Perceptions
by Mark Anderson-------------------------------
This first appeared in Fanzing #46
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1918: The Argonne ForestI ran. I ran. And ran some more. The sound chased me, coming closer, pacing me. The treeline before me exploded into shards.
Dirt showered up in puffs as bullets walked across the ground toward me. One found my leg. I collapsed forward with blood geysering from my leg.
Blackness fuzzed the edges of my vision, tunneling and closing over me.
I dreamed....
I was home.
It was the Fourth of July. The sun was high and bright.
I could smell Mom's apple pie baking.
SNAP! The sound of a twig breaking under a jack boot ruined the dream.
Standing over me were four German soldiers. One of them, a kid, my age, aimed a machine gun at my head.
One of the older soldiers yelled something and shoved the younger one toward me.
I couldn't hear them The roaring in my ears was too loud.
He gestured aggressively with the machine gun and advanced toward me a step or two.
I was going to die.
"I love you, Mom," ran through my mind. I projected, hoping that she would know that I was thinking of her in my last moment.
A red, white and blue tornado seemed to sweep over my head. I saw the eyes of the young German grow wide as a fist upper cut him knocking him off his feet.
The Germans were knocked about. A blue coat with tails billowed out behind him as he mopped the Germans up. Bleary-eyed, I watched as the man in red-striped pants, stars-and-stripes top hat and a star-spangled cummerbund beat the Germans into unconsciousness.
My head began to slip forward toward my chest. The star-spangled whirlwind had finished the last of the Germans off. He walked toward me. He looked like my granddad. I felt his hand on my shoulder and fought my head back up to look at him.
"Don't worry, son. You'll make it home to Mom's apple pie," he said in a kindly voice.
***
1918: Paris
I woke up in a hospital ward in Paris. I asked, but no one could tell me how I had gotten there.
Three weeks passed in that hospital bed.
The next thing I knew, I was on a ship departing Dunkirk bound for New York.
The trip was uneventful.
I stood on the deck as the ship slipped into dock in New York Harbor, balancing atop my crutches.
After a long train ride, I was home in Iowa.
***
1942: Iowa
I saw the old man again 23 years later.
He was right there on the front page of my hometown newspaper. War clouds seemed to be gathering again. I had volunteered to go back in the service.
And, just as I was going back into service, there the old man was again, fronting a group of mystery men called the Freedom Fighters. He didn't seem to have aged a day in the intervening years.
He was Uncle Sam, the spirit of my country who had come to me in my hour of need and saved me.
I never tried to explain it to anybody. Who would believe me?
But the thought that Uncle Sam was out there comforted me in the long days ahead as I went through training, landed in North Africa and fought my way across Italy.
***
1968: University of Metropolis campus
The police cruiser rolled over. It's lights on the car's roof went out as they weight of the car crushed snuffed them out.
The crowd surged forward. I stood my ground, but it was hard. I'd never seen people so angry in a crowd before.
I knew they were just students upset about the war. I was upset too. But I joined the police to make a difference just like Dad taught me.
I remembered my Dad's stories about World War I and II. He faced the Kaiser's men in the trenches and Nazi storm troopers and Italian fascists all across Europe.
He got Nazis...I stood facing a horde of crazed, half-dressed, long-haired barbarian teenagers.
The "Stop the War", "Make Love, Not War", and "Hey, Hey LBJ" signs were used as weapons to hit the policemen in riot gear.
Then, the living wave struck our line and we gave. A human stampede slammed into us and bore us backward.
Something hit me in the head. I went down. I could feel something warm and wet running down the side of my head.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. I tried to stand up.
Standing over me was a wild man in red striped pants, a blue vest festooned with white stars and a bare chest. A large peace symbol hung on a necklace around his neck. His long shaggy white hair and heavy white beard flew in the breeze making him look like some crazed zealot, but the gentle blue eyes shocked me.
He reached down and took me by the hand. His grip was firm and strong. I was lifted back to my feet. The crowd surged around us, but we were an island in a sea of hippies and police as they pushed and shoved each other.
He led me to the side of the street and seated me on the curb.
He said, "Now you jus' stay here, sonny. You'll be safe. I've got to go save some more good Americans today." He turned and disappeared back into the crowd.
My last sight of him was of his funky red and white pants with peace signs on the back pockets, striding through the crowd. He stopped for a moment here and pulled a group of hippies off another cop and, a few steps later, he pulled a police officer off of two hippies who had been struck by billy clubs.
