Archive of Our Own ^beta

You wake up to screaming, angry, anguished screaming, and for a horrible moment you imagine that you’re back in that hell-home with the gaudy doorframes and the taxidermized heads on the wall who looked a little like you and that itchy, scratchy bowtie choking you to death. The man with the funny hat taps his cane on the floor.

But it’s just your empty home and your horrible piece of shit neighbor.

You pull on last night’s dirty clothes thrown onto the floor and you leave your house with a loaded gun, pissed off and half-asleep, intent on shutting China up for good or for at least a few days. When you get there the front door is locked; you slam your shoulder into it until it hurts, China screaming and telling you to fuck off and die with every poor attempt and then you notice a window thoughtlessly left open. You experimentally stick your head into it and the rest of you follows.

She wasn’t in the living room, but her bedroom door is left hanging wide open.

And when you come into the room, she looks like she hasn’t slept for a few weeks. She is gaunt, her face sharp and corpse-like and an unshaven shadow on her jaw. She has patches of blood on the sleeves of her drab grey-green military coat, and when she coughs into them they came away fresh with new droplets. You are afraid that she is stark raving mad, but she stares at you and immediately her smile is full of recognition and hate.

CHINA: Bitch, go ahead and shoot me. That’d be a mercy at this point.
CHINA: You don't even realize it, do you?! You’re so stupid.
CHINA: You won. You kept to the side, you didn't commit to anything or ever love anything in your entire life and you won!!

China by now is working herself into a frenzy, pacing around, heaving more blood into her arms, practically ignoring you and somehow monologuing at you at the same time. You take aim and she doesn’t even care; you want to shoot her to prove that you did love something.

CHINA: The big hairy idiot is dead and now the tigers are tying a noose for each and everyone one of us. This is worse than being forced onto the back foot– this is fish in a barrel- this is the dead end. Our only end.
CHINA: I know what they did to Chile, and Indonesia, and fuck knows how many others and-

She’s afraid. This is the first time you have seen her genuinely afraid and it’s funny. You have to choke back a chuckle. It hurts a little. Her eyes narrow at you and she hisses:

CHINA: -but you made friends and now you’re safe.
CHINA: India, I have been alive and dead for thousands of years and I am never going to die again, YOU HEAR ME?!

With that scream, China doubles over, wheezing, clutching her abdomen, nearly falling. You don’t make a move as she falls and immediately rolls over onto her side, trying to catch her breath. Her spittle is pink as she babbles on and on in hysterics:

CHINA: I'll do anything– I'll have to regress, I'll change myself fundamentally– You won't recognize me in a year!
CHINA: I have to get a suit, a business suit- they love that, don’t they? All the men in suits and ties but skirts never suited me anyways-
CHINA: A red suit, yes sir, for good luck, for my banner, not for any other reason, of course not- I cannot control what my people do, I am result and not cause-
CHINA: AAAAAHH!!!! I HATE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!

She has clearly lost it and you are seriously considering shooting her in the mouth just to shut her up when she cranes her neck and looks you in the eyes.

CHINA: No more dreams. We have to wake up and face reality, and I-
CHINA: I just want to live.

And with that, her eyes roll so far back in her head that you are certain that she'd somehow tear them out of her brain completely and she slumps, a dull green blood-flecked heap on the ground. There are worse ways to be woken up at three in the morning. You shoot out both of her kneecaps out of spite anyways, and leave a note telling her that you also raided her fridge for treats and could you please get the better kind of apple next time, the sweeter one with the less mealy texture. Oh, and you left your window open; that’s how I got in. Your fault.

When China wakes up, having not died after all, her body stitching back her knees together, new steel-bones growing in, still coughing up bloody phlegm for the pure shock of an entire world-system collapse, she is pissed as hell but she punches a hole in the wall and feels better once the pain hits her like a cold river dunking through her fist, the force of each punch rattling up her arm and into her heart. She's alive. She was prepared for this but it still hurts, god, it hurts.

And what of her comrades who didn't prepare for this?

She sits down and stares at the bloodstains on the ground and rubs the fresh scars on her knees. She says terrible curses for you and everyone else, she curses herself, every single one of her inhabitants both human and not, curses most of all the man who left her and her comrades to die. She weeps, she cries and cries and looks like shit while doing it.

But she makes a plan. And she executes it. You’ll never see it coming- but this is not about that.

He rises out of the disarrayed blood and bones and meat and fat of what was Imperial Russia and you are pretty sure that you are either really high, experiencing severe withdrawal, or having some sort of psychiatric maladaptive reaction from, well, everything around you within the last decade and what has been your life for the last century or so. You watch it all with some sort of detached interest; those Occidentals are always going to war about small potatoes, about you. You are ignoring the slowly spreading bloodstains, renewed pain in you back or your ass or your legs; Everything below your waist is mangled- has been, for a while.

But once he is being fired at by several other, saner, clays that is when you know that he is not one of your many, many sweet-sticky-smelly opium visions. He's real enough to send a severed head flying. You watch it bounce on the ground and split open to reveal marble-pink brain.

The Communist is like and unlike the old Tsar: he's wearing some sort of silly flat-cap and fashionable suit jacket, his tie hangs loosely on his shoulders, his shoulders which are broad and muscled in a way that makes your mouth dry and your dying heart beat out of control, his hair is white though currently covered in blood and grime, the wrinkles under his eyes reflect his age, but he moves like a teenage athlete and his clean-shaven face gives him a sort of anachronistic youth: a man reborn.

He's being attacked by half the world, and he's holding his own, with a sledgehammer he busts open skulls, with a sickle he practically slices them into two- and he's using the dull side! A pistol-whip and then a quick, efficient shot to the temple. They can't kill him. They wound him, you hear the crunch of a nose crushed beneath a boot- and he just gets up again. And, as you watch him tear off a head or three or a thousand, he's looking back at you when you glance over the last time, his face creased in effort, sweating and crimped.

He's just been born a few minutes ago and already the old-new young-old baby-man is on his feet and he's killing. A great way to start your life, what a pity! Who knows what this will do to his psyche.

Your eyes meet for a fraction of a fraction of a second: his irises a dark red the color of venereal blood, you own a dusty dead amber with striations of gold- and then that is when you knew.

Knew what, you asked the other woman inside of you. Wait and see, she says, drawing up her long limbs to herself, hugging her scratched up knees to her bony chest, squeezing as if her own legs might fall off suddenly because they might as well at this point: it's harder and harder to keep all of your limbs together. She runs her fingers through her own hair, which had been recently and very regretfully cropped short. Long hair's a liability out here, something to pull on, something to catch you by. The other woman is somewhere else, but she's with you and is you, almost.

Wait and wait and keep waiting. One day I'll become you, I'll devour you whole, you'll become me; we won't be ourselves anymore, and if everything goes well, we will not remember this suffering time and aching place but as a vague dream-memory-story to talk about. Her arm is bandaged up, her pain is yours and you know the bullet is still inside. She still has the black flag, a scrap of dark cloth torn off of something or another, tucked into the ammunition belt across her chest. Worn, stained, yellowed booklets tucked tenderly into her rucksack. A new one she acquired.

Maybe one day we'll get out of this mess, you said.

The third woman, she's in the back, her hair is chin-length and combed neatly through, she's shrouded in a dim shadow and says something like this is mine and I'll kill you to the second, but it is just sisterly hatred. She's with someone you can see more clearly, he shines, he is as pale as his wretched father, he is a man you have seen before in a nightmare or terror-vision. He's got little funny glasses with darkened round lenses that obstruct his eyes completely, as if his eyeballs were really just two black dots swimming in round cheeks and chalk-white skin, like little black sesame on rice. He's fat and jolly like a golden statue, though he has hair- white and spiky. He gels it. It's as shiny as the rest of him.

He's saying something, he's loud and enthusiastically gesturing like this and this- the fat on his chin jiggling a little and his hands are pointing to a map- of yourself, of course. Every single part of yourself naked, front lines and enemy and ally barracks marked, cities here and there, that's a settlement with sympathies for the ragtag nationalists.

It makes you feel like you're an animal about to be vivisected and that's when you remember that your organs are currently already halfway out of your body. You are already meat for the market, have been for a long, long time- that's what the opium is for, to keep you compliant and make you forget that. He's got guns and bullets and all sorts of other things in crates he's giving to the third one, who's as resolute and quiet. The second one smiles at the third and the arms dealer- not a nice smile, more like a grimace. I'll chase you into the sea, the second one says.

You say nothing. After hours or days or maybe minutes or years, you felt a bullet or blade or something- You close your eyes to the bright, the brilliance of the first red star.

They call it the Second World War, but the first one hardly ended for you, did it? Now you're staring down the dead end of failure. Stinking failure. Feels like wading through shit.

AMERICA: You were supposed to take over!
AMERICA: I wanted the whole THING(TM), but you just gave me a SHIT ISLAND(TM)!
AMERICA: Now you're just an overglorified naval base and I gotta keep you ALIVE(TM) all the way over there!!! How am I gonna do THAT(TM)?!

