I drove to the Moonlight Motel and knocked on the door of room 106. The Moonlight was a sleaze joint on the outskirts of town with the cheapest rates around. It was the kind of place where you looked around like your head was on a swivel. Scanning the cars, looking at the windows of the conjoining rooms to see if eyes peeked through the venetian blinds. But then you had to laugh at yourself because even if there were someone up here to spot you, their sins would be the same as yours. This was the lowest point for lonely travelers who were all looking for the same thing.

Mona didn’t answer. I knocked rhythmically for a couple of minutes before losing my patience to the harsh western winds. My right hand turned the knob slowly. The door stopped about three or four inches in. A rusted gold chain at eye level answered why.

“It’s just me, Mona. It’s just me, Johnny.” I said.

My face was pressed against the splintered wood, and with my right eye I could see her sitting at the edge of the bed. “Mona, can you open up? I’m cold.” She got up slowly and emotionlessly, dragging her bare blistered feet across the shag carpet before flicking the chain off its hinge and dragging her body back to the bed.

“Sorry, John. I’m just tired, ya know?” she said.

“Yeah. Boy, do I ever.” I took my jacket off and threw it over a chair in the corner of the room. We sat silently for a couple minutes. Then she sighed, got on her knees and began bouncing slowly on the bed while waving me over with her index finger. “Come here, big boy. Come see, mama. Lay your head between mama’s breasts,” she said, switching gears to work Mona. Playing out the scenario I most often requested from her.

“We don’t have to rush into this, Mona. Could we take our time?” I sat down on the bed, and she came over to massage my neck before kissing it, and rubbing down my bare chest to the buttons of my work pants. “Mona, Christ. Could we take a second, please? My back is sore as hell from shoveling shit all day. Could we just talk for a minute? Please?”

She didn’t answer. I turned around to see her wearing a face of unbridled anger and annoyance. She was pissed. She hated when I did this. It wasn’t what the hour was for. We both knew it, but I still did the same thing every week, anyway.

“Can we just fuck? So you can give me my money and hit the road.”

“I thought you liked my company,” I answered.

“Why do you always do this, John? Why do you always come here like we’re a fucking couple or something? I. Get. Paid. To. Fuck.” She said, clapping her hands together after each word.

I looked her in the eyes and held my stare. It made her uncomfortable because no one ever looked in her eyes to see what was in them and what was behind them. Looking in those sky blue irises would mean acknowledging that she was a human being. And that wasn’t good for rooms at the Moonlight Motel. Wasn’t good for business.

“Why do you do that?” She asked.

“Do what?”

“Look at me.”

“Because I like you.”

“Why?”

“Because I see you.”

“What in the hell does that mean, Johnny? Stop trying to make me feel stupid.”

“I’m not, Mona. That’s the last thing I want. I just meant I look at you. I look in your eyes and I can see someone worth seeing, that’s all.”

“You know you only have an hour, right?”

“Yes, I do. And didn’t you tell me you’d do anything? Anything at all.”

“Yeah.”

“Then talk to me. Sit and spend the hour talking to me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Mona. Sit next to me. Talk to me.”

I patted the edge of the bed to my right. Signalling her over with a quick brush of my head. She just looked at me for a minute like a scared old battered dog experiencing love for the first time in its life. Wanting to believe it. Wanting to run towards it, but being fooled too many times to ever trust it.

“It’s alright, Mona. It’s alright.”

She extended her legs and timidly slid her body next to mine, Mona’s eyes scanning for a devil’s trick, but soon realizing there was nothing there but me.

I wrapped my arm around her like it was our first date at a drive-in. All of a sudden, it was just the two of us. Two people. Not a customer and worker, but two people alone in a motel room, with nothing but the sound of the baseboard heater humming like a swarm of angry flies, and the sound of Mona’s heart beating with nervous excitement.

“What did you dream of as a kid?” I asked.

“What?”

“As a kid. I mean, no offense. But this couldn’t have been your dream. When you were a girl looking at a clear sky filled with stars, you weren’t dreaming of the Moonlight Motel”

“No, of course not,” she said. “No. It was never this.” and then she looked like a

traveller heading back in time, to places, and thoughts that hadn’t been allowed at the forefront of her mind for a long time.

I put my hand on her knee and rubbed softly with my thumb in a counterclockwise motion.

“It’s alright. It’s just me. I just want to talk.”

