I decided that I was going to take over the kfc division of the army. granted, I had no experience of the military world, but why the hell not, I was keen to make my mark. goddam it, I wanted to make a difference, I’m not ashamed of it. I went into town and bought myself some army gear from the surplus store, the genuine stuff. I mean, I had to look the part. what I really wanted was one of those stiff caps the very top guys have, with the little peak and silver badge, but I couldn’t find one anywhere. in the end, I settled for a baseball cap, which I wrote ‘major’ on in black permanent marker so that people would know I was important.

I went to the army base in my new clothes, every button was shining like a star. I blinded one small boy with them just by walking past, the first casualty of war. hey, there’s no room for sentimentality when it comes to the army, I had to show a strong face so I gave him a 50p piece and relieved him from the two-year national service I intended to impose. he ran away, crying out of his petrol puddle eyes. the sun shone and the birds sang. I took those as good omens and started whistling a tune I didn’t know the name of.

at the camp they had the barrier down at the gate, the soldier guarding it wouldn’t let me in, not even when I promised him immediate promotion. but I wasn’t going to be swayed that easily, and in the end he had to go off and get some of the big cheeses, his standard operating procedures didn’t cover what to do when a new leader comes to town so he had to go get some new orders. the generals or whatever weren’t too impressed when they came out to meet me and I told them how things were going to be from now on. leave it to people who know what they’re doing, they said, you know nothing. that’s right, I said, I know nothing, I’m here with the fresh ideas. we’re going to make this army great again. ‘we’ you see.

they threw me off site.

I was expecting it to be honest, they weren’t just going to give away their jobs like that after working so hard for years at beating up young kids and sending them to their deaths, they were made of sterner stuff than most people you meet. they had pension schemes to think of, wives’ credit cards, drinks with the old boys. hell, I don’t mind admitting it, I admired their dedication. at least I tried to get them onboard. as it was, the situation demanded that I get rid of them, sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs to get the ball rolling, I guess it was out of my hands once they’d thrown it back in my face. I walked around for a while, and eventually came across the men in the middle of the countryside out on fitness training. they’d been out running all morning, and were shouting when I stopped them in their tracks.

strong and bold

gonna save the world

those sounds were music to my ears, straight away I knew that they had the right attitude at least. boys, I said, that’s a beautiful song, a lovely sentiment. they’re just words, they said, we didn’t mean anything by it, they just happen to rhyme and fit the rhythm of running. we could have sang about mould and getting old, it would have been the same to us. but boys, I said, you chose to sing about being bold instead, didn’t you. even if you didn’t consciously realise what you were singing about, you still chose it somehow. or maybe, I said, maybe it chose you to sing it.

that sold them, predetermination always does, everyone’s a sucker when they think they’ve been cut out for something special. after hearing that, they all wanted some of my action. I’m gonna make you all heroes, I said, I’m taking charge of things here. we’ll make all your parents proud. they started whooping and slapping each others’ backs. I’d soon beat that kind of juvenility out of them, but I let them have their moment.

we marched back inside together, brushing past the idiot at the gate, and tied up the generals. don’t say I didn’t offer you a chance of glory, I told them, you could have come along for the ride too. and then I shot them all. I had to, for one thing the men needed to know who was boss, and if you don’t get rid of the dead wood, it comes back and gets you later on down the line. I’ve seen it happen before, people always hold a grudge and try get back at you when they think your guard is down. so there we were, me and the boys, everything cleaned up and ready to start again, a fresh canvas. I shouted, all my men, and everyone cheered.

you boys have been living too easy, I said, what we need here is discipline. no more running around all day and drinking beer all night, the tax payer doesn’t want that. doesn’t he? they asked, isn’t the façade of an armed response force enough? no, I said, this country wants warriors, men of steel, forged in the furnace of inhumanity (I had some evidence to this effect that I’d got from talking to people on the street with my clipboard). but we’ve always run and drunk beer, they said, that’s what we do. not anymore, I said, the new time’s coming, and anyone who wants out can go now.