The overwhelming bulk of the United States leans back in his chair, it creaks and groans as he spins around, chewing on his pen. The Republic of China has nothing to say for herself, but she sort of leans forwards and keeps staring at the back of America's chair. She remembers that America is a little different from his father and he's not inclined to cane people over the head or pull their teeth out. Those ways are not genial enough for him. He's more likely to just shoot you in the mouth if he feels like it.

You lean back again as America spins back around to face you. America begins to practice gun danger as he takes his pistol and spins the trigger around his pointer finger. He aims it at the wall opposite, past your head, and you jump as he fires a bullet into a picture of the Soviet Union taped to the wall.

You whip your head around to see that another hole has joined the many speckling the communist's image, this new one smoking between his eyes. America clucks his tongue to get your attention and you look back to see him smile, perfectly white teeth shining and pearl-glistening. And his sunglasses hide his eyes, but he's probably squinting at you like he might have a better time using you as a gun range target, too.

AMERICA: Take a walk. Get some LUNCH(TM). Network with some of my other FRIENDS(TM).
AMERICA: And you better hope that I have something to use you for by the time you come back, or else...

He presses the hot barrel of his pistol against your right hand and you flinch and pull it away.

AMERICA: Be a good girl, a'ight?

Stumble once, then fall all the way, then get up on your hands and knees. You look up to see the most handsome man you have seen, covered in blood and guts. He looks like a statue or a painting, wrapped in a war-weary coat, his hat tilted to cover his eyes, an unclean sickle hanging lazily off his belt. He offers you a filthy hand smeared with dry blood and dirt and debris beneath his nails and you take it and you squeeze tightly when the blood rushes through your ears, your heart thumping and jumping around in its lung-bone chamber.

USSR: COMRADE. WELCOME HOME.

Your eyes opened again and they were nearly that same deep organ-red, but with a smattering of gold in one of them. You turn to the man at your bed. He's in uniform, an off-white jacket, as clean as he can get it in wartime, he grew out a very manly mustache that makes him actually look his age. He moves and speaks slower, with more thought, not like the brief flash of vigor you once saw a lifetime ago. His eyes, still that red, are distant and cold. Even when he's looking at you he is far away and somewhere else. He has your eyes. You ask, in your own common language:

CHINA: How long have I been...?

And he shrugs, guessing more than understanding, and takes your hand and helps you out of the cot. He was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, but a man always called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by literally everyone who knew him, a title that he felt unworthy of but accepted, your rival, your lover, your comrade, your betrayer, your worst friend. He answers you about as verbosely he's always been.

USSR: WEEK.
USSR: BUT, WAR IS OVER. MUCH WORK TO DO.
USSR: ROAD TO RECOVERY... DIFFICULT.

His voice is warm and bassy, and very loud in this small tent. And you smile, smile with sobriety, for the first time in over a century. The USSR makes a face and you realize that you are definitely showing all of your teeth, which are not in the greatest shape after decades of substance abuse and years of no access to toothpaste; war is hell, especially for dental health. You try not to open your mouth too much as you speak.

CHINA: If there's much work to do then we work hard.
CHINA: Comrade.

Though after the end of his life you won't be the one who finds him first, you at least get to savor this time when he is more alive. And he embraces you and squeezes you tightly until it starts bruising your ribs, then you wheeze for air and he lets go, his head hangs down, his face apologetic, pupils darting around for the exit like you might attack him. He smells like smoke, toxic industrial smoke, the smell of an economy diverted entirely to the produce of war. You love bad smells. That's why you smoke.

Later that night he'd lay his hand on your waist as you shared the same ragged cot because you refused to let him sleep on the floor, and it barely held the two of you together and you had to practically lay on one another and it was the best sleep you ever had even though he snored loudly enough to shake the thin tent walls.

When your former torturer swept into the camp with his fat son (or maybe, it was the son who was towing around his father, it was hard to tell with the Anglos) and his servant-colonies in tow, your comrade had his hand on your back as you fought the urge to shoot them all, consequences be damned. But, you were glad when Britain looked at you like a stranger or shit he stepped in. You were out of reach of him, or anyone else. You will never be that poor thing, that dying emperor, ever again. It's such a relief. You have been reborn anew.

One of the colonies of the Raj, the bigger one (a not-man, not-woman, a sort of transcendent, your predecessor's old grey memory supplies), they're stick-thin and tall like bamboo but much less structurally sound. They're dressed like their colonizer picked out their outfit, the most European of suits, and they tug at the bow-tie squeezed a little too tight around their slender neck which Britain probably did that on purpose, that sadist. They wear glasses with big oval lenses and their brown eyes are rather dull and pass over you and everything else with barely a hint of interest. Their voice is soft and polite, too polite. Too polite means a monster behind closed doors. But you smile at them anyways.

But it's not them that keeps your attention for long, no, there's a smaller one, he wears a lush green, pure negative to you and your bloody red, a medallion with a star and crescent moon on his chest. You ask your comrade who this one is, and he gives a grunt and a shrug.

When the smaller one (who you have never seen before in your existence?) looks up at your, his eyes are green, which does not surprise you because Britain loves to match his colors on his dolls, but his pupils cut horizontally across the iris, which does. Goat eyes. He looks up at you with curiosity, his mouth curled, about to open in greeting.

You remember animal eyes, don't you?

And you turn to see your best friend, a short little fat cat-man. He's not looking well, he's just as bedraggled as the rest of you, and he's been left on the ground, to die, maybe. But he's here. He gets up onto his elbows, his mewl carries across the camping grounds, his paws twitch in anticipation. His butt is wiggling in the way that signals an imminent pounce, the micro-adjustments:

And he launches himself at you and tumbles you over, you roll with him, head over feet five, six times, and he gets his claws into your forearms and he doesn't let go and he meows, so sadly, little kitty.

IRAN: How could you forget about me?

And your commissar's eyes narrow and he calls Iran something nasty as he storms over to pick him off of you. The tall stick of the Raj intercepts him, and now they're the one who's grabbing Iran off by the scruff, probably swearing. The commissar is bewildered, he stops; He looks at India like he's seeing them properly for the first time in his life like the same way that you saw him. Oh no. Oh, no no no. Take down the numbers. This one is going to seduce your comrade if you don't do anything about it, right this second. You get up, brush off the dirt off your coat and say:

CHINA: Comrade, we should go. We must speak with the imperialist-capitalists about the peace.
CHINA: And put up the strongest demands.

You gesture to Britain, who's tip-tapping that cane in the mud and America, who looks somewhat amused. Then, his eyes turn on the two of you and he smiles even more, smiles in anger, not something he gets from his father but perhaps one of his other myriad of parents. Maybe it's a smile you used to be used to. But not anymore.

Britain says something and in an instance the subcontinental colonies are gathered back in line, standing straight with military posture, their attention only on the sharp tip of his walking stick. They've probably had their fair share of beatings and deaths at his hands you guess, from the way they act in becoming machines under his eye. Iran has the good sense to keep out of sight as you drag your comrade along to speak with the monsters. Your cat-friend's eyes flicker at Britain nervously- what gives?

But no time for that. It's time to settle terms.

Britain orchestrates a horrible thing in his repertoire of horrible things, and you can't help but admire how he's cut it all up to ruin it for everyone. During Partition, you barricade your doors, terrified of spillover and preparing for some sort of raid to come knocking, but in the end it had settled in blood and dust and two countries came out of it. The formal establishment of the Dominions of India- the tall twiggish one, and Pakistan- the green little goat, and the other half of Pakistan.

They had already been kicking around for a while, subsisting on vagrant nationalisms of the colonized peoples fomented during the wars: you heard that Britain was quite pleased with the strategic surgery of his Jewel, but now they were attached to real humans and real land and a bunch of words on various legal documents. Their reification complete, and they looked a lot more alive in your stately eyes.

You later learn that there are actually two Pakistans, brother and sister, and the one you had seen two years ago was West Pakistan and the other end of the country is a larger girl who you did not get to speak with. They have the same eyes that puzzle you. Iran notices your continued interest and makes an off-color joke and you tell him to not joke about things like that, you sick fuck!

He just grins the cat grin and pours himself another glass. That old (well, he's basically your age, technically) pervert will be the death of you or at least embarrass you very badly one day. You scuff him, he mewls, mouth dribbling wine over his lion's coat; you throw him out the window with a heave that makes your elbow and shoulder crackle.

That thing aside, it is unfortunately becoming clear that you and your commissar have diverging ideas about the world, about your places in it as communists. While a corpse bleeds out onto the sand, he, Britain, and America supervise the creation of a new settler-colonial state. You don't know why you were brought along- probably to even out the number. You literally have no reason to be here. This has nothing to do with you and you feel a little sick here, supervising a corpse rotting under the ruthless sun.

CHINA: You are stupid. You create a debt that can't be repaid.
USSR: NOT MY CHOICE. THE HAT MAN'S CHOICE.