Tears were filling her eyes, and I took my hand from her knee and raised it slowly to the dark circles underneath. I wiped them and smiled at her. She took my hand in hers and kissed my palm. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. It’s just been so long.”

“It’s okay. I know this is strange for you, hell it’s strange for me. I just realized I don’t talk anymore. I don’t know any folks anymore. And I wanted to know you. You’re the closest thing to a friend I have, Mona. And I ain’t just saying that.”

Mona was silent for a while. But I didn’t press the issue any further. I let her sit with it. Let her come to me on her own terms.

“An actress.” She eventually said in a decibel above a whisper. “Hollywood. A million miles from here.”

“Not quite that far,” I joked. “But yeah, it ain’t close. What brought you here? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t know. Money, I guess. It’s always fucking money. But I’ll admit when I was younger I actually enjoyed it, believe it or not. I liked sex. I liked it a lot, and I was young. When you’re young and beautiful, you get nice looking men. And if they’re not, they’re rich.” She laughed at this, but her eyes looked sad. Sad and ashamed. “But I guess like a lot of jobs. You get comfortable. People tell you you’re great at this and you’d be crazy to go off on your own. It’s a scary world out there. You’re safe here, and all the rest of the horseshit they peddle. Then you wake up one day, and you’re on the wrong end of 30, with a lifetime of sin and regret.”

“It’s never too late, Mona.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re still beautiful. You must have money stashed away somewhere,” I winked.

Mona shrugged her shoulders.

“A little, I guess.”

“Well, why don’t we take off? Let’s take off and go to Hollywood. I could be your agent. Set you up with the best gigs in town and make sure you’re compensated.” I flexed my biceps and added. “You don’t get what you’re worth. They’re going to have to go through me.”

This made her smile. For the first time since I began paying for Mona’s time, it looked real. It looked genuine.

It gave me a small insight into who she was before this life. The young girl who looked in the mirror and acted out the lines of her school plays. The one who screamed and jumped for joy when she received the lead in Romeo and Juliet. Mona Hatlee, the young girl from the broken home, would get to kiss Robby Reiger. And from there, the sky was the limit.

But inside those eyes was also the girl who went to Robby’s on the east side to go over their lines. Holding that smile until her face hurt. Laughing at everything he said, whether it was funny or not, because that’s just what you did. There was the kiss. The kiss that froze her in time. Then there was the walk home afterwards, along the railroad tracks, papers held tightly to her chest, dreaming of the wedding reception. That was all before Robby and his football buddies put her in the back of his Camry, raped her, and threw her back out onto the tracks, with her dreams scattered like the pages of the play.

“That would be nice.” Mona said.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty broke. Working as a farmhand in Lone Pine for twelve hours a day, and I’m still only getting pennies. We wouldn’t make it far on my salary.”

“Oh, we would do fine.” She added. “I have money.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes finally meeting mine. “I’ve been skimming some for years now. Still those little girl dreams of taking off. It’s all in a little black bag in my closet, piled under a whole stack of shit. It isn’t easy to get at. Money for a rainy day, I guess. If that day ever comes.”

I looked outside as soft rain splashed the motel window. “Well, maybe we should really do it then.”

“Maybe we should, Johnny. That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

I rubbed her right cheek with my callused hand and kissed her softly. She kissed me back, slowly sliding her tongue into my mouth. Something we rarely did in this room. Something she hated. But on that night, we made love. Slow, and without rush like we were the last two survivors of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

When we finished, I lit a cigarette, and we shared it. Mona was sprawled across my chest, looping her fingers around my curly chest hair, laughing as she straightened the hairs and watched them return to their natural position like a pig’s tail.

The clock said ten to 11. My time was nearly up. “Well, I should get going, girl.” I said, as I got up and walked over to my work jacket, hauling out the bills for the evening.

“No. No, Johnny. Please. It was wonderful. It really was.”

I insisted as she declined. We played a little back-and-forth game for a minute before I stuffed the bills back in the breast pocket of my work shirt and kissed her again. “I’ll pay ya double next time.” She laughed, then blushed.

“Well, I should get going, Mona.”

“Please don’t”

“We’ll get out of here soon, I promise, baby. Me and you, we won’t ever see this motel or this room again. I promise you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“Don’t hold your breath, but don’t lose faith soon.”

“I could love you, Johnny. I really could.”

