…and on my way to the Group HQ that morning, there started, like, flashbacks to the beginning of our affair, as if I needed them, the fucking recollections.

My girlfriend Ninka the Champion-Screwer, each of her holes at ready for rapid deployment sooner than Jack Robinson yells his „knife!“, as mean a bitch as they go, she’s still a buddy you can rely on, any time. So she it was to kick them off, the relations.

In that our usual cafe on the corner we were sitting when she speaks up from her pink iPhone, ‘ Yo! Check out the toothsome lover-boy!’

‘What’s up?’ sez I. ‘Your ex rolled out another of his selfies?’

‘Don’t you ever bring up,’ Ninka sez, ‘that fucking Kwazzimodo!’

So, well, I took a peep at and saw, yeah, quite a grabbable ugly-&-sexy. A thick beard trimmed close to his map, and jolly eyes, you get it at once – nothing of a bore with a pain in his arse there.

‘Hey, Nin,’ sez I, ‘wanna bet the Ace heads to be loaded for a reshuffle in my deck?’

Ninka gave me a sore squint up from her iPhie yet kept zipped up for she’s well in the know none of them would ever get off the hook if I’ve zeroed in on the guy to have a bit of fun with. That’s why she kept her peace, like, a kinda lady of proper breeding.

But hooking them is just a dead cinch when you’re a profesh in the trade. ‘Supreme potshots-taker’ called me my the last but one ex. Also a jolly guy he happened.

Nothing’s easier than picking those dummy mushrooms, they stretch up, rise on their toes—me, me, me! pick me for your basket!—all ready to blow off their roots and jump into.

The rest is a potshot. You find that eager mushroom on Facebook, make sure to click-like his avatar mug (that’s the must), then add a couple of “wow!” emojis under wise shit on his wall, which they share year after year, with wolf packs in the background, like, “The herd tremble when a gangsta wakes up!” or maybe “The rules of justice are set up by the strong!” You also may sprinkle a couple of wink emojis or in black sunglasses, which do excite them, so as to make a dead kill. And that’s it! Check the stopwatch, in no later than half-an-hour he knock-knocks at your account with the friend request if only he was active on the net, sure thing. Anyway, the boob would be run down within 24 hours.

As if the cat is left with any other choice, huh? No loophole after one glimpse at my avatar. I do like the picture myself. The tits at ready like the bow of a cruise icebreaker for the wealthy who tour the Polar seas. The face turned to the winning angle (three-quarters), the parted lips rigged in a welcome smile of both promise and expectation. The cat’s cock head blackouts the brains in his upper noggin and, all full of heat and vibes, unable to think of anything but iboning me in privately personal communication by Messenger, he sends the request to be my friend for chatting forth and back seen by no peepers.

Messenger’s my lab to X-ray them thru their egg-shells. If that’s a gasbag or touched in his head with political issues or climate changes he gets unfriended without a further notice. Go play with yourself, asshole! Likewise the guy who every other day rolls out selfies where he leans against another BMW or Porsche, that’s certainly an auto mechanic who I promptly ditch – we need no alkies here! The rest need closer attention and I allow them to go on with their show.

In short, after a week of texting and pics exchange he was not sieved out and I went out for the kill in earnest. What else could a girl do when smack bang in the middle of winter he sponsors your week-long vacation in Sochi or, maybe, Turkey. Anyways, there was some sea in the pics and selfies though I never walk in further than knee-deep for the fear of goddamn sharks, you know.

‘Next time,’ sez he, ‘we’ll ride the Venice gondolas and stroll along the Elysian Fields in the Capital of the World.’

He knew the Geography tip-top, better than National Geographic TV Shows, he did.

“Next time” means in between his business trips which the Group HQ sent him to all the time.

..besides the Geography he knew about the whole kit and caboodle of things and was good at fucking too. Yep, as practiced a romantic as advertised by his beard on FBook. He knew how to set you floating and cum wildly, he did. Not like those boars stuffed with green from their old men who know only doggie style and hookers.

All what a girl needs is to be treated as a person. Then she’ll have you banging high and all on the house.

Well, I mean fucking a good sport is fun. Though it depends on the girl too, greatly. Keep him encouraged by often praise, admire his bone. Pride makes them spread their wings, extends all their parts. Yee-hoo! Well, and at coming or simulating, scream all stops pulled it’s never be overmuch. And then, as if it’s your last words, groan out, ‘O, my God! Two of you undone me, you, babe, and your one-eyed buster!’ That way, he’d start pushing his level-best limits so as to live up to the image.