He gestures at Britain, who looks at him with his nose wrinkled, both at him and the smell emanating off the slain.

CHINA: What happened to anti-imperialism and self-determination?
CHINA: All of those nice-sounding words, was it all lies?
USSR: OUT OF MY HANDS. IT IS ALREADY DONE. BEFORE YOU WERE AROUND.
CHINA: Idiot. Bitch. Liar.
BRITAIN: Lovebirds, quiet down. He rises.
AMERICA: Yeah, SHUT UP(TM), guys.
BRITAIN: My boy! Come to your daddy!

At Britain's cry, a fist punches out of Mandatory Palestine's caved-in chest, then another, and a small boy hatches out in what's rather typical for clay birth- if not out of the earth itself, then out of the nearest source of flesh. You've seen this before, you witness it again and you wish you didn't have to; for all of your wartime experiences, you are still unnerved by the creation of life rather than its destruction.

The USSR draws in a sharp breath that tells you that he is as equally disturbed and he grabs your arm, leaning on you, nearly bringing you down together. Britain rushes over as fast as his limp can carry him; he picks up the boy out of his broken corpse-shell and covers him in kisses all over the forehead and cheeks and face and holds him in a mockery of familial affection and you hear America mutter:

AMERICA: Gross, pops, he's covered in Arab AFTERBIRTH(TM).
BRITAIN: Look upon him and weep! He is my weapon, my perfect baby boy, my right hand in the Orient-

Then, Israel, understandably upset at having just been born and now this strange man is manhandling him like a doll, leans down and bites Britain's shoulder. When Britain recoils, the lad darts away, naked, the blood already drying and falling off his perfect pale skin, his hair grey like river sediment. The USSR says something that you can't make out, but you turn away. Of course, none of you notice the hollow shell start to move and drag itself out of your sight, leaving a sticky trail of entrails in the sand.

BRITAIN: Israel! Come back! Put your pants on, young man!!

He's already gone, retreated well over the horizon.

Later, you'd get news of a rogue clay on the move, from place to place, fed on imperialist arms and angry men and a hankering for land; you get it secondhand because frankly, it does not concern you that much other than a distant atrocity to tut-tut and shake your head at. Iran is oddly defensive in the way that makes you wonder exactly how deep the Anglos have their teeth in him, the commissar is regretful at the whole affair, and India leans on the doorway and does not say a word at this little off-books gathering. A communist, a bad communist, a monarchist, and an unaligned individual in the same room. India watches passively with half-closed eyes, soaking in every bit of intelligence passed back and forth at this little gathering: ominous. You lock eyes with them and you have to double-check your memory because now their irises are blue, with white pupils. Like a lapis lazuli ring in their eyes.

Iran then purposefully spills hot tea on the USSR, who jumps up and immediately goes for his throat and the next ten minutes are spent trying to tear them apart. You call the meeting off and you drag off Iran into the other room while India makes an escape and your comrade leaves in a huff and growl.

CHINA: What's wrong with you?
IRAN: I do not like him! I do not like his face or his eyes or his entire him!
IRAN: He fucks dead bodies and you don't even care!! I saw him with-

Iran then coughed up a hairball on the carpet before he could tell you whose rotten corpse the USSR was sticking his dick in and that's when you exiled all of them out of your house. You do not believe Iran and you continue to not believe your best friend until he comes up with evidence, which he never did.

You do believe when you watch him dig up the rotting corpse of the European fascist, watch him slit the abdomen open, and excavate putrid brown and green intestines and livers to feed to his dog-son in small pieces, who laps the sticky, melty organs up eagerly. You do believe when you see the westerners do the same for their little pup.

Fucking Europeans. They're all filthy. They bleat and cry out empty platitudes and the moment you look away they're turned to monsters again. You ought to take a big hacksaw and send that peninsula into the sea. You would saw off the corrupted half of your comrade to save him. Better to live as half alive than what he will become if he keeps doing this; if he keeps playing with profaned flesh like it's a toy and raising the dead you don't know what you'll do.

You soon forget about it and the memories fade as footnotes in your notebooks.

The Koreas sit in silence, somewhat awkwardly- well, war has to end somehow, but this armistice is the best they can get. The communists on the one end, and the imperialists on the other. Looking down at a map, as shameful as looking at the bare naked bodies of them, those gawking, ungainly teens, peering over to see who's getting what. They're both all bandaged up, bruised and contused in purple and yellow and green and fresh scars mark their skin. Your Korea has a bandage over his eye- that one couldn't be saved. Another count to the sum of his grudges, but that's his business and not yours.

For all of your differences, you and your comrade could agree that it would be a shame if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a small, slight boy who didn't smile and empty eyes and the demeanor of a small aggressive dog or perhaps a pet rodent who's been manhandled roughly one too many times- it would be a shame if he had to die. His body holds the old hopes and dreams of the peninsula. So you two made sure that he didn't.

He is silent as he considers the maps, the tables and accountings of the weight of a war. His land is ravaged almost to nothing but ashes to build anew. His face screws up as if he's about to cry, but he doesn't. Boys don't cry. Boys shoot with guns and cut with knives and lose their eyes but they don't cry. And he's a good boy.

CHINA: One day you will be whole. Like me.

Almost whole. Still that straggling island looms out of your reach, another you usurping your place, the last symbol of colonial control they have on you. You pat him on the head and he flinches away and glares. He's too smart for that.

You sleep like you're dead. At five in the morning, the sun is still asleep below the horizon when the USSR comes knocking, banging on the door like a barrage of artillery. He moves like he's been shot, but no, he's just absolutely wasted. You open the door. He looks down at you, eyes glazed over, looks through you at something else.

He then throws up on your front step and passes out in it. You want to go back to sleep and pretend that you didn't see him, but he's going to choke on it if you just leave him. And you like him enough to not let that happen- not that the death would stick, but it would simply be unpleasant for him and you both.

That's how you, free India, a few decades newly minted, drag the unconscious body of the USSR into your home. You somehow drag him into the bathtub, leaving trails of bodily fluids on the floor. He smells god-awful and you consider taking his clothes off of him and running the tap- but no, you wouldn't want anyone else to mess with your person if you were caught passed out somewhere. So you wash your hands, wipe up whatever nastiness got onto the floor, and you immediately drop like a stone when you get to bed.

You get the scare of a lifetime when in the morning the half-naked USSR is sitting at the kitchen table and looking very, very sorry about himself.

INDIA: How did you- Oh, right, yeah, fuck!
USSR: ...I AM VERY SORRY.
USSR: I TOOK WRONG TURN AS DRUNK. IT WAS DARK.

He looks down at his hands on the table, he taps his claws, digs them slightly into the plasticky coating. It occurs to you that he seems incredibly awkward, this artillery piece of a man just perched on one of your stools, leaning over the table. He's definitely embarrassed about having to use one of your towels to cover up. It's kind of cute.

Cute? CUTE?!

This is the Soviet Union. The steel glacier. The red nightmare. The spectre of communism possessing a stolen body. The man who once was disappointed by your lack of adherence to his ideas of bloodshed and justice- but now he's here, he's apologetic about mildly inconveniencing you and he just looks so sad and pathetic. He's also wearing only a towel.

Oh, you want him so fucking bad. You really look at his scarred muscles, how they ripple under his skin, then you have to look at the table and bite your tongue. You feign nervousness and pick at the threads on your shirt as your speak.

INDIA: No, it's all good. I didn't want anything to happen, I mean-
INDIA: I, um, I think we didn't really like each other the first time, back at the end of the war.
USSR: OH, THAT? LONG TIME AGO AND NO REASON TO HANG ONTO IT.
INDIA: Yes! Mr. Soviet Union- Can I call you Soviet Russia?
INDIA: That's your actual name, right?
USSR: YOU REMEMBER THAT?
INDIA: I remember a lot of things about you. You were very scary.
USSR: ...I SEE.
INDIA: But you're not really intimidating when you're lying on the ground passed out in puke and piss.
USSR: SORRY.
INDIA: No! Don't be sorry, please.

You have no idea what you are saying. You are just saying things to make him stay longer. You slam your hands onto the table and make both of you jump.

INDIA: Stay for lunch, please. I would love to get to know you better- outside of the official affairs. Please.

You don't realize that you look like you're going to die right there if he says no.

USSR: LET ME CALL MY BLOC. PHONELINE?
INDIA: Uh, yes!

Elsewhere, China calls the Soviet bloc. A disinterested Ukraine picks up. She doesn't have a good mental image of Soviet Ukraine, except maybe short hair the color of moldy straw, and eyes flat and brown like rich musky soil.

UKRAINE: No, he's at India's. I hope he dies on the trip back.
CHINA: Great. Wonderful!

China lets her hang up before she slams the phone down on its perch. With one hand pinching the bridge of her nose, the other tugging at her collar, she mutters curses and other insults at the USSR and at India.

They're going to get together and if they're united against you, then-

Breathe. Calm. You need a counterweight to India- yes, the siblings, the Pakistans East and West. They were made to be buffer states, this is their purpose. You have to court them both, but more than that, you need to weld them to your side permanently. They're young but not naive and you can't just sweep them up with promises and sweet-talk. You have things they want.

