Out of Combat

‘Can you stop posing at the mirror, you queer or what?’ one of the bunkmates shouted behind him. Alarmed, he immediately dispelled himself from the toilet mirror and began mopping the hospital green floor tiles ever so muddy. Fifteen more minutes a snout nose third sergeant would comes by and scrutinized their bunks, so better keep everything on your godamn pig shed bunk in tiptop condition, berating the snout nose sergeant, whom everyone knew outside he lived in a pig shed. Tobias, mop and damp cloth in hand, felt himself wasting time here. He presumed he would not reached eighteen, thinking and sometimes hoping that death was creeping around the corner, lurking in darkness, waiting for him in the lift or staircase of his HDB flat with a machete. But he was eighteen now. Silently celebrating his eighteenth birthday with a mop and piece of grayish crap in hand, seething malignity at the chagrin environment he was surviving in. Rather be killed with hearts and lungs spewing out by ones bad luck than be killed a janitor and a cleaner by pure, avoidable boredom.

‘Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t crazy,’ one half moon face said as he peered down to an audience of feculence scattered around an oval shaped amphitheatre. ‘And this is crazy.’ Pluck. The crescent, contained no longer, poured down gooey sick yellowish substance from the orbit, came crashing down as celestial punishment on the filth of crapkind, drowning them into the center pool with bottomless depth. A catastrophic disaster ensued.

‘Yuck’ said one shaved head.

‘Yuck’ said another prematurely baldhead.

‘Well, at least he got a point,’ Tobias, a shaved head, mopped the showering marooned tiled floor ever so grimy.

’Yes, we should try getting ourselves sick,’ said the prematurely baldhead.

‘No, we should try getting out of this mopping and sweeping, eating and sleeping, walking and running, aiming and firing, throwing and ducking, shouting and scolding.’

‘Bro, that’s life you are referring to.’

‘No! Getting out of combat duty!’ Tobias snapped impatiently. Does premature balding beget premature loss of intelligence or vice versa? Another chicken and egg question put out for the world to ponder about.

At night, Tobias laid down his dying body on a mattress he quite certain originated from a casket furnishing. Mind wide awake, dwelling in thought with sobering intensity while physically caged inside the confines of mosquito netting with a thumb-sized hole on the left-hand side of his torso and a big toe-sized hole near the bottom of his feet. Fifteen minutes ago after the fifteen minutes the snout nose sergeant imposed it to them for area cleaning were fifteen minutes of strenuous punishments consisting of pushups and sit-ups. Every count were quietly accounted for and locked inside Tobias unforgiving cerebrum. Every pain and strain he tolerated were absorbed deep into the skin cells and streamed through the current of blood circulating in and out of his agonizing pumping organ. Heart and mind corroborate, the snout nose sergeant be subjected the gallows. No, better yet, impaled him onto a wooden stick just like Vlad the Dracula had invented bloody brilliantly. One thing Tobias adored in this little red dot was the exquisite ethnic cuisines, and barbecued pork meat on a stick was one of his favorites. Fresh snout nose sergeant with rims of fat barbecued on a sizzling grill, wonder what it tastes like. Succulent, juicy, meaty and above all, a sweet munch of revenge. However, he didn’t seek revenge, neither would he fancy himself licking the snout nose sergeant pounds upon pounds of cholesterol guaranteed fats. What the heart and minds corroborated instead was a sense of escapism. The abhorrent army obtuse lifestyle was a life not to be for a roseate intellect like him. But how was he going to escape, that’s the question put up for him to ponder about.

‘Platoon two fall in now!’ It was five in the morning. The snout nosed sergeant shouted from two floors below their bunk, his voice echoed like a squealing adult pig anticipating slaughter.

‘Three days in this godamn combat life and I am enough of that godamn son of the bitch,’ said the crescent faced.

‘So which do you prefer? Your screwed out combat life or the son of the bitch yelping downstairs?’

‘Neither. I am plotting murder. And when I succeeded I would flunk myself out from the window and be martyred.’ The others nodded approvingly and wished him best of luck for this courageous endeavor.

