee door and now has a ding and a whir click sound when you power it up. Which is not fucking good. That camera cost a fucking fortune. And who’s going to repair it out here? The PX guy? I don’t fucking think so.

And how is that, that he couldn’t get just plain NukeEm on Flickr? Had to go for NukeEm3. He could have had NukeEm2 but two is unlucky for him. Two. It’s a pissweak number. How many would you like? Two. Not much. Hardly more than any. Why bother. Two. Even and balanced. No one here is even and balanced. Even and balanced doesn’t get the job done. He got NukeEm, no numbers, on MySpace but he doesn’t really like MySpace. He hasn’t put shit up there. Dave has a MySpace. Too much crap. American flags behind everything. Video, music, flashing fucking shiny things all over. Takes fucking forever to load. Out here anyway. Maybe back home it’s real quick. How would he know? He says to him ‘Yeah Dave it’s way cool. Yeah Dave love those flags in the background.’ Except you can’t read the words on top of them. Except you can’t scroll down the page without it takes another 10 minutes because there’s so much crap. But he doesn’t say that to Dave. He likes his MySpace. Leave him happy.

Flickr, on the other hand, always has some order to it. You see the picture. It’s clear. You click on the next one. It shows in the right place with no blinking flashing hoo ha around it. Nice. And it’s about the pictures, not who likes who this week down in the friends column. People like his photos not his taste in fucking pirate MP3s.

He looks at the photo on the tiny screen. The intellectual nancy boys will hate this one. The peacenik chicks. The lefty smart arses. Ha. He loves it when they leave a comment. He just says it’s this Abrams tank, this one here on the left hand side of the picture, that gives you your fucking free speech. It’s this M16 assault rifle, with grenade launcher, that keeps you safe in your ivory campus tower. It’s this defence force that gave you the fucking computer you are typing on now Mr. Something up your nose after seeing the dead body you paid to have killed. Ha. This is the carnage on which your pleasant world rests, have a nice day.

He turns to the dead fuck insurgent again. The light is shifting softly. Generally the light here sucks. There’s glare or there’s blasting glare. Sunrise and sundown can be good. Sundown can be fucking incredible but sunsets are corny. Hackneyed. NukeEm3 doesn’t do them. Here, in the shade of the bombed wall, light filtered through the rubble and rafters, it’s got something. There’s a warm soft bounce from the cinderblocks and dirt that’s just enough lift for the dead face, so peaceful, so perfectly framed by ruin. This guy’s beard is so patchy it looks false. The dead guy moves. Shit. He pulls his glock and releases the safety. He can hear the instructor from back in Quantico still barking FIRE. TWO. WELL. AIMED. SHOTS. So he does. And then another.

Dave yells over ‘Wasn’t he dead enough for you?’ and the guys with him laugh.

‘He’s gotta have ’em more dead.’

‘Perfectionist.’

‘Hey you want me to call the F18’s back? There’s half a wall standing over there still.’

He’s dropped his fucking phone. Shit. He picks it up, blows some dust off and presses a few buttons. It still works. The picture is intact. Lucky. He raises his eyes again to the dead insurgent. Couldn’t shoot that now and post it. Someone would complain about offensive fucking content. The light is rare though. He takes his time for a few more pictures. He wishes he’d brought the Canon.