“Way ahead of you, baby.” I put my jacket on, opened the door, and walked across the parking lot to my car.

Inside, I pounded on the steering wheel. “FUCK! FUCK! FUUUCK!” I cried, and then my phone buzzed. “No, please no! Please, God, no!”

I almost didn’t answer it, and ran back to room 108 to grab Mona and fly down Highway 29. But then headlights from the far end of the Moonlight Motel began to flicker. They were here. They were telling me to pick up the goddamn phone, or I was next.

I took a deep breath and answered it.

“Yeah.” I said. “ Yeah. Yeah, she has the money. It’s at her place. Yeah. Yeah. Under a bunch of shit she said. In a black bag. In her closet”

I hung up.

Then the red Toyota pulled up in front of Mona’s room. Two men got out and knocked on the door. This time, Mona opened it without the chain. And the men had the bag over her head before she had time to change the expression on her face.

They dragged her out to the car. Threw her in the backseat and drove towards me. I rolled down the window as the driver threw a thick brown envelope into the passenger side. It landed on the seat.

“I’m sorry, Mona. Christ. I’m sorry.”

DISCLAIMER: I might seem weak, broken, down and out. But I’m resting, rebuilding my strength, gaining back my stamina, and I’ll come back like a Phoenix on fire, stronger than ever before. I’ve defeated depression, addiction, PTSD, many an unwitting bar patron who had the misfortune to insult someone I care about, I’ve defeated heartache and loneliness, rejection after rejection, the pain that keeps you up at night crying and howling at the bleeding moon. I’ve conquered joblessness and hopelessness, gods and demons, weight loss, running, karate, Crohn’s disease, liver disease, bipolar disorder. I’m a legitimate super hero. I’ve beaten it all. I’ve beaten bullies and low self esteem, deaths of loved ones, alcoholism and the pain of not fitting in. They’re all just new notches on my bedpost, scars on my Killmonger chest. I’ll beat divorce too. I’ll come out roaring like a lion breaking out of its cage. So don’t think a little setback will knock me down forever. I’ll just come back stronger and better. Persistence is my middle name. I don’t know how to give up. There won’t be any breaking me. There won’t be any destroying me. There won’t be any stopping me. And one day, when things get really really hard, I might be the one helping you, pushing you along, carrying you if I have to. Whatever it takes. So this is my disclaimer: never, ever underestimate me.

I’m crushing it

At the Bud Light Riot

The neighbors are losing it

At the Bud Light Riot

The same guy

Who just called me a homo

Is insisting!

That I fucked his girlfriend

Behind his back

We'd been drinkin'...

With a great big

Smile on her face

At the Bud Light Riot

Far and away

From Miller Time

It’s best not

To argue with a drunk

When they're half right

David Burdett

1/26/2022

I learned the horrors of prescience at the very moment I discovered I was gifted with it.

She was a childhood friend, a year younger. There happened to be a pause in our rambunctious play, a pause just long enough, and our play just close enough, that we accidentally found ourselves looking into one another’s eyes. Being children, the staring itself became the game; exploring each other’s souls inside them, daring ourselves to venture deeper while at the same time being revealed. We passed that point where one laughs to hide their discomfort, or looks away, and we continued even longer, her winded breath so close that I could feel it on my chin, and on my moistened lips. It was then that I saw who she really and truly was, and she me. And it was then that I knew.

“You are going to die.” I whispered.

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

She answered the only way a child could answer when the question is so fearsome as death. “Hide.”

When I left her that day I never saw my childhood friend again.

“Robert?” My mother called from the foyer. “Alicia’s parents can’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

“No Momma,” I lied.

But it did find her, even where we had so carefully hidden her; inside that big old trunk down in her basement, covered between the musty old clothes and things, the heavy cedar top closed and latched.

There’d been death in my friend’s eyes that day. There is no hiding from that.

The alcohol in my glass drains as my heart sinks

and all I can do is think of you

I still remember when we first met and I decided to cast my bet

Now all I feel is sorrow and regret

Every time people start to care it always leads to nothing fair

Everything ends in sorrow and despair

It’s just a shame I can’t tell you I care

I don’t know your name and I feel selfish for having this pain. You’re always in my brain and people say I am insane.

We watched your mother die and I watched you cry. I tried to comfort you and nothing could be done.

I thought of my son and how nothing is fair under the sun.