First, I was, like, his call girl in between his business trips. Those lasted differently from half a month to a three-four months in that two-year hitch of our free love relationship. And then I moved to his place, after his divorce. The ex-wife had taken the kid but he paid no alimony because there was an accident and the boy died. God my witness, I don’t gloat at other folks’ misfortune, not me, never, still it’s good she did not frazzle his nerves in a spousal support litigation.

That was our natural wedlock. He comes back home from his trips and we shake bones till the next departure. He had a nice body, streamlined, not a beefy body builder, yet sinewy. Before enrolling the Group he was a Captain in the army and kept himself toned up, morning runs and stuff.

He had a couple of tattoos, who does not have them now? Not too braggy though, a commonplace skull on his right forearm and a line on the opposite “Seeking For The Shore” in clear lettering.

Getting along quite well we were in our relationship. Neither alky nor junky, a normal guy he was.

Yeah, at times we got ecstasy high or used Viagra, not often though. The high was fine, no denying, yet not all yours because the stuff somehow ripped off its share and the next day you are busted empty and dried up and wanting not a thing at all. Same as after a big C recreational party.

Only at times he, like, black-outed, stalled flat, even at the dinner table. The eyelids open wide and some frozen glint would enter the eyes. The fucking zombie look gave me the shivers at first.

‘Hey, where are you?’

‘Sorry, babe, my bad, got lost in thought.’

‘Thought of what?’

‘Regardless. Doesn’t matter…’

O, sure, big boys, big secrets. Till you’ve laid them up. Then tender stroking his bighead the right way, no direct questions, no haste. He’d tell you all, night after night.

Now, the hardest is the first to clip. More so if they’re unarmed. You kinda get a wanker-handcramp before those pop-out eyes. Then a loud round, and there’s no man already but a bundle of meat, riddled, oozing blood. But after that it goes without a hitch, like, an automate conveyor-line. The trick is not let them fix you with their stare.

Well, in short, he left the army and landed into the elite Group who farmed out specialists for protecting customers’ security, were they a private person or a state government no matter while paying ready money. Syria, Africa were his business trips’ destination, mostly.

‘Ever happened a black cunt not fucked?’

‘You’re stuck in fucking like a happy pig, no other thought in your screwed-up head.’

‘And who did you protect in that fucking Syria?’

‘Oil fields.’

‘And in Africa?’

‘Gold mines, diamond mines. Pits, in short.’

‘From who?’

‘Well, from all kind of terrorists. Americans too, some fucking bullies…’

I couldn’t help tripping him there. ‘Why to care if you’re not in the army?’

‘You can’t dig it, a regular for a day is a regular for life, defending the Motherland is his duty.’

‘O, sure because the Mother-fucking-land’s ass’ wider than my girlfriend Ninka’s, so when she squats to shit the shade overcast half-Africa’

‘Politically ignorant bitch!’ sez he. ’I’ll drive it home to you the hard way!’And he tumbled me flat on the floor-rug by the bed.

…when the Special Operation War was started, I went with him. ‘Enough,’ sez I, ‘of your uncontrolled business trips, you’re anything but a trustworthy family man, by your looks. Your pecker needs a hole every other day. Besides, the war is not overseas, no visas necessary. And by my side you’ll have regular meals, be kept well-groomed and off insanitary bunker fucking.’

On our last night in Moscow we visited a super restaurant aboard a yacht moored in the Moscow-river. They rip off the guests there ex-fucking-orbitantly but nothing doing, romanticism is an expensive sport.

It’s there, on that luxury yacht, he asked to marry him, officially. Yep, wit a diamond ring in the small box, everything like in a high-styled soap-opera.

‘I wrote a report,’ sez he, ‘to the Group management, to consider you my wife, in case I got killed. The Group pays a plum compensation to the dispensed personnel relatives.’

‘Fuck their compensation!’ sez I. ‘It’s you I need, not their shitty dollars!’

So, on arrival in the war, I rented a decent house to get settled there and to his field commander’s duties he was riding by his camouflaged SUV, like, a camouflaged bank worker without a necktie.