Whether you like it or not, you have the resources of a former empire at your disposal. A dead, dying, rotting empire still gave you all of this land and people. Your humans, they have probably already made the calculations for you. Clever people who brought you to life. Trust them to figure out their end.

You just need to play your part and seduce Pakistan, or Pakistans two. Oh, you really are some sort of pervert. If Iran was here he'd say that and wish you luck on your endeavors with a wink and a cat-grin and maybe he'd bite you for no reason. Idiot.

You tell Iran what you are going to do, and he gives a wink and pounces on you again and takes a nibble at your hair.

You had lunch with him, after drying his clothes and returning them to him, and you talked and talked and eventually the shell of awkwardness flaked off and you found yourself thinking: why didn't I get to know him better before? And then, a few hours later, you and the USSR were in your bedroom. He's nervous, and pathetic-looking, and, oh, you just want to wrap yourself around him and strangle him to death. The bed creaks as he shifts uncomfortably. He normally carries his bulk with pride and a little bit of hubris, but now his size only seems to make him more self-conscious, as if he's going to break everything if he moves too quickly. As if he'll shatter you into a thousand pieces.

USSR: INDIA...

You press your pointer finger to his lips. He falls silent, obediently. Everything about him suddenly relaxes, becomes malleable, like clay in the hand. You see it in his face, though, his eyes, the I-want-but-I-don't-want, the absolute surrender of a man, an empty man, a hollow meat-shell-flesh-puppet thing too afraid to feel a real feeling.

INDIA: Not today.
INDIA: But I will be seeing you later. Tonight.

In an instant you see his expression of disappointment-relief and he rolls off your bed, landing hard on his hands and feet, then he bolts out of the room and you hear his frantic, heavy footsteps as he slams open your front door and he vanishes into the midday light. Someone other than you might think that he's a lost cause. Too forward, too much, too fast. But you know yourself and you know what you do to other people.

And he does come back. You're always right about that. He wanted you more than he was afraid of ruining himself.

What can death be to someone who's died over and over for a million times again and again? You'd like to live, and when it is made possible you do not mind death that much and yet- For the dead time at the deepest night, for the moon and stars looking at you in that peace, you know that as your country sleeps, you must watch. And wait.

If war comes, if machine-soldiers rain down hell upon you again, you are not afraid. After the first, your comrade to the west was born. After the second, you and all of your generation was born. And if a third happens, it might just turn the entire world red. A new, better world, one built on common ground, on the common prosperity of all, a world where no one is starved on purpose or brutalized by cold or heat or driven into the sea for someone else's profit. Where silly ideas of chauvinism are all thrown away, perhaps preserved in a museum somewhere for future generations to look back on and say: look how selfish we were, how we killed and raped and damned our siblings in the name of stocks and profit and domination. The old world died and something beautiful blossomed in its ashes.

The only thing that could make you afraid is the possibility of total, absolute annihilation. Not even a chance to fight back, no second word. You saw it across the sea once and you knew then and now that it was for terror: to show you how the world can be remade.

So that is why you go looking to make yourself some nukes.

In a better time, before you and your comrade had quite realized the differences between you two, you'd linger at his back, watching, committing every bit of detail to memory as the USSR had his scientists explain this and that about nuclear elements and atomic physics and plenty of other details to make you bored. He was guarded, but he was happy to share some of his secrets. He sent you his people and his equipment and you agreed to get him the raw materials.

His mistake, which he realized once that you would not be a meat-shield or puppet for him. He should have realized sooner. And as his apathy and complacency grew more apparent, so too did your own plots grow more well-formed.

The betrayal was not surprising but it was sudden, and soon all of the knowledge you shared was just fragile copies on notes he left behind, and you knew that he could destroy all of your work- you moved quickly, with a growling stomach (fucking sparrows), to hide and cloister all of your progress. But as luck would have it, you would get everything that you needed through subterfuge, sympathetic individuals, and the hard, hard labor of all of your researchers and the ones who maintained them. Too lucky. Not anything that you would want to make a habit on leaning on- but lucky enough, just this time.

As the cavalry beat their gas-masked horses to a gallop and the mushroom cloud rose in the distance, you stood there, transfixed, understanding that you ascended to the ranks of those who could destroy the world utterly.

On imperialists' maps he and you bled out together, a mass of red, both marked for death by those tigers, hungry, always sharpening their claws and teeth on the bones of the innocent. No matter your differences, you were still both communists, and the only good communist was a dead communist. This you knew, he knew, and you would not look upon him with hatred, but the tension of two large competitors in each other's way- one tired of war and seeking stalemate from his enemies, the other unafraid of it and reaching out to her siblings still chained.

His reasoning was sound and your reasoning was sound and at the end of the day you could not fault him for being wary and careful, but fundamentally, he could not trust you if you could not be controlled and you would not let yourself be controlled by anyone else.

Your own maps lay him out lecherously, every jagged border and curve of his geography drawn, naked, all of your patient spying and scouting and prodding and probing resulting in a wealth of information. Every bone, every sharp corner of his body is mapped out, in black and blue ink. You marvel at the copy with both the appreciation of the People's Liberation Army's apparatuses and with a sort of lust for your comrade-rival; your eyes linger over the borders of conflict where he and you would bicker, square meters of earth, these minerals, that iced forest, this craggy hill. This is what his predecessor gave him to work with. Land taken in unjust deals, then the inhabitants dragged along into socialist civility. A wealth of raw things to extract from yielding earth.

More than that are the accompanying overlays of military trails and factories and population centers and those were already annotated in the tense, cramped script of your generals. Sinew and tendon and veins and pulsating, soft, organs, then there are the grain fields which feed the stomach. The centers of reproduction at the villages and the hospitals, and then the flow of fresh resources to be worked into weapons of war and peace, the roads and rails to and from the factories. The nerves of the Red Army and various state apparatuses entangled through it all with one eye open, always watching. This shield of his bloc, the buffer zone to never ever again be invaded from the west. His east flank interlocked with your claims, why doesn't he just back down-

You take a moment to think about what could have been. And you take your pen and mark the places to decapitate first if you ever had to retaliate against him and burn the whole world down.

Out of the two Pakistans, brother and sister, you quickly determined that the brother was the more dominant of the two despite his slight frame and short stature compared to his bulky, sturdy sister. His goat eyes, the same ones that reminded you of your dear complicated friend-not-friend Iran back then, looked up at you with wonder (or carnal desire) and something else you would name later.

Good. Easier to manipulate if he adores you beyond reason, and you two have enough common interests on the human, official side to keep you two together. You're not interested much personally in the sister, but still you give East Pakistan pleasantries and a handshake that West Pakistan glances at with no emotion. It's West who does all of the talking and planning, as you guess. East simply sits there, obviously unhappy, but kept there to brood. There is a weak point, there.

CHINA: Need something more than just words and trade to bind.
WEST PAKISTAN: Look.

He taps his fingers on the table, then drags them over to the intimate map of the border, right next to long-debated Kashmir, and traces a route to cut through the border. You imagine West Pakistan's touch right there, and feel it tickle down your chest.

WEST PAKISTAN: A highway.

And you smile and nod, and West Pakistan sees the hungry look on your face and looks nervous, like he just stepped into a cage with a rabid animal. But he steels himself, readies himself for whatever he needs to do to please you.

In this dim lantern-light he looks handsome, small enough for you to put in a sack and carry around if you wanted to, but, when the light hits his eyes in just the right way to illuminate their darkened jade and he blinks and his eyelashes flutter, and the way he moves his arm, sits perched with familiar grace, and you remember how he only has two close friends of two strange men known for their bad habits: Iran, your fellow transsexual, and Turkey, the retired homosexual who spends his days bemoaning his old conquests over bad liquor.

I know that you think that I am a monster, a burgeoning thing suffocating the lives of those dealt a poor hand by chance, a god fed on blood and terror. I know that you only see the surfaces of things, or shadows cast on cave walls, mind-killing terror, that which hollows you out into a vessel. Your world is hemmed in by impossible utopias with no stomach for reality to digest the contradictions. You throw away what you cannot eat, cannot hope to even sink your teeth in or grind away with your molars.

You can't see the monsters that I was grown to fight, only feel the weapon in your back, and you cry for it, how horrible of a beast I am, and that when I am destroyed I will burn in hell forever. I do not care. I don't believe in god or another world. Only this one.

In my reality, I am a mechanism of love and hope, a machine that must kill, a marvel of engineering, I am the truth of the people, I am their fear and their bullet, I am their sum. My bones are in the bones of the people and my flesh is the flesh of the people. I am effect and not cause, you keep making that same mistake. I am imposed from below, not above. My veins are the railways, my breath is the smoke of millions of fires, my heartbeat is the heartbeat of hammer on metal. I feed myself on meat and crops grown on my skin.