You’re that small Iraqi boy in a place I never belonged. You never had a choice, I hope we can be your voice.

No apology will let you know, no protest will help you show. I beg you let my soul get placed on the right track.

I miss you Iraq and it’s fair you don’t miss me back.

’The gates of hell are open in Iraq”-

Amr Moussa, Arab League’s Secretary General, September 2004

In the next few minutes, as you’re reading this, a mother will give birth in Fallujah. There is a 33% chance because of U.S.-used depleted uranium that the child will be born with a life-crippling birth defect, or dead; a young man will forge through piles of trash for food to feed his impoverished and displaced family. There are over 5 million displaced Iraqis, high estimates of over 1.3 million killed and an entire country with no secure future. Food, water, power, housing, education, safety, freedom of speech—all words absent from America’s “liberated Iraq.” Most of these events are rarely reported.

People often spend their entire lives fantasizing about war, or vicariously living through the proud stories of soldiers who have experienced war first hand. Often in American culture war is glorified and sold to the almost 307 million civilians in the United States without ever hearing, seeing or realizing the costly effects war has on those that survive it all the while forgetting the names of those lost in it.

I remember this day like it was yesterday. I often become queazy and physically ill when I think of it. It was at our JSS in Mushada which is North East of Baghdad. I was only 22 years old at the time and it was my second consecutive deployment to Iraq. Friends my age were in graduate school and I was in the middle of a war that I could not understand. We received a call that multiple Iraqi civilians had been killed or wounded in what I remember as an American air strike. It’s very confusing to myself how Iraq seems to all blend into one massive chaotic pile of undesirable shit in my brain. I often have difficulty pointing out dates, times and often even locations when traumatic events happened. This day, this day will forever be in my mind and wear heavily upon my soul.

After we threw our gear on, grabbed our weapons and headed out to provide medical evacuation to the wounded Iraqi civilians our stryker paused about a half mile down the road from our JSS ( joint security station. American soldiers and Iraqi police live together in a botched attempt to hand over security to the Iraqis) and came to a halt. I was in the air guard hatch of the stryker with a fellow soldier and friend Pedro Rios. We were watching people carrying a woman on a stretcher to a helicopter that hand landed about 200 meters from our location kicking up dust and rock. As the soldiers from my platoon were carrying the women one of them slipped and dropped her lifeless corpse into the dirt. It was as if time froze. Her frail, limp body had landed in the dirt of the road and dust had kicked up like smoke enveloping her lifeless body. I looked at Rios as the ramp to our vehicle had begun to lower. It was our turn to try and save a life. A small boy no older than the age of 5 years was pushed into our Stryker until another helicopter could land to evacuate him for medical attention.

The small boy had holes in his chest that were crudely attended to. I remember completely being consumed by this childs face and eyes. As i watched him struggle for breath and life I felt powerless. As the child drew his final breaths of life I wondered and still do wonder what his last thoughts were. His eyes were fixated on mine and I couldn’t find a word to say that could possibly consul this young boy. A child much like my own son. Someone who probably loved sweets, music and hated his homework like most boys his age. At this very moment in the war in Iraq I saw a face I would never forget. In the wreckage of a job well done I watched a boy die and could do nothing to help him. These are the types of stories Americans never hear about. How airstikes go wrong, mothers die, children lose their fathers and sisters and soldiers are reduced to our human factor. Empathy.

The ramp lowered and the corpse of what was once a smiling child was hauled from our vehicle. It seems the world lost two people that day. I found out later the woman who was dropped was also the boys mother. I had mixed feelings, I was broken by the loss of human life but I was almost relieved that the boys mother would never know her son was dead as she had met his same fate. I never really had an ill bone in my body for the Iraqi people. I would have happily died in Iraq if it had meant legitimate liberation for their people. I could no longer blindly look at the war as if it was something necessary or good. War in Iraq is something so abstract to civilians that at times it becomes frustrating.

For the remainder of my life on earth I will remember this boys face. The child who’s body is buried in a country I didn’t belong in. There’s something intimate about watching someone die. I wanted to help but there was nothing left to do. The last images of that boys life is of my face and I had nothing to say to him. I couldn’t say anything in Arabic, I couldn’t smile at him...how could I? His life was draining from his body before my own eyes and here I am, deployed to Iraq in the great and “noble” mission of “Liberating an oppressed people” only to find out that the United States military was the leading cause of Iraqi civilian deaths. 1.3 million Iraqis died in a similar manner. I learned something about US foreign policy that day. That that childs death may have been an accident but the war against the Iraq people was not an accident. That hundreds of thousands of children have met similar fates. That if we as soldiers remain silent and do not paint a lucid and accurate picture of what war is really like, what war means to the people in a country that it’s waged on, we may find our own children staring into the faces of other peoples children as they exit this world in a violent manner.