War is a fucking hodgepodge, whore-and-madhouse, two in one. They’ve driven there birds of each and every feather. Both the Russian army, and the specialists from the Group, and the volunteer convicts raked up at prisons. Whatever was his crime and stretch, the convict signs the contract and—if not killed in six months—he’s a clean citizen, pardoned and free. Besides the wild companies from the Caucasus, bearded all of them, cackling in their dark language. And Syrians too, contracted by the Group in their country. And mercenaries from India or someplace…

In short, all the horde was raised to liberate Ukraine from the cussed fascism.

The liberators all too twitchy-edgy, strung because of this here fucking war. Half of them drugged or drunk, you see it in the look of their frost-bitten optics, the eyes bulging out like binoculars. And every mudak carries this or that firearms and there’s no telling when or what will go off in their contused brains.

But the most godawful thing that you start coming to terms with the fucking madhouse, you’re getting used to and, like, become one of that crazy crew.

I used to wearing the fatigues and felt myself how quick it made me switch over to the casual army talk. Who fucking cares to watch their mouth there? You speak short-cuts so that they’d get it quicker.

Not much trouble about bugging though. Even if the bully was under influence, I flashed the Group’s chevron—the merry bare skull on the fatigues’ sleeve—and the fucker began eating his own shit.

And in war you’re in a hurry all the time, like, being late, desperately, for something. You live posthaste. Even when, like, there’s nowhere to hurry to, you keep speeding up. Meals gulped away almost before they’re begun, scurried quickies. Move it! Giddy up!

Why hurry? Where to?

Still you can’t help being on the run. Constantly. Except for, maybe, a barbecue party. But even then there sits in your guts down the belly some clot, nagging all the time. And at an explosion, no matter if the bang was close or distant, it turns a kinda hard pebble, that fucking clot. At a party it kinda retreats and let you relax but now and then the bitch pings back, intoxication or no intoxication.

The parties were held at the house we rented. His buddies came too. Cliff. Viking. By the Group’s regulations the employees should call each other only with their monikers even at the dinner table. And they came not alone but with their war-time wives, WTW, they picked from the liberated local girls. One was a blonde, the other had black hair. As if they had much of a choice, the chicks. That’s life. Even in a whorehouse a girl needs a ‘roof’ to be protected, someone she could count on. Viking and Cliff often swapped their WTW’s, at one party the brunette’s his squeeze and otherwise the next time. Only we, the hosts, stayed stable.

In war the meanest shit in guys froths up. I hate when they torture prisoners to make a video, at times you can’t say who’s who because both sides rigged in the like fatigues, and then upload to the internet how they undo the man. For kinda propaganda ends, to frighten the hell out of the enemy. Or made him knee and squash his head with a sledgehammer. Dirty motherfuckers.

The sky in war is also different, it simply hangs overhead, you feel, like, pressed down, and you stop looking up, if only for a short glance, so as not to jinx-attract a missile bombardment or a drone fuck-banging from the blue to make you start with that fucking pebble, the size of a tennis ball already, in your guts.

In war there’s nothing of the life you lived before it, sitting in the cafe at the corner and chatting with Ninka of nothing in no haste, and it doesn’t matter where you look, up or down, and nobody rushes by like crazy, no bangs, no screams…

And also that hateful feel at times that all of us are, like, traveling in a long speed train, a huge rambling beast of cars thunders along the track, the wheels hit rail joints sooner-sooner-sooner, and every passenger knows for sure that the track’s destroyed someplace ahead, and any next second we’ll go tumbling in these metal cages screeching their huge squeal…

That’s why that haste is there and you can neither eat nor fuck with pleasure…

…they liberated some important city. The fighting and bombardments over, he took me over there, like, on an excursion. The city pretty large for those liberated, the most of civilians were already deported, especially kids. No traffic to speak of, only armed vehicles and small buses tabbed “Press” who came to shoot reports for their TV channels.

At some local hall they convened a big press-conference and the Group sent my hubby to take the floor there as a good looking field commander. That’s why we went on that trip in the first place.

Yet, we arrived too early for the grand affair and to kill the time went wheeling about the city. Passers-by were scanty, a rare pair per block in the sidewalks and those too looked more like retired zombies.

Then he swerved into some mighty huge factory or something. The gates in all the buildings wide open and not a single living soul around. There happened bombardment holes in the road and walls yet the buildings stood erect.