‘Excuse me. This is an army camp here and we are all combat fit. What do you expect? Free food and accommodation, with sergeants and warrant officers messaging your back under the velvet canopy at the sandy beach overlooking the Peninsula Ocean? So stop squirming your ass off like pussies and start facing the reality.’ The tall lanky guy retorted. Months in the advertising business had conditioned him to use descriptive words, words normally found in newspaper advertisement, to seep into his everyday speaking language. Everyone, in the bunk of twelve, hated him as he made them feel unpatriotic. True they were a somewhat unpatriotic bunch, but by verbalizing it he offended the eleven deities whose spectrum of life consisted of themselves and no other.

Tobias, back from the bathroom with toothbrush and a plastic green mug in hand, decided to kick-start the crusade. ‘That’s the spirit. That’s the holy ghosts we are looking for in ourselves aren’t we? Risking our life for some colorful ribbons and badges just to boast and show off to others. Have you ever read ‘The King new clothes’? Others would just see you as a meathead with colorful poles of bandarilhas adorning your naked skin. Very glamorous indeed.’

‘Well I am just implying…’

‘Or you might perhaps lay down your insignificant life in defense of something far more significant than you ninny propaganda consumerist. Making the ultimate sacrifice for a nation, a country, a piece of land surrounded by unnatural boundaries in which you and me and everyone else in the six billions universe have no right to claim for. What’s the point of forsaking a living breathing life for a handful of soil? Non.’

‘You are dying for your family and your community and your friends for Christ sake!’

‘I will not die, it’s the world that will end.’

‘God you are an naively selfish person!’

‘What the fuck are you all doing upstairs, performing orgies? Come down now and I would orgy you all.’ The group of unpatriotic soldiers gladly obeyed the order, leaving behind the bloodied scene unmapped.

Tobias couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t caused by the mere fact that he had ran a distance of ten kilometers without stopping in the morning, swam ten laps in alkaline smelling pool in the afternoon with his left thigh in pain due to the constant stomping on rocky terrains in the morning run, attending evening gym lesson with his left thigh cramped from the afternoon swim, and finally went for dinner in late evening before collapsing, tray and utensils in hand, onto the icy cold checkered tiles due to the pounding and cramping and the machine-straining on his left thigh. Exhaustion wasn’t the cause for his insomnia, no. It wasn’t due to the fact that a group of curious shaved baldheads started circling around him, muttering with one another copiously as he laid legs spread across the checkered floor. To enclose a victim was a ritual practiced by almost every delinquent homesick servicemen whose sole intend was to witness the cruelty of fate drawing towards the victim, if not then perhaps speeding up the process by suffocating him to infinite sleep through the aggregated funky odor of sour sweat and repulsive pungent earth exulted from the wall of homesick servicemen surrounding him. Tobias survived through the olfactory torture; the prospect of three days of freedom popped quickly like a short life bubble in the devious minds of his many brothers in arms. Once he got up, he gave a friendly word of advise to his tall gangling advertising bunkmate to consider taking a bath and changed his stinking socks. Humiliation and a black eye wasn’t the cause either.

It wasn’t even the sense of isolation enfolded around him that gave him insomnia. Sinking boiled broccoli, salt less chicken breast, bland overcooked cod, hardboiled egg, white rice and clear soup thoughtlessly into his jaw hanging opened mouth; he noticed short glimpses and pointy fingers across tables all targeted straight at his face. Yes, it was the heated debate this morning that had crowned him instant stardom, assailing him to become topic of the day at the dinner table. Oh, he didn’t gave a damn about what they thought about him, what were they talking among themselves or what were they thinking of anything else, for what life worth living for if you constantly put your feet into other people stinking shoes. Tobias preferred wearing his own shoes, serving for his own happiness rather than getting pain in the arse on other people problems. National service was pain in the arse. Selfishness was happiness. Communal living was pain in the arse, but acknowledging to live at the best apartment in Singapore could offer was happiness. Entangling in someone’s life was pain in the arse, though involvement with profit at someone’s expense was happiness. Combat duty was pain in the arse, absent without official leave was happiness but with serious consequences imposed by the stringent laws of the Singapore Armed Forces, which was a real pain in the arse. Tobias couldn’t sleep that night; he was too busy strategizing an escape plan, opening a route for happiness from this pain in the arse.