Americas greatest danger does not come from the lips of a small boy in a foreign place that most Americans cannot point out on a map. Americas greatest enemies are those who promote a perverted culture of death that rallies endlessly for war. I often wonder what that child would have became if not for the war in Iraq. I do not even know his name yet I see him almost every night. I don’t blame them for hating us. I hate us for not stoping the war in Iraq.

That night I could not sleep. I lay awake listening to music trying to organize my thoughts. I wondered if my friends and family at home knew what was happening in Iraq. I wondered if they even cared. I decided that I would never support a war like Iraq again.

For many Americans the wars we wage are far and foreign. We almost never think of war as an actual material condition. Our friends and loved ones we send to die or kill are always and never at the tips of our lips.

Have you ever seen a horror or suspenseful movie with dead, headless animals and hoped you never would have to deal with that in real life? Don't worry, I did it for you and let me tell you how you never want to live that life.

So flashback to 2019, one hundred degree (F) Afghanistan. We are sent to do plumbing on a former black op site. Imagine walking through black plastic covered chain-linked fences to teal or slight pink buildings. There was dust and sand EVERYWHERE, dry porcelain toilets with the bowl covered with dry poop; pealing off like old wallpaper. The rooms smelled like asbestos, death, dust and whatever else lives in a building that has been unoccupied for a year or more.

We made it through the main building, which had no power, but when you flicked the phone light on, you could see the horror! Malaria infested mosquitos awaken from a slumber. The feeling of walking into a rainforest, the dampness clinging to the green molded walls. We were checking to see if the water was on, it was, in case you were wondering because a shower head dripping echoed in the empty darkness.

The last building sat in the corner. The windows closed, the door shut a little to tight, a disgusting smell a few feet away resonating from within, baking in the Middle Eastern sun.

We opened the once white door, now stained in sand storm dust, and the retching smell hit us. Dead, headless birds lay scattered across the floor.

Now a normal person would think they died once getting trapped in the building and a cat ate their heads (cats are feral there to control the varmint population). I am not a normal person, I automatically assumed this was a sacrifice, logical response! The best part, the birds weren't decomposing, but clearly have been there for some time. We had to take care of the birds, I blocked how they were disposed, but the smell lingered. Leaving the windows open during the day was allowed, but we had to close them at night. Super hot during the day, freezing cold at night; that would never fix the smell problem.

A month later, the whole project almost completed. We never fixed up the dead bird building, the project manager didn't want it done. It was never touched again once we cleaned it. This job sucked, but watching my leader put his hand down a pipe with dried feces really topped the job site. That is another story of how that came to be!

"we're a long way from pizza houses and bars, baby." Hair and make-up had been done and she was postured up. Last minute adjustments and hotel room antics.

I passed her a joint as I fumbled with the buttons. I muttered something about leaving the bottom stud undone and she shook her head...and she smiled.

I'd made some mad dash escape

from Orlando to Austin to get here.

For this.

To see her honeyed eyes light up. To see it all click.

I wanted to see her, as she took it all in.

I watched her hand quiver in the pass...I took an inhale and took her hand.

Pulling her in to me. I needed her close to me. I needed to take the self-doubt from her mind.

There was the rapid *beat. Beat! beat!!!" Of her heart. I wanted to believe she smelled like me. But... She smelled like her and so I shut it down.

And I whisper something akin to, "you've got this, babes." I felt her grip tighten and her head bend into my chest. "You're here," she says, "that's all that matters."

Drown me

wash my sins

in the waves formed

from neglect, the

drip, drip, dripping

from smiles gone askew

I thirst

for icy water

that closes my throat

but demands each hair

stand on its end,

ready to be touched

I thrash

along the waves

catching glimpses

of sandy beaches

trying to remember

what it's like to be ashore

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

On the channel today, we feature a legendary mind from the pages of Prose. I've been waiting for this one. Here's the link.

He's your huckleberry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFU8lqjcy8Y

And.

As always...

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team