well, a couple of them said they were leaving and turned towards the door, an army without beer and running was no kind of army they were interested in, they said. I had to shoot them both in the back of the head, keep morale up. they dropped and bled, one of them writhed about a bit until I shot him again. strange, I always thought a head shot was fatal every time. I told the rest of the boys that there was going to be no leaving of this army, not while I was in charge. this isn’t some party you can just walk out on halfway through, I said, we’re here to do a job. and then I made some scrawny looking youth mop up the brains. some of the guys didn’t look quite as happy about the whole thing as they has before, but I made sure I got their names.

and as from now, there’s gonna be no ranks either I told them. in the real world, who knows the difference between corporals and lieutenants and privates? not me, for one. in fact, no one does, no one cares. so we’re starting with a clean slate, I don’t know any of you, so you all mean squat to me. I smiled at the men, some of the wiser ones smiled back. so I set up two new ranks, the pippimädchens and the herr schreckliches. girls get girls’ names, and the men get to sound hard, I said, as of now you have to earn your nom de guerre. as for me, ich bin der ubermensch, I told them. they all seemed quite happy with the new set up, even if most of them didn’t quite get the german. I liked the sound of it in any case.

seeing as no one complained, I got started on modifying the kfc army right away. first of all, I got rid of all the beds and made the men sleep on nails so they’d get used to having it hard. no pussies in my army, if they couldn’t hack it, I shot them. the nails got rid of three members of the chaff, bang, bang, bang, but I still didn’t have the elite I hankered for, the shirkers had ways of getting round being shot. putting mannequins on their nails and the like, I’d have needed eyes in the back of my head to catch them all.

after the beds, I got rid of all the televisions and radios. that stuff will pollute your minds, I told them, and I want brains that come clean. I kicked the hell out of all the screens and broke off all the aerials. then I burned the bust-up boxes at lights out in the middle of the dorm. a whole group of them started crying then, saying that it wasn’t fair, so I took them outside and fed them to the alligators. I had those brought in when the men lost the fear of the gun. always thinking.

I figured that my first set of ideas had worked quite well, but I didn’t want to rest on my laurels, complacency killed the cat and that wasn’t happening here. so I called my brother, he always had a lot of advice. although he admitted that this was new territory for him too and wanted to know if I was ok about half a dozen times (v. anal), he recommended that the men’s menu be changed. you are what you eat, he said, and those boys are pure carbohydrate right now. look to the other major food groups for inspiration, the body needs a little variety to really perform. damn liberal. I asked after the kids, he said they were ok, but wouldn’t be joining the kfc army now I was running the show. I laughed, hahahaha, and thought about running a recruitment drive around their school. front line material those little half-arsed nephews of mine, operation decoy for them and no mistake.

next morning, I told the men that their diet was unsatisfactory. it was something I’d been meaning to change since I started, but had never got around to (it’s not like my brother ever gave me credit for half of the ideas I’ve given him over the years). there’d be no warm food when I sent them out to save the world, so instead I made them eat elephant shit (I got the elephants thrown in with the alligators, no one at the zoo could be bothered to look after them any more). christ, did those boys hate dinnertime, but they cleaned their plates every time, they knew all about the sharp teeth that were waiting outside. second helpings all round I’d shout when the elephants had been eating fruit, banging my ladle against the side of the bucket as I walked down the mess hall. some of them puked, but I made them eat that too, and that soon cleared up their gastric problems.

but I still wasn’t satisfied that they were really up to the job. one night I reviewed myself in the mirror and found that I was looking perfect, my teeth were as bright as my buttons now. I’d done everything I could to get them into shape, but despite everything some of them still didn’t have the new time look in their eyes. the problem must lie with them I figured, the ungrateful slack bastards.

finally, I came up with the best idea yet. if they couldn’t change of their own accord, then I’d just have to give them a helping hand, worms couldn’t fly if they didn’t grow wings. I made them all drink my urine. we are a brotherhood, I told them one morning after they’d eaten the elephant diarrhoea breakfast I’d put them on, a collective, and so you boys are all gonna drink my urine. I’m going to sit in that room (I pointed to a door) and fill up bottles all day, every day. and if anyone drinks anything else, I’m going to buy a machine that sucks your eyes out through your nose and makes your bladder implode. I’d seen one at the shop where I bought all the army gear. or was that a dream, I can’t quite remember, they should invent it either way.