Military parade was what Tobias loathed the most. Conformity and formation order were a pain in the arse, but he wouldn’t dwelled on further as he had plenty of it twelve sleepless hours ago. Groaning with appendage pain from yesterday hellish limb-breaking thigh-straining sole-stabbing toe-chewing tortures, they limped whiningly in steps to the egg-toast-able parade ground at platoon level of three by twelve rows. After a few attempts to drilled them up, the stick wielding sergeant major whose face reminded him of a yeti gave up.

‘Drop your feet like birdshit again!’ the angry yeti growled. The company delivered to him what he said he wanted again.

‘No! All of you down!’ The sweaty company, yearned for yetis to extinct, wanted to gorge its tiny eyeballs out but thought it wiser to obey his command since it was armed; the murder can wait until it was out from his tuft. Tobias cracked up.

‘Why are you still standing? I asked you all to drop!’

‘I am disobeying you. So what can you do to me?’

‘Are you trying to be funny with me, huh?’

‘This is no joke, I am not going to answer your idiotic question unworthy of a respond.’

‘Fuck you. What do you think you are, huh?’

‘I am not a thing but a who. Tobias is me, and he is denying your request to drop down, and this aren’t no joke.’ Yeti fumed and punished all those obedient ones with more push-ups. The sound of bone cracking proliferated the air.

‘Just do it for us, please?’ one exhausted pallid face baldhead with distinctively bat-like ear pleaded. Tobias ignored him flatly. The batman sighed reluctantly and suddenly, as if intentionally, lost his wobbly arm strength, squarely plunge himself face first onto the rice-steam-able ground. The beetle-eyed yeti widened his eye by a few millimeters, whistled for the medics, who were caught red-handed for sleeping on the stretchers under the rambutan tree. Double duty awaits the two poor medics when yeti caught them red-handed again for running instead of marching smartly into the parade square. Triple when he caught the marching medics red-handed yet again who failed to greet him by his complete Indian name with the right consonants. Fumed even more boisterously when the medics lifted the unconscious batman and witnessed half his face baked - dinner was served early. The thought of writing the damned incident report frustrated him. Yeti recalled grimly that he was not proficient with English, or was he any good in any subjects in school. That’s why he signed on to the army, a profane deadpane career that suited him perfectly well, plausibly a match in celestial heaven. He didn’t came here to write long lengthy essays of incident reports, he signed on for a nobler reason that would reduced Mother Teresa into tears of wailing Virgin Mary: scrotum-tightening the young recruits. And he was going to perform the decent act on this joker he fancied laying his hands on.

‘I am going to charge you for insubordination, you clear?’ Yeti was secretly charmed by his use of a very difficult word. What a splendid day today was going to turn up for yeti, yet another word dribbled itself into the empty pages of his treacherous porous treasures.

‘Yes sir, and I, Tobias is not going to obey your requests, and I am not joking.’ Tobias answered.

‘Are you really dumb, do you understand any eeeenligggisssshhh?’ Yeti pronounced it as he thought the child English.

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Its all your fucking fault that the boy knocked out, you will write the incident report for me. You clear?’ The yeti finally scrotum tightened him, expecting him to squirm like a girl.

‘I would certainly attempt to. Its really my fault that he kiss hot smacking loving scorching mother earth,’

‘Aren’t you ashamed yourself to stand while your army mates suffered more push ups because of you?’

‘No.’

‘God you are a heartless selfish person,’

‘Thank you’

Tobias spent the silent night on his bed inscribing words on a thickly crumbled piece of yellowish scrap paper, under the circular orange light his torch sufficiently provided, intruding the darkness encapsulated his bunk. It was galvanizing for him since he hadn’t been practicing this craft for a long period. Nevertheless, Tobias strongly believed he inherited a unique blend of genetic code that guaranteed success, a combination of his pap’s indomitable literacy talent and his mum’s unforgiving gabbiness, all stored and flowed within the body of their love product. So writing shouldn’t came difficult for him, and one in which he might even excelled at. Imagining himself soused in the world of book signing and obsequious readers clamoring for his great name, kissing his every book, sucking his every breath, licking his every word, a bit terrifying scenario for most un-ambitious fowls but he was mentally prepared for this inevitable inauguration to shower on him. Yes; this opportunity to penned his finest wittiest piece in the form of incident report he had ever written on a thickly crumbled piece of yellowish scrap paper.