I am good and I am bad, I hold the contradictions in my talons and I feel them cut my palms, I am resentful and I am grateful, I am trapped in the epistemological ant farm of the millions of dead. The ghosts work their chains and with bloodless bullet holes they speak my name, even the babies tell me.

On whose account? To the Party? To icons I have destroyed? To my own colonized who remain half-awake, forever changed by what I have done to them and to their way of life? To my neighbors which I have tried to do good and bad by? To names like Marx or Lenin or Stalin am I accountable? Who shall I blame for my faults and my triumphs?

It is the endless spiraling of history, to the dirt beneath my boots, to the birds, to people who work the fields and factories. To human labor and dreams and their lies I hold myself accountable. Yet, what decades of war does to them, to me, is too much, and my war machine guts will eat myself alive and when I am released from my duties I will walk away from everything and everyone who has known me. My flesh is becoming not of the flesh of the people, and I slowly rot. To touch without feeling, to know without thinking, to lose my nerves is only one part of my fate.

Who will kill me? Will I end quickly, in war and the omnicide of nuclear death? Will it be slow, will my death be to the rot I already know in my veins? Will it be a stab in my back, to my neighbor in the south, my comrade? Will it be you, you, the man with the numbers and the books of the names of the soon-to-be dead? Don't answer. I know my death.

A vision came to me on the back of a bird, my bird, my pet bird, when I slept, passed out in vodka and my own filth. Slow death, slow life. I see it, ignoble, drowning in my own rupturing organs drawn too far, it lives on the backs of my eyelids. And I'll kill myself first before I let it get that far. My heart will stop on my account and no one else's.

When I am dead, when the sum of millions is wasted away, they will rejoice at the end of history, and say, finally, the real work can begin. Don't look at my suffering millions, look at everyone else who will cower under them. The sun of the frozen future will blister their skin and burn away every flower that dares to blossom under the new light. You will not know their names. You will not care if they all die as long as you can have your petty joys.

He wakes up with vomit in his mouth, gunshots ringing in his ears, with his hand still on the bottle. He retches, spits it out, his mouth hangs open as he licks around his teeth, tasting acid, cigars, alcohol. He looks at the mess he made and sees little black digested blood clots on the remnants of his last meal. Must be his ulcers acting up again. He's in someone's bathtub, stinking like stomach acid and urine. He doesn't know where he is. He looks around, and it all seems unfamiliar to him. The fear-thought that he might have gotten wasted and someone might had fucked him while he was out flits across his mind, but he dismisses it. No one would ever think they could get away with it.

Well, might as well make use of the tub. He strips naked, dumps his soiled clothing on the ground, runs his fingers over the tough, ridged scars mottling his skin and thinks about re-opening them, he blasts himself with a torrent of cold water just the way he likes it and cleanses himself of the sins of last night. He grabs his clothes too, washes them the best he can, before wringing them out and setting them to dry on the edge of the counter.

Now he stands naked in the bathroom, still unsure of where he is, and he glances at the mirror. He doesn't like what he sees. He turns away, quickly, closing his eyes tightly; he waits for the afterimage to vanish from his eyeballs. He grabs the towel, wraps it around his waist, then steps out of the bathroom to down the hall.

He looks at all of the decorations and the portraits and when he sees the grinning visage of actual literal Mohandas Gandhi staring down at him, he realizes whose house this is. He sits at a stool in the kitchen, praying that his seat will hold his weight. He starts to recollect the events of last night- must have been out drinking, then he must have taken a wrong turn home.

Or maybe some part of his mind wanted to get to know his neighbor better, yes, maybe... He imagines India, he's good at it because as often as he is vexed by them, enchanted by their gaze, suffocated in their limbs, it causes them to stick out in his mind's eye more and more. He digs up information about them long squirreled away in his brain; perhaps he was too complacent but now he has something more to look at. Yes, someone to grab and grope and kiss and caress and one more disgusting pleasure.

AMERICA: -but, see, even with that it took me ages to KILL(TM) him! And in the end it was the ECONOMY(TM) that did him in. And that dumb invasion.
AMERICA: You can only keep the PEOPLE(TM) down for so long, y'know? They knew their system FAILED(TM).
AMERICA: When I have the entire world in my palm, that'll be the END OF HISTORY(TM), folks!
AMERICA: 'cause in the morning we'll make sure that rest of the world follows our DEMOCRATIC(TM) ways, too. The freer the MARKET(TM), the freer the PEOPLE(TM)!
AMERICA: Have a good night and get home safe, and when you sleep at night...
AMERICA: No more silly DREAMS(TM)! Wake up and face the SUNSHINE(TM), baby!

The worst year of your life ends in your death.

You wake up flat on your back and for one blissful moment nothing is in your head. You look up at the ceiling, you see without seeing, blink, listen to the sounds of birds chirping.

It all comes rushing back, pain, the brutal amputation of your right arm spraying blood in moonlight, the sword through your chest, India, India smiling meanly, India with the sword because they just cut off your arm, East Pakistan on the run, you and your axe intent on killing her, and then-

You shriek and you sit up, frantically touch your arm, it's there, touch your chest, no hole bored into it by a cruel sword. You realize that you are in the house. Your house where the two of you live. But your sister isn't here. Of course she isn't. Because you have once again driven away everything that has ever mattered to you. Why would she stay if she had the chance to escape you? You treated her worse than you treat animals.

A small hint of regret comes, then it is smothered by anger. How could she do this to you?! Shaking with it, you growl at nothing, you let your teeth grind together. You look at your axe leaning in the corner, shiny and clean as it was in the morning before you tried to murder your sister. You pick up and throw it out of the open window.

You are Pakistan now, just Pakistan, the only Pakistan in the entire world. You don't want it. You don't want to be the only one to have your name. You're used to sharing everything but now you have this one thing all to yourself and you don't want it anymore. But you will take the name because you have no choice and no other name. It is yours because she didn't want it anymore and she didn't love you anymore and you just want to throw something and punch someone.

There's nothing. There's no one here to blame but yourself. So you slam your fist into the wall of your house until you create a small crater and your fist is bleeding raw to the bone and you scream at nothing and everything:

PAKISTAN: GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!!!!!! FUCK MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!!!!!!

Days after he came back to life, Pakistan broods in the back of the room in the little meeting place for you two, a small compound at the border, compulsively twirling around the corner of his mustache, picking at stray hairs on his chin, looking not really at anything. He looks down and checks his arm compulsively, as if he thinks it'll vanish on him if he's not careful. He starts when you step near, and you have to lean over to look at him. He looks at you with a glassy herbivore stare, perhaps not quite present. You touch his shoulder and he straightens up, suddenly at attention.

CHINA: 巴基斯坦。

He grimaces and returns your greeting with reserve:

PAKISTAN: !چین
PAKISTAN: It's all gone to shit, I'm afraid.
CHINA: You're still here.
PAKISTAN: Like anyone can guarantee that?
CHINA: I will still keep you an ally. Or pet.

You have to reach down to give him a hefty slap on the shoulder which just about bowls him over.

PAKISTAN: Ow! What do you want.

Pakistan catches his sad, crumpled hat as it nearly falls off and secures it back on his head. He just looks very sorry for himself and not at all cheered up by your platitudes. So you have a better idea.

CHINA: Walk with me.

You turn, not giving him a chance to object. He starts to say something. Then he shuts up and wordlessly follows after you. Down twists and turns and to the very back of the building, there's a dusty room where no one gets into. You have the key on your belt and you open the door.

It's empty save for a desk and a chair sized appropriately for the largest countries like yourself. You point at the chair. Pakistan struggles to actually get his ass into the seat, and has to perform some acrobatics to shove himself onto it, nearly knocking it over in the process. Once he's settled, you drop your binder of things onto the solid desk with a loud thunk, making it jump in the process and rattling the chair and Pakistan as well. You slam your hands more gently down and lean over to look at Pakistan and look him right in the eyes.

CHINA: We have to renegotiate about one thousand agreements.

Nothing at first, just the slow comprehension, and then the horror of bureaucracy.

PAKISTAN: Fuck.

An excruciating hour later, China gets tired of paperwork and she closes the binder. You look up at her, brain absolutely numb from the mind-numbing boredom of cross-referencing and checking and accounting and god you just need a drink right now. Or some uppers. Or tea or coffee or something. Please. Anything to take this away.

China suddenly plucks the pen out of your hand and returns it to her pocket. She runs a hand through her hair, which is now removed from her signature ponytail, and sighs, then stretches and rotates her shoulders with a few creaks and pops, straightens her spine- she was leaning over the desk this entire time.

Then she leans further, looms over you, her breath smelling like nicotine.

CHINA: Pak...

She says your name with a sort of tenderness that makes you suddenly break out in a sweat, your hands clammy, you subtly wipe them off on your pants.

CHINA: You didn't deserve that. No one does.

Her hand is suddenly gripping your jaw, immobilizing you. She tilts your head up so you're forced to look at her. Is she drunk or high or something? No, she's sober and lucid and has been since you saw her today. She knows what she's doing. Her fingers run up the side of your face, and you feel like your entire body has combusted and now you're burning as you lean into her palm, unable to look away from those eyes- cold and creased with age.