I didn’t really make them drink my urine. I’m not a sadist or anything. and besides, I didn’t have the time to sit down all day, I had to keep ahead of the game. so instead I gave them normal tap water mixed with lime colouring and dosed it with a chemical which would make my boys just that little more aggressive in combat. they didn’t know the difference, and after a few days they were ready to eat each others’ still beating hearts. it was all going great, even better than expected.

after four weeks intensive training, I bought three dozen orang-utans and made the boys fight them hand to hand. one on one, they tore those monkey bastards to pieces, I had to let the apes fight in threes just to keep some sort of balance. even then they only lasted a week, and I strangled the last one myself (show of leadership) on the friday. I had to bury them all quickly, some of the men wanted to eat the bodies, even though I told them it was shit for dinner as usual or else. I’m sure a few of them sneaked out at night and dug them up for supper anyway, but I wasn’t bothered. good leaders know when to relax the leash.

I know what you’re thinking. why didn’t they rebel against me, have a mutiny, after all I subjected them to? I shot their friends, burned their beds, cut them off from the outside world and made them eat excrement. christ, I took away their identities, why didn’t they murder me in my sleep? I’ll tell you why. because they were in the army, and knew how to take orders. they believed in me (even when some of them grew fangs and changed colour because of the water). they wanted what I wanted, to save the world and leave an indelible impression on it. they were gonna be remembered and I was going to lead the way like some kind of giant firefly guiding them through the night the world had become.

a month down the line, and there we were, finally I had the crop of human evolution (well, almost human) right there awaiting my orders. there wasn’t a minute to lose, so I called my band of death-dealers together and we started planning the next move. but where to start, there’s so much badness in the world these days you might as well just stick a pin in a map and take it from there. if there’s one thing I can’t abide though it’s randomness, I figured our roll-out would have to be a showcase victory, a glory in which we could bask for many a day.

the tv news kept talking about some group of neo-cryptic fundamentalists in the southern hemisphere (I allowed myself to watch tv, I had to keep some kind of contact with the outside world). they seemed like a bad lot, always capturing nationalist factionalists’ children and filling their teeth with plutonium so that their heads softened, that sort of thing. oh, the inhumanity. yes indeed, the phm seems the perfect target to start proceedings, I said, once we’ve taken those dirty rat bastards out of it people will see that we mean business and take us seriously. the boys who still had vocal chords grunted in agreement. for some reason I had a vision of me strangling my father pop into my head, but I tried not to dwell on it.

so off we went to rid the world of its anti-social elements. we took the leaders of the phm out as soon as we arrived, the whole operation only took a couple of days. I didn’t even have to take any guns, my boys were so enraged they just leapt at the other guys and tore them to pieces. I stood at the sidelines, my arms folded nodding my head slowly to a job well done. it was a bloodbath, a whitewash. the men wanted to keep the heads as trophies of their victory over evil, but I managed to convince them we should travel light, god knows what customs would have done if they’d found those, it was all I could do to stop the boys masturbating on the plane as it was. but I tell you, it was a lot of fun that day.

and that was the end of that problem, no one ever heard of any more violence from the phm ever again. or the yjk, the klm or the bae. but no one thanked us. no one ever thanked us. we toured the known world, every single continent, ridding it of anarchists, reactionaries, religious fanatics, dictators, puppet governments and anyone else who seemed to be doing wrong in my eyes. but no one ever said, you guys did great, thanks to you the world’s a better place. quite the opposite in fact. we were mauled by the media for taking matters into our own hands from the start, I ended up on late night talk shows trying to defend our actions, but they wouldn’t listen, people never do. apparently we should have taken internal politics and the feelings of those we smote into consideration. it seems even the most inhumane and violent deserve compassion. people spat at my gang of mutants as we wandered through towns and cities, telling us we should bugger off. from shiny buttons to a faceful of phlegm/the best laid plans...

so today, I give in. I mean, I tried, but no one wants to know. I was never cut out to be some hero, flying in the face of corrosive eternity. the world doesn’t work like that any more. I’m going to let the boys kill me this afternoon, I’ll order the execution myself. I bought some lions from the zoo (we get a special deal with them these days), and the boys can just throw me in. martyrdom always appealed. my men will get along fine without me, I’m sure. and if anyone does hear of a good cause, make sure you let the boys know.