When all was said and done, we were lucky. No one died. Some of us got the hell beat out of us, but nobody died.
Later, I described the man who had saved me to my Dad. That was the night he told me the story about the Argonne.
***
2002: Baghdad, Iraq
The man in the bed tossed in his sleep. His profile was known worldwide, though this night it shown with a sheen of sweat.
In his fevered dream, the bombs rained raining from the sky. His anti-aircraft guns couldn't catch them. They ranged over his city...over his entire country at will.
The bombs dropped everywhere. Smoke blotted out the sky. Fire roared all around. As he watched from his balcony, in terror, more and more bombers swung in over the city and dropped their cargos.
One moment, the sky was full of bombers. The next, unexpectedly, the bombers were gone.
A crashing boom continued, though. BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! It came with regularity.
BOOM! BOOM! Plaster rained from the ceiling as the whole room shook.
Through the smoke, an impossibility came. A giant satanic figure clothed in red, white and blue. A monstrous devil with white hair and beard glared at the city about him. Blue beams leaped from his eyes, burning into the ground. Laughter roared from between his fanged teeth. Bright red horns rose from his head. A blue jacket was worn over a red bow tie. Red and white striped pants reached to the ground.
The monster's eyes settled on the Presidential Palace, seeming to stare directly into the dictator's eyes.
BOOM! BOOM! He approached. His every step shook the ground.
Tanks rolled from concealed bunkers near the palace. They fired at the monster. The shells had no effect whatsoever.
The Great American Satan still came for him. The beast fired his hellfire blue eyes at the tanks. The metal scorched, burned, and, then, began to grow soft under the unrelenting heat.
The monster reached into the window of the palace and lifted the President of Iraq out into the night sky. Raised high above the monstrosity's head, he dangled over its mouth. Razor sharp fangs opened below him.
From his vantage, Saddam could see the hell that his country had become. Starving people looked on and seemed to smile as they saw him about to be consumed by this monster. A huge red tongue slithered out of the beast's mouth.
A scream tore from the throat of Iraq's President for Life as he dropped into the mouth of the hellspawn.
Awakening in his bed, Saddam spun and looked out the window. A clear sky, just shading toward dawn, greeted him. No troop of bombers. No rumbling footsteps of a giant American leviathan come to consume him.
Breathing heavily, he rose from his sweat-soaked sheets and went to get a drink of water. A deep sense of foreboding kept him from returning to sleep.
***
2002: Diego Garcia, The Indian Ocean
A small shack stood at the end of a row of small shacks, all nondescript, most of them housing obsolete equipment.
A soldier, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, approached the shack on the end, knocked, and went in.
"Hey, Sam! I'm here to relieve you. Anything going on?" He asked.
The man named Sam removed the headphones from his close-cropped, white-haired head, before answering, "Naw, perty quiet tonight. Saddam had another bad dream's all."
The soldier took Sam's place at the console. "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, if you ask me," he said.
Sam moved to the door of the shed. "I agree, sonny. I absolutely agree. Hey, how are your Dad and Granddad doing?" Sam asked.
"Ah, they're both still kicking and ornery as ever. I've got leave coming in a week and we're all three going fishing back home," the younger man answered.
"That sounds great," Sam responded.
"You should come home with me sometime, Sam. You would be more than welcome. And they would love to meet you," the younger man suggested.
"I'd love to son, but I rarely take leave. You have fun and tell them about the good work you do," Sam said.
As Sam left the shack, he stopped and leaned back against the wall. He looked up at the stars overhead. The Southern Cross wheeled across the sky. "I cain't be everywhere. And I cain't protect them all. But by God, I'll protect every one of them that I can. And those I cain't protect, I'll avenge. As long as they believe in the American Dream, I'll be there. They may not always see me in the same way, but it will always be me."
As Sam walked away, his fatigues shimmered, transforming into a familiar blue coat, top hat, and striped pants. He slowly faded away. And if anyone had been out and about on that night, they would have heard the opening strains of "America the Beautiful" being whistled.
The End.
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Any resemblence to real persons living or dead is purely intentional.
All DC Comics characters are © DC Comics.
All DC Comics characters, trademarks and images (where used) are ™ DC Comics, Inc.
DC characters are used here in fan art and fiction in accordance with their generous "fair use" policies.
All original characters are © Mark Anderson.
This work of fiction was © 2002, revised 2006 by the copyholder.
posted by Mark "Puff" Anderson @ 3:37 PM
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