CHINA: You want to just forget about this for a little?

She's offering herself to you and the realization turns your stomach and makes you giddy and guilty for it. You are a stupid goat caught in the jaws of a dragon stunned, not even bleating or struggling. You are going to regret it if you say yes. You are going to regret it if you say no. You say nothing, just stare up at her with wide, surprised eyes.

She shoves her thumb into your mouth.

You freeze for a moment, then you feel her jam her nail between your teeth, press against the rough surface of your molars, seeing if they wiggle in your gums. Her skin is rough, calloused from decades of war. She hums in satisfaction and takes the finger out, then wipes off the spit on your coat. You gasp in surprise and run your tongue over your teeth and the inside of your cheek where she touched you and you lean back against the chair, too nervous, too sweaty.

Something is circulating around in your blood and time seems to slow down. You say nothing and just watch as she circles around the desk, then turns the chair so that you're facing her. She starts to unbutton your shirt with one hand. You already feel exposed, the way she stares down at your body, the weight of her other hand pressing on your shoulder, now sliding down your bare skin, and oh god-

PAKISTAN: Stop.

You break. You claw at her arm and you shred through her sleeve and draw blood and she recoils and she says something that you don't hear because you're already out of the room, arms wrapped around yourself to cover your chest and you run, and you don't stop running.

Unable to understand why you did that- why she did that, you hit up the bar to drink your sorrows away, as one does. And of course, you call your two best friends (yes, even though Iran might want to eat you) to have a meeting about this. As you recount what happened to Iran and Turkey, you drain three, four whole glasses of a horrible alcohol and crude oil mix. The alcohol makes talking easy and the oil is a replacement for your last dozen or so skipped meals. Turkey has to hold you up by the shoulders. You cough and spit up a little bit on the table. The crude sticks to the roof of your mouth.

TURKEY: Probably thought that you were too sad.
IRAN: I predicted this! I guess that she would go after you. Now she owes me like five bucks.
IRAN: Pak, I know her very well. And as smart as she is, she misses the most obvious things sometimes.
TURKEY: Like the sparrows?
IRAN: The sparrows. But also, she must have simply thought that you were ready for her when you were not.
TURKEY: She should beg for forgiveness.
PAKISTAN: ...Guys, I don't want to talk about this shit anymore.

You finish your fifth drink and you look down at your hands on the table, watch them tremble. You don't want to think about anything right now. Not her, not how her eyes bore into you and rip out your sniveling heart. What does she see in you? A coward or a monster?

Crops need nitrogen to grow. Humans need food to grow. No nitrogen, no crops, no humans. Parents will pick which of their children will survive. The old famine centuries will rear their heads again and once again you will watch as the old and young are eaten. All because you ran out of fertilizer. There's other factors, sure, your own internal turmoil and the reaction to the reaction and negation of the negation and whatever, but the cold calculus of nutrients and calorie consumption is what spurs you to the moment. So you sign a deal with a mask of serenity and you send your people to hell for the sake of feeding them.

But, you are clever. They must teach you how to make good things, how to manufacture all of luxuries of the first world in your home. You will be their dog. You will be their factory for as long as you need to.

You attend one of Iran's birthday parties, and you aren't paying attention to recent events in his country when your head is bloated with predictions and you keep paring those futures down as you calculate what you have just done to your people. There it all goes, the dice are cast and now you brace to read the numbers. Exactly how much money is a life worth, anyways?

But, enough about your bullshit. You have a party to get fucked up at and people to flirt with and maybe asses to take if you're in the mood for that.

Several drinks and unknown substances later, you're feeling good. You're just trying to chat with Iran about ceramics or something like that when you feel a clumsy hand on your shoulder and smell the stink of alcohol on your neck. You turn to behold the face of the Soviet Union, who looks like he's already wasted, just barely an hour in the night. You shove him away, hard, and he stumbles and catches himself.

CHINA: The hell you want?
USSR: ...

He coughs a little, looks at Iran pointedly. Iran is only a little coked up and jittering.

IRAN: What? What is it?
USSR: I HATE YOU. SO MUCH.

And then the USSR lunges at Iran and you at first think that he's going to kill him and you leap at him and you all collapse in a heap and you realize to your tantalization that Iran is biting his face off, but the USSR isn't stopping him and in fact seems to be encouraging it, and he's grabbing Iran by the throat and kissing him, with tongue and spit and blood everywhere. A loose tooth bounces off of the USSR's collar. You're pinned beneath their combined bulk, and your legs are hurting, but-

You realize that there is nothing better in the world than two guys drunk and high making out with each other on top of your lap. This is literally the best thing that has ever happened to you. You watch them rip each other's clothes off and you wish that India was here too.

While looking for the bathroom after a single drink (that was meant for someone larger), you open the wrong door and proceed to get an eyeful of hairy ass and cock and balls, oh what the fuck is that three of them, oh my fucking god.

After staring for more than a moment in dumb horror or lurid fascination you squeal and shut the door in a hurry, your little feet pattering quickly down the hall as you make your unwieldy escape. The next set of doors has what you need, and when you're done pissing you go to wash your hands and see Turkey at the sink, lighting up a cigarette. He looks at you and he stares in greeting.

PAKISTAN: You shouldn't smoke in here.
TURKEY: Have you seen Iran?
PAKISTAN: Oh, um, well...

You don't really want to tell Turkey that yes, you just saw Iran, Iran naked with China and the USSR doing unspeakable things to each other. But you're a bad liar and you can't lie to Turkey. You soap your grubby little hands up (the soap smells good, like saffron?) and scrub for ten seconds, then rinse and you get your wrists wet too.

PAKISTAN: He's fucking some other people.
TURKEY: Who?
PAKISTAN: Two of them. At once! I didn't even know that was allowed!!
TURKEY: Way back I used to have three or four whores on me at once when I got bored. Maybe he will have five or more.
PAKISTAN: Don't say that! And besides, you're different. You're, y'know... Turkey.
TURKEY: That is not a compliment. You think I am a pervert?

You slap Turkey on the chest with a wet hand. He grunts and stares at you placidly. You proceed to wipe your hands dry on his shirt, finding the right words to turn your thoughts into like a scavenger hunt in your wrinkly nerve folds.

PAKISTAN: You are a pervert! But it's you. It's fine for you, Brand New Turkey, to be a pervert. Iran isn't supposed to be a pervert. A drunkard, but not a pervert.
PAKISTAN: Everyone already knows because of what Grand Old Turkey used to do. You can't hide it and that means you're safe.
TURKEY: Safe because the secret is known? It's because my sponsors need me.
TURKEY: Nothing to do with reputation. Just, I am willing to do things that they tell me to do. To be meaner and more horrible.
TURKEY: Don't speak of my empire, either. I did things to my vassals that would make you hate me forever.

Turkey pauses, staring at you, and of course you lunge for the bait.

PAKISTAN: Turkey. I love you! You're my friend and you're not a monster. To me.
PAKISTAN: Also, stop smoking in here. You're going to make someone complain and then Iran will get mad at you and bite your dick again.
PAKISTAN: And I'll laugh at you for it!

Turkey stubs out the end on the counter, then flicks his spent cigarette into the waste bin. He turns to leave and you follow him instinctively, trotting after him to keep up with his surprisingly urgent strides. He looms like a pillar of muscle and fat. You draw close to him, comfortable in his shadow because no one could ever beat you up if he's there.

TURKEY: Who did you see Iran with?
PAKISTAN: Uh.
TURKEY: Just a little bit of gossip.
PAKISTAN: Why do you care?
TURKEY: Why do you care that I care?
PAKISTAN: Hrrmmm.
PAKISTAN: It was just China and the Soviet Union with him. I think.
TURKEY: What, no India?
PAKISTAN: No, no, thank god it wasn't India! Could you imagine it?!
TURKEY: I could...
PAKISTAN: Ew! You old piece of shit!!

You pinch his elbow for that and get his funny bone. Turkey pulls away and swears at you, rubbing his arm.

TURKEY: You don't care that China was with him?
PAKISTAN: Why? She can do whatever she likes. Who can stop her?
TURKEY: ...I don't understand how no one ever gets jealous of the fucking and sucking.
PAKISTAN: That's because you're an ex-empire, Turkey! You want to own clays.

He scoffs and turns away, but you can see him smirk.

The morning after. The guests are shooed out of the quarters and the cleanup begins.

Iran squats next to the bonfire. He's thrown all of his royal clothes and his bedsheets and everything fancy and gilded and flammable into it. He puts his hands into the raging fire, holds it there for a minute, and then he pulls them out, and his hands are perfectly fine. A shiver overcomes him and he leans back on his heels, propping his elbows up on his thighs, resting his chin on his hands. He stares at the fire a long while, it reflects in his cat eyes, now slit and mean, as he gets back up. Iran rips the crown off of his head and he throws it in the fire.

