Tokyo Twins Chapter 21 - East is not east, nor is west.

a serialized online story


by Tommy Schmitz

Chapter 21 - East is not east. Nor is west.

(Here is the link to Chapter 20.)


After their meal

inside the mountainous hideaway

near the border of Kashmir

there was a knock on the door.

'A' gave 'B' the nod

and 'B' found the old man

returning for the dishes.

"Let him in," 'A' said.

And the old man, his head still covered

began gathering the dishes on a board he carried in.

"Can we now, 'A'-san, hear your story?"

"Mrs. O'Brien, there is nothing for you to know now.

It's too late for that."

"Never too late," the old man mumbled to himself.




"Who is this old man who speaks up!?" 'A' ordered,

"Secure him, now. Next to those two. Put a hood on him, and

put theirs back on, too."



'A' stood watching the backs of her prisoners

and feeling, just now, more nervous than angry.




"Go find out the background on this man." 'A' said.

She had eaten behind her prisoners

to keep her anonymity.

And paced before them once again.




"What is the telling of a story, Mrs. O'Brien," she began saying,

"to one so close to death.

Will it carry on with you?

For the betterment -- or for the terror, perhaps --

of souls in another realm?"



Mieko O'Brien began crying under her hood.

And suddenly screamed out, "Why are you so angry?!"

'A' placed the end of an automatic rifle

against Mieko's forehead, and slowly leaned into the stock and barrel

until her prisoner nearly fell over backward.



"You have no idea what anger is, Mrs. O'Brien," she said,

pulling the barrel away.

"And you have no idea what causes it."

"Can I say... " Mieko began.

Quiet.

You want my story.

Here it is.




'A' stood quiet for a moment

and stared blankly at the back wall and shook her head.

"The name Pol Pot, is one that everybody knows, is it not?

The demon of Cambodia.

A committer of genocide.

But who made conditions ripe

for his crimes?

You know, Mr. O'Brien, don't you?"

Henry whispered the word and shook his head no.

"No. Of course not, Mr. O'Brien.

How many brain-washed Americans do?




"The United States quietly conducted

horrendous bombing in central Cambodia

during the early 1970s.

Tens of thousands were killed.

Many more than that

perished in the aftermath...

mostly children,

from hunger and disease.

And Pol Pot comes along

and organizes the surviving suffering masses

and continues killings of his own.



"The US news industry

siezed upon the demonizing of Pol Pot,

without a twinge of self-reflection

upon the desperate rivers of blood

let loose, unseen, from 20,000 feet.

Is there something more sanitary,

or more sporting perhaps, Mr. O'Brien,

about bombing from high altitudes

entire populations of children, women and men

compared to the manual slaughtering

of these human beings with a machete?



"Here we have a digusting set of facts

just a bit too sour for the delicate palatte of the American public,

and far too rotten for the capital market wolves

that guard the US Defense Industry

to ever taste outloud in a quarterly financial report.



"What's more disgusting

if you can imagine

the hideous possibility of such:




"As Pol Pot was doing his thing in Cambodia,

the US was quietly directing genocide

elsewhere in the world."



'A' began to boil water for tea over a make shift wood stove.

"I don't get the connections," said Henry O'Brien.

'A' clenched her teeth and poured water into a pot.

"I'm just getting started." she said.

(end of Chapter 21)

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