He pulled up at random and we left the SUV. Complete emptiness and silence around. We entered a nearby building, bigger than a football field, dead silent. It gave you creeps like a horror movie. He gave a yell out. The echo bounced about the hollow and died.

Then I spotted someone stretched low behind a rail in the track along the building. ‘At three!’ called I. He slung his Makar, ducked, and moved towards the figure, then holstered the gun back.

‘Nah,’ sez he, ‘this one had got his share.’

I came nearer, yeah, it’s dead as a nail and the body had been dropped there for at least a couple of months. A godawful cadaver stench. I only wanted to collect the velcroed blood group tab from the fascist. Blue was the lettering not like in ours.

He stood watching and suddenly slapped his forehead and cried, ‘Fucking, yes!’

Then he turned about and rushed out thru the gate.

I walked after but he was running back already in working gloves, clutching the hatchet from the SUV trunk kept there for random barbecues in the nature’s lap.

In a heartbeat was he by the body and hacked the head off. Grabbed it by one ear and trotted out again.

The ear tore off with a shred of skin, the head dropped and rolled away along the cemented floor. He took it over, caught a hold and went on running. The thing and the hatchet squeezed in his hands at arms length.

‘Are you fucking mad?’ screams I.

‘Shut the fuck up! I know what I’m doing!’

He picked a piece of cellophane stuck in the garbage by the wall, wrapped the thing and shoved it into the trunk.

‘No sweat,’ sez he. ‘Time’s enough. I’ve rogered the know-how in Africa’.

In short, at that show-conference he took the floor together with the peeled dead head. Keeping the white skull in his black-gloved hand, he talked to it, face-to-face.

‘So what now, Yorick?’ sez he. ‘Wanna give out one of your jokes, huh? Tell me if those Poles were of any help, fool? That’s what awaits all of you, damn fascist bastards!’

With the skull put on the rostrum, he blah-blahed a bit more and even recited some verse of his own. Some romantic motherfucker he was. But I’ve told that already, or what?

Then there was an all-out drinking bout for the press and the military and at night, in the hotel, I asked him:

‘What fucking hooey it was? Yorick? Poles?’

‘Who knows they know,’ sez he. ‘It’s citing from Shakespeare and Gogol.’

‘But that shitty verse? Like a snotty kid at kindergarten.’

It was the first and only time in our relationship that he punched me. Too plastered he was. My bad too, couldn’t zip up in time. A stupid cunt will always find an nasty adventure for her ass…

…the next day we went back to our location in war theater. Forgave each other, let bygones be bygones. Because a girl needs a roof for protection even if its romanticism is fucking leaky.

He downloaded from the internet that show of his stunt with Yorick. A bearded romantic rehearses lame lines to a raw skull who grins back at him… jollily…

It was winter already as Cliff dropped in alone, bleak as grim clouds.

‘They smoked Shore,’ sez he.

A kinda hellish jar ringed in my ears.

‘Fuck! No!’

He shrugged:

‘They took him to the reanimation block in hospital.’

I zipped over there. He’s stretched out, the eyes shut, white as the bed sheet over him, black beard webbed in loose tubes, and that fucking thing a-beeping over his head. All as you watch in the fucking soap operas. It beeped for twenty hours more…

No, they never found who made Shore on his knees and executed with a gunshot in the back of his head. It could be be contracted prisoners who had a big fang against the Group specialists that stay behind sending the dispensable meat to attack and shooting those who stampede back. Or maybe, troopers from the Caucasus for Shore happened to keep a couple of their big shot at his gun point hollering what motherfuckers they were. It could also be the army servicemen or some mean rats from the Group personnel after an anonymous fascist billionaire announced on the internet $4 mln reward for the Shore’s head and only head, they did not care for the offal. Because the enemy watched Internet shows too. The murderers might have been after that jack pot. Yet they had no time to cut his head off, something had shooed them off.

A serviceman from an MP patrol dropped behind a wall in ruins to take a leak and saw the body on the snow. Neither falling hot on the trail nor later investigation brought up a thing. Or, maybe, they just didn’t want to dig it up…

And then I was sitting in the luggage car of express train over his zinc casket, wearing all black. 2 hunks from the Group sitting at a distance in their fatigues, harnessed with sidearms, just in case, because of the anonymous $4 MM prize for that head in the zinc box without other parts. Full of grim respect sat they silent over there as was appropriate beside the widow of the legendary spetzy from the elite Group seeing her hubby off the battle grounds.