Iran stands there, hands on his hips, watching the flame. He pads back inside his home, and gets a jug of gasoline. He goes through his house, thoughtfully splattering it all throughout the rooms, cracking open wine when he runs out of the fuel. The fire in the backyard begins to spread, and Iran seals the deal when he hurls another bottle of wine at it out of his bedroom window overlooking the yard. He sits on his bed, serene, as the flames begin to eat up the items in his house. The fire soon becomes a wall closing in on him, but Iran does not move an inch as he waits with his eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

The next morning, India sifts through the ashes and finds his locus in a pile of charred ribs. India lifts it gingerly with their hand and digs a quick grave, says a curse at it, and sets it down and buries it. Then, China scares the shit out of them when she clears her throat, coming up from behind them.

CHINA: Why did he do this?

India wordlessly gives her a newspaper. China reads it, crumbles it up, then tosses it on the ground. India fusses and picks it back up, smoothing it out as best as they can.

He comes back. He always does, he walks into your house like it's his own, like he's been doing for the last few decades and you don't even recognize him. His beard-mane has turned a shocking white, pure as snow, and the crown which he once wore obsessively is now replaced with a turban, his rich coat replaced by simple robes. Down from the royal extravagance to something less and more striking.

IRAN: I have renewed myself for my birthday.

He smiles a toothy cat-grin, less happy and more hungry. And he reaches out with dried blood under his nails as he shoves his face into your chest. You push him away with a wince and rub your boobs and hold him away at a distance, hands on his shoulders, inspecting him.

CHINA: I want to understand what you are now.
IRAN: I'm still me, silly! Still a cat.

You tilt your head and squint at him.

Why are you even friends with Iran? This question has perplexed many people and clays, but the answer is very simple: because he knows what it's like to buckle under the weight of an entire civilization's worth of memories and to forget how to be a person from the throne on high.

Empires aren't people. They are machines who eat people and turn them into ground meat. You were once an empire in the era of empires, until, mercifully, you were brought down low and lower and until you were made meat yourself. He knew it too. Now, you, as a country of the people, a dictatorship of the proletariat, can get a little closer to the elusive thing called personhood, still, you are not a thinking living thing by yourself.

You cannot be a person and a nation at the same time.

This is the trick of the clay species; they take on visages of life; they ground themselves in word and action; they are not really real. They are only as real as they need to be. They are results and effect, wandering illusions with the delusion of autonomy. You and Iran know this: that no matter how far you go, you are bound to loop right around to the same destination. Tomorrow you could wake up and do everything possible in your life to fuck it all up, but the day after it would all fall back into place as if your deviation from your script was never real.

Iran sits on your couch at your table, and he knows this too. His cat eyes glitter, and he looks at you, expectantly. You reach out and he takes your hand, turns it palm-up between his stubby clawed fingers, and starts to lick it. It hurts a little because he's got a lion's rough tongue and it leaves abrasions, but that's the same and it has been the same for centuries.

Things settle and you really, really wish they didn't. You've always had your thumb on the pulse of history but you can't predict anything but death now. Not yours, of course, but the man to the north isn't looking well. The turn of the century approaches like a ticking bomb, but you don't think he'll even survive until then. And in trading in your dreams of painting the world red in exchange for life, you have yourself been giving and getting a whole world that now looks at you less as an enemy and more of a business partner. Less of a threat and more of a market and you've never felt like more of a slut for it. You made a devil's deal and you're bound to it now. Tone down your rhetoric, smile more and speak less. Nod. Let them lease your land, build their factories, swallow whole millions and make gears of human bone. When no one is looking promise vengeance to your ghosts. Swallow your quietly simmering anger and keep it locked away in a vault that one day you will smash open.

Forever changed. You have contemplated the past, about the hazy dimly-lit nightmare centuries and decades rewinding to loop around themselves at the back of your skull and tangle your veins, teeth and fingers digging into your throat, your arms, everywhere else. All of those things you have cast away for good.

Still, during the decades of mediocrity there's some things that make you happy. You've been gaining weight for what might be the first time in a millennium; your chest and hips have grown full and round to the point that your old shirts and pants don't fit anymore; you've been practicing how to walk with a swagger in your step and more jiggle than you're used to. Perhaps losing your grip strength is a minus, but you'll take the trade. You look and feel good and you know you're turning heads in entrancement or maybe jealousy or maybe a flicker of self-recognition.

Pakistan keeps looking at you.

You are hardly surprised when Pakistan comes to you, looking low and pathetic, and wants to speak with you about something personal. She says it, you nod, and you admit that you already sort of had a good guess. You could piece together the puzzle pieces by yourself in your head, but you never wanted to interfere with someone else's game. Not something so personal. But she's aghast:

PAKISTAN: Why didn't you tell me? If you knew?!
CHINA: An egg cracked from the outside is destined to be eaten. CHINA: But, an egg cracked from the inside may one day be an eagle.
PAKISTAN: What the fuck are you talking about???

Pakistan looks even more agitated so you cut your monologue short. You were going to share a whole anecdote and words of reassurance, but there will be a time and place for that later. Maybe in a bar, though Pakistan has now completely gone the path of the teetotaler, much to your disappointment.

CHINA: 巴基斯坦。

You pat her on the head and she looks up at you with big wet eyes. Those goat eyes that keep gripping you. You keep your voice gentle.

CHINA: What are you going to do about it? Now you know?
PAKISTAN: ...

She scrubs at her face with the back of her hand, then straightens up as tall as she can, which is not much. You look down at her.

PAKISTAN: What I have been doing for decades.
PAKISTAN: I have lived this long. Why not carry on like this.

Her voice is flat, she steels herself towards a future, the safe future. You pet her again, then you pick her up. She lets out a nervous squeak as you toss her over your shoulder like a burlap sack.

PAKISTAN: China, I, um...
CHINA: You think too much.
PAKISTAN: I, uh, did I do something? To make you...

She sort of gestures aimlessly.

CHINA: Make me what?

Pakistan starts to hit your shoulder with a clenched fist and you drop her on the floor.

PAKISTAN: Ow, asshole! You're doing it again.
CHINA: Doing what?

She gets up on her knees, and looks up at you and stares you in the eyes as she speaks.

PAKISTAN: Don't play dumb. That works on other people but not me. You just want to fuck me so I feel better, don't you?!
PAKISTAN: Do you think that I'm just some sort of machine that if you press the right buttons it'll fix me?
PAKISTAN: Just crank my hog and I won't want to die anymore?!
PAKISTAN: Do you treat everyone in your life this way? That's fucked up!! You're fucked!!!
PAKISTAN: I make my own choices and live down my own consequences, damn you, چین!!!
PAKISTAN: I don't need a pity fuck from you!! YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS!!!

She cuts deeply, deeper than you expect. You let your hands fall to your sides, and you look at her, careful to not let a single thread of emotion show. And by the look on her face she seems like she didn't mean to do that. She swallows, but you cut her off before she can speak.

CHINA: I'm sorry.
PAKISTAN: ...

She turns away, trying not to cry. Great job, China. You fucked it all up.

You have a visit to make, one last visit, though you had hoped that it wasn't the case, it turned out to be. She raps her knuckles once, twice, thrice, on the door and waits, very patiently for about ten seconds or so, less patiently for five, and then she steps back and kicks the damn thing in.

The USSR gives only a glance upwards as China steps briskly into the office, his door now hanging off of one hinge shortly before it gives up the ghost entirely and crashes the rest of the way. His mouth twitches and he doesn't quite complete the snarl; he only looks very, very sad. And there's nothing more that boils your blood.

CHINA: You're dying.
USSR: HAVE YOU COME HERE TO GLOAT?
CHINA: No. When you die, it might just be enough to bring everyone else down with you.
CHINA: Your path is already fixed and the rest of us are going to deal with it.
USSR: IT WILL NOT BE MY PROBLEM. BECAUSE I WILL BE DEAD.
CHINA: I know, bitch.

China suddenly lifts her leg up and plants her hand onto the desk, knocking away all of the papers and various bitty-bobs and things carefully left to clutter it. She pulls herself up the rest of the way with a grunt, and now she's on her knees on the top, stooped down to be eye-level with the USSR.

The USSR leans back and pushes himself away with a horrible creak on the tile floor as the chair leg drags. You look at him. He looks at you. You look at him again, and you stare at him and try and soak in every detail on him. You lean over a little, in danger of tipping over the desk you've perched on. It's sturdy and made of solid, dented metal, the only material that could hold up to decades of abuse by him.

The USSR wears a rumpled cap that probably hasn't been washed for weeks. His hair, normally combed back into hostile spikes, is all out of place. His eyes are shallow, flat, dead, the red of rust, still the very same eyes that caught you all those years ago. He looks more pale than normal, as if that's even possible. The eyebags tell you that he hasn't slept for days. His mouth turns downwards, lips parted slightly, probably about to swear at you. His bear-teeth are yellowed with countless cigarettes, his jaw has little bits of stubble on it. His lips have flecks of dried blood coating them. His shirt is stained and wrinkled and also looks like he hasn't changed it for a while, phlegm and blood on the sleeves. He smells extremely like alcohol, with a undertone of not having bathed for a while.