Incident Report

To Colonial Lee / Major Lim / Major Gan / Captain Ong / Captain David / Captain Leong / Lieutenant Lee / Lieutenant Saw / Second Lieutenant Patil / Second Warrant Ang / Second Warrant Kismore / or to whomever this may concern whose name is being left out: please indicate ____________

On June the twenty second, Tuesday afternoon at around 3.30pm. The hobbledehoy Recruit Benjamin Toh falsified an injury by self mutilation on his left face while flagging an immoral, outrageously perfidious accusation on the sunny weather we Singaporeans all accustomed to. He shrewdly situated the wound on his face, a shrewd place of choice where the skin is most delicate and culturally of great importance in our society of first impressions, thus fooling us to sympathize even before questioning him. The two helpful paramedics stationed during the accident, which I found them so overtly friendly and jubilant, gay, I might add, when I came to en–queer them about the seriousness of this pain in the arse injury. One of the inseparable chatter birds diagnosed that a rice cooker or an oven is possibly the main culprit for his charred face, an undeniable piece of evidence of which this pretentious liar of Judas incarnation had obviously infiltrated our holy cookhouse kitchens stealing army food, gnawing away our food supply, wishing us death by starvation. I thanked them for this insightful knowledge; apologizing at the same time for disturbing their Tuesday afternoon sun tanning session, picnicking like a lovely couple under the termite infested arms of the rambutan tree.

As I had witnessed, Recruit Toh has nothing an appearance worth preserving or to be proud of, disfiguration is perhaps to him like a vase of lilies placed on the crowded dining table of rotten food. Moreover, based on my thorough background investigation, he got a wealth of distinguishing criminal records outside. We are dealing with a dangerous character here, sir. It would certainly be my greatest honor to send them to you for reference but alas, my precious information got burnt down by a shadow friend of his whom I failed miserably to catch. But never mind about my loss, Sir, a few pints of whisky and some recruits to vent my sadness is all I need to extinguish this fire in my soul, crashing this heavy stone in my belly. Other than that, Recruit Toh should be nothing for us to worry about when he is behind bars, or treated as one of the Jehovah’s witnesses.

What is more troubling should be Recruit Victor. After this incident in which he had not partake yet being poignantly wheeled into, he had became more and more sinister about army life. Probably because of his youthful innocence tolerable for someone his age, this infidel Recruit Toh had cast an unbreakable miasmic curse on him, killing every positive image in his strawberry tender mind of good soldierly characteristics and the glorious call for duty every five in the morning. He had changed entirely. I have first hand encounter personally with his psychosis homicidal behavior. Cutting wrists, drowning himself in the toilet bowl, banging his head on the cabinet, eating shoe polish, drawing eerie pictures of impaling his platoon mates on a flag pole and saluting at the platform, murmuring himself about crucifying officers on the crucifixes and humming accordingly to their shrieks of pain. He needs more than a psychiatrist or a therapist, a counseling or an exorcism, he needs an immediate exemption from combat duty, or else there would be a high possibility of bloodbath, gunning us down with our own SAR-21. With our own weapons! Imagining the shame we would have to endure, getting killed by our own invention. Never say I haven’t warned you, sir, this recruit is much more dangerous than a freed terrorist. If he never got your immediate concern to be disarmed, sir, it would be my deepest regrets but to sacrifice for the goodness of all humanity. I will present you my resignation letter, together with the piles of spiritless breathless corpses murdered by this kid as souvenirs for your own mistake, uncorrected by stubbornness.

Regards

MSG Gospala Nordopulalan

It was pouring outside. The bunkmates’- whom Tobias found a nuisance memorizing their names - didn’t stirred at the sudden dropped in temperature. His wristwatch beeped two. Two in the morning! Less than three hours of sleep left, Tobias copied the letter onto a clean sheet, ballpoint pen whizzing like crazy robotic hands tapping on a piece of microchip at some wafer manufacturing plants. Completed, he slides the original in one of his many duffel bag side pockets, kept the imprint neatly folded, placed under his pillow to be sent to yeti in the morning and proceed to dream. Tomorrow everything would change, breathed Tobias in his sleep, smiling from cheek to cheek.