I didn’t feel like talking neither. The damn train car swayed me to and fro, I sat and smoked over the box, fuck them yokels, I didn’t care for the hulks. I sat there and felt that bitchy clot in the guts went slowly dissolving, and thoughts of all sorts swayed in my head too. Say, if I could find a way to clip those two assholes, was there any possibility to veer off away together with the head from the box? Some cloud-cuckoo-land, sure thing, yet green of $4 MM tells on your train of thoughts, it does.

Then I recollected the book I read when in the 9th grade. Ninka gave it to me. What motherfucking fools we were! Naive book-reading virgins. Short stories full of Italian sex. Her brothers stabbed her lover so she hacked his head off and kept by all her life. Filled a big flower pot with earth and buried it there, something was planted too. The flower turned real meaty. Ah! I remembered! Boccaccio was the writer’s name and the bestseller’s title Decameron or something.

Comic fools we were! Reading books, passing folded slips at the classes with scribbled nothing. At the parties in the school gym we played the Brooklet. Lined in pairs, one behind the other, I and Ninka hand in hand raised up. He walks bent low in between the paired guys, grabs your wrist and pulls after him in that narrow tunnel walled with their fancy frocks and pressed trousers, their arms up clutching each other’s hand. And all are screaming, laughing, your head twirls like a merry-go-round, the tunnel ends, you two turn around, straighten up and raise your hand-in-hand aloft, he smiles at you, and it’s so good, and all your life’s ahead, and no need to rush and… Shit! Where? For fuck’s sake!

…in short, I walked up to the Group HQ as was arranged. The tower building with huge WG moniker above the entrance, you couldn’t miss the fucking HQ. But the secretary in the anteroom to the said office began to dust my brains:

‘He’s at a meeting now.’

‘What the fuck! I’m on an appointment! What’s your name, again?’

So the bitch informed her iPhone:

‘Victor Eugenich, here’s a visitor who’s on the list… yes… not quite adequate though.’

And the chippie was too stupid for switching speakerphone so that I heard:

‘Sorry, Eugene Pavlich, it’s the Shore’s WTW after to graze out her 50K.’

Over and out. Shit! I had to wait, what the fuck could else I do?

And those two armed yokels had stayed along by the zinc casket up to the very crematorium door, just in case. Saved $4 mlm for the anonymous contractor, they did. The honorary fucking guard, sort of.

Shore’s old man, a dried-up ruin with the bold spot over all of his dome, spiffed in Lieutenant Colonel parade crap with dangling medals, did his level best to keep his crisply shaven map away from me. Then they brought in the urn with ashes and handed it to him, a kinda cup for sport achievements. As if I was not there at all!

Well, only when leaving already, local paparazzi swarmed around shooting me from all the angles, in deep sorrow and decently low neckline. Mournful for another three years in my life passed away…

In fifteen minutes came that Boar I had the appointment with, his jowls hung to the armpits, the stomach to his knees. Stomped by to his office, then rang the secretary up, she flagged me off to enter.

His Obesity was seated behind the huge desk in the chair as wide as a davenport, and he began to stream his podcast.

‘Let’s talk straight. Can you flash the marriage stamp in your passport? Then here is my healthcare advice, be wise and don’t stick out. You roger that?’

Nothing personal. No odd words. He knew how to run business, that fat fucker. The memo which Shore left at the HQ no one had ever seen, $50,000 of the compensation went to the winner in the race, together with that urn-cup.

With empty hands I left that the shitty HQ with their American letters in the facade. Fuck you, fucking motherfuckers!

And now what? Whatever! Keep living on will I. A juicy woman of generous tits not stuffed with silicon. The other day some Thrice Nominee from an online writers funny farm texted me. He’s ready to write my memoirs about Shore, the Legendary Hero, and see the book thru the press in less than 2 months, the royalties split even.

Fuck you, moron! The Shore’s “stash case” sits by me, and a pinch of stones from somewhere in Africa, where he was smoking blacks and yellows in those pits. So fuck yourself, literary schmoe!

Now what? Calling Ninka would be a bit early, eh?

Whoa! My iPhie’s singing. Another ugly&sexy wanna make friends with the juicy vet of the Special Operation War? Huh?