In short, he looks and probably feels like shit and of course he does, given the circumstances. You expect something more than what he says; you hoped for a little of the old bite:

USSR: GET OFF OF MY DESK, PLEASE.

Pathetic. The man who you saw decades ago fighting for his life and for the lives of everyone else, the man whose moral corruption you witnessed over the years, the man who was that first red star, lighthouse in the dark eternity, has been reduced to this. It disgusts you. It makes you insane. Perhaps, that is why- You lean over him. You grab him by the shoulders. You force him to look into your eyes, the same organ viscera red, yours interrupted by an aberration of yellow because you are and were his anomaly, the one thing he could never control.

CHINA: Everything that you have fought for is for nothing.
CHINA: You will die and it will have all been for nothing.
CHINA: When you are a dead man I will not look after your grave. I will let everyone do what they want to it. And you won't care.
CHINA: Because you're leaving us all behind.

Your fingernails dig into his shoulders; he mutters something under his breath. You continue on.

CHINA: I have been with you all this way and I have never wanted you dead, no matter how much I hated you, no matter what you did to yourself and others.
CHINA: I was your comrade and you were mine, but none of that matters.
CHINA: I wish-

You pause, out of breath. The USSR isn't looking at you, he's looking to the side, avoiding your stare. You realize with a start that there's little tears in his eyes, his mouth twists. It's too much, too terrible to behold, so you close your own eyes.

And then you lean further and practically crash into his lap and you wrap your arms around him and entangle him in a mess of limbs and you feel him, his wasting body, every square inch of bone, his heart thudding away under his ribs flapping like a bird caught in a net, his shaky gasps, the sound of a man trying not to cry. You shove your face into the crook of his neck and you finally just give in and sob and let all of your nightmares out of you. Everything that you never let yourself feel leaves you in hot tears and snot. He wraps his sturdy arms around you and you don't want him to let you go.

At ten o'clock that night he drinks the last of the alcohol in his pantry, and then calmly finish the book he was reading. Once he reaches the end, he shuts the book and puts it back in its place on the shelf. He looks at the loaded gun on his nightstand, waiting patiently for him for years and years. He picks it up, inspects it, loads and unloads the bullet with the ease of habit, fiddles with the mechanism, makes sure that it's in working order so that he will have no chance to regret this.

He thinks about it. He thinks about the future and what will become of him. He thinks about the humiliations, the impossibility of survival. He thinks about how happy they will be when he is gone. He thinks about you and how everything will fall onto you. He thinks about the years of hegemony that will follow, the wretchedness of the end of history. Pale light. Futurelessness. He thinks about the past that he never really got better from. He thinks about the relief at the end of everything, to just finally sleep forever and ever and-

Like in a trance, he steps into the closet and retrieves the saw. He feels nothing as he tears open his own chest, spraying blood everywhere, on his clothes, on the walls, a few drops on the ceiling, and plucks the locus out of his body, sheds his immortality, and lets it fall onto the floor.

He blanks out his mind as he puts the barrel of his gun in his mouth. A twitch of the finger.

You were safely sleeping in your bed in your home too far away to hear the single gunshot go off.

India had found him first and then you found India kneeling over him and his shattered head, silent. At the end of the hour you click your tongue and they start at you. Their face is wet as they say:

INDIA: What do you fucking want?
CHINA: Stop crying.
CHINA: We have to clean this up. Clean him up. For when he comes back.
INDIA: He's not-
CHINA: I mean, the Tsar, not my dear dead comrade.
CHINA: Look at this mess.

China gestures vaguely to the shattered locus, the gored body, the blood and bits of brain splattered onto the wall, the floor, everywhere. She moves calm and automatically, without thinking. Not the first time that she's dealt with a suicide, but the first time with a real one, one that lasts. Her body moves without conscious input as she grabs India by the wrist and leads them away. India is desolate, they are in shock, but they snarl and shake China off after a few breaths.

INDIA: I can take care of it myself. I don't need you. Go away.
CHINA: Promise?

China smiles in the way she reserved just for India, flashing her canines and sticking out her tongue a little. She looks like a dog. And India doesn't make a single expression as they say:

INDIA: Yes. Now, leave me alone.

You stay put and hover over them as India fetches bucket and sponge and get on their hands and knees and start scrubbing. It lasts for all of ten seconds before they stop and glare up at you.

INDIA: I said, leave me alone.

You do not. You fetch the spare sponge, you get down into the filth, too, and you say:

CHINA: Never say that I never did anything to help you, but this isn't for you. It's for him.
INDIA: Shut up, whore.

Once you are done and once the body has been dragged out onto the front steps, a bedsheet to cover it, the illusion of calm starts to waver. Your head is spinning; you are exhausted from hours of cleaning the place up; India offers you some lead-tasting water from the faucet which you gulp down to only throw up ten seconds later- fortunately, onto the grass and not in the house.

No one else is here. They all ran away the moment that everything collapsed- no doubt that some of them are dealing with their own wounds or crying in relief that their red nightmare is over. But, something is happening to you- every piece of your body alert-

India doesn't catch her when China falls and lets her hit her head on the concrete. They lean over China, watch her chest rise and fall, flick her eyelids open with an uncaring thumb, shine a torch into her eyes: her red-yellow pupils dilate. Satisfied, India gives China a good kick in the stomach- but she doesn't move. They just stand there, watching China. Then, they go back inside, leaving her with the corpse.

Hours later, India drags China purposefully over the roughest patches of road and dumps her on her own front step and then makes a hasty exit, not inclined to be shot at by the People's Liberation Army for returning their doll in such a state.

And India digs a shallow grave in the front yard of the USSR's fortress, alone, and they drag their dead friend to it, alone, and they cover him in a thin layer of dirt, alone. They find an empty bottle of vodka, and stick it in the dirt to mark it.

A week later, India shoots out China's kneecaps and China makes a plan for revenge, for the end of her future.

And a shallow grave remains at rest until a skeleton of a man wakes from half-century slumber.

He wakes up in a panic, a sharp pain through the roof of his mouth, but just as soon as he reaches for his head to make sure that it is all there, the sensation vanishes like water spilled on the hottest day of summer. The USSR looks at his claws, and they are clean of his own blood. He uses them to check and touch and feel his face; his face has all of the holes in the correct places and no extra ones. He touches his chest, and it is whole, And then, then he looks at his surroundings and he does not know where he is or what here is. He is in a snow-covered forest, but he is not cold. The sun is shining and rays hit the snow but he is not blinded. He does not recognize this place, though it is like every other place he knows.

With nowhere to go, he picks the direction of the sun and he starts walking, and walking, and walking. A little red bird, a cardinal darts from tree to tree and follows him for a good distance before it finally decides to land on him. He raises a hand to shoo it off, but then recognizes it and says:

USSR: WHAT IS THIS? WHERE HAVE YOU PUT ME?

But the bird says nothing, just preens itself with its beak. And he is this close to grabbing the devil itself and strangling it, but then he sees it, a lake. A frozen-over lake. Like any other one, and yet, he feels the tug, something at the base of his neck, no, lower, in a hollow flesh pocket where the locus of his immortality should be. The ice creaks when he steps onto it under his weight- the man of steel walks forwards, again every step after the other, his mind is screaming at him to run, his instincts tell him-

This is where he will finally rest, as the ice cracks with gunshot noise, as the devil flies away from his shoulder, as he plunges into the freezing waters and he doesn't even fight it.

Russia has to be dragged back to bed when he insists on getting up and surveying his imperial possessions which he no longer owns. He's nothing like the man you buried. When he starts to get combative you stab him in the neck and rock him to sweet dreamless sleep.

Nothing left of the man who you foolishly lusted for inside of him. Good. Learn that fact well. Learn, like that colonizer taught you. Stand up straight, speak with reserve and gentlemanliness, and always look for the opportunity to get ahead. You're never going to sleep well again because you will only dream about his nightmares.

America asks you a favor that you can't keep, but you'll do him one better. When you grab his hand, Russia blinks at you. You squeeze his palm and he squeezes back.

INDIA: Do you remember loving me?

He shakes his head and looks at the floor, probably confused and ashamed.

INDIA: That's fine. We can start over again.
INDIA: And do it better this time.

Someone finds the grave and leaves weed-flowers on it. It's vandalized and pissed on by countless countries, until the wind comes and sweeps it all away and the ground is flat and unremarkable. Cuba and his few comrades go digging around in Russia's backyard until they find a skull with a hole in it, strangely pristine-white, and they take it to Siberia as far north as any of them can stand, then they bury it again and mark the grave with unsent letters and books and cigars and of course, vodka.

China visits only once to place her old red-starred hat amongst the rest of the offerings and she has a smoke and says nothing. She drops the burnt stub onto the ground and leaves with her head held high as the sun rises, ready to burn all her futures away.