The Odd Angry Shot by William Nagle

what are you making?’
    â€˜Well, this, as you know, is a shoe box. What I’ve done is cut a hole in one end, and in the other I’ve put this little handle that I’ve made from a coat hanger. Now, attached to the handle is a bunch of feathers…’
    â€˜Feathers?’
    â€˜Yeah, feathers,’ replies Rogers, smiling.
    â€˜Now what you do with it is, you wait until you get an erection and then you insert it into the hole…’
    â€˜Go on,’ I reply, moving closer.
    â€˜Then you start to turn the handle, the feathers do the rest, and there you have it; one fully operational wanking machine, padres, for the use of.’
    â€˜So what are we going to do with it?’ I ask.
    â€˜We’re going to present it to him, next time he comes to visit us.’
    â€˜This I’ve got to see,’ I say as I walk back into the tent. I sit on my bed and am just about to lie down when I hear Rogers’ voice.
    â€˜Hey, Bung me old mate, have we still got any of that blue paint?’
    â€˜A blue wanking machine for the padre?’ I start to laugh, and almost make myself sick as I imagine the padre, bent double in a back corner of his chapel with his baggy shorts around his ankles and a blue-painted shoe box impaled on his erect member.
    Bless me father for I have sinned—turn the handle—Hail Mary—gasp, gasp. I’m sure we’re all starting to go mad. Remember.
    THE APC jolts along the dirt road, stopping now and again like a large metal frog caught between jumps, with the snail’s eye of its machine gun sniffing the air. I sit on the steel floor with my back against the loading ramp, the muzzle of my rifle resting against my cheek, studying Harry’s boots. I feel too hot to even try brushing away the fly that crawls along my lower lip. The one-hundred-degree outside temperature is intensified all the more by the steel enclosure of the tracked vehicle that seems determined to do everything in its power to dislodge us from its belly.
    Rogers wipes a droplet of perspiration from the tip of his nose and the red dust on the back of his hand mingles with the sweat, forming a muddy moustache on his top lip. The glamour has gone; no more professional gung-ho here. We have become interested only in trying to stay professionally alive.
    I spread my hand over my forehead and drag it slowly down my face as if trying to squeeze every drop of perspiration from my head. My hand stops momentarily and my fingers bunch together, like the feathers in the padre’s wanking machine. I gingerly feel around the grit and sweat created pustules in and around the creases at the sides of my nose. One breaks. I examine the white discharge that rests on my fingers, then wipe it on the leg of my sweat drenched trousers.
    The now chipped and scarred butt of Harry’s rifle is resting in the crease behind the toe of his almost wornout boot. I notice a small rust patch on the metalwork. Rogers is trying to scratch the tinea that has crept from his foot to his ankle by inserting his knife down the inside of his boot.
    â€˜Jesus,’ he says, his face screwing up with pain.
    â€˜What now?’ asks Harry disinterestedly.
    â€˜I stabbed myself.’
    â€˜Stupid bastard,’ says Harry from beneath closed eyelids.
    The APC jerks to a halt. My head is snapped forward and then quickly back, and my eyes open as my skull smashes into the steel ramp. A sickening pain creeps down from the back of my head and my nose gushes blood.
    Harry lies in an upended tangle of ammunition cases and weapons at the front of the vehicle. Rogers lies beneath him, his face buried in a pile of spent Browning .50 calibre cases.
    â€˜Where’d you learn to drive, you stupid prick?’ screams Harry at the black-clad crew commander.
    â€˜Everyone out. QUICK,’ screams the black-clad figure, as the Browning starts to thud away over our heads, raining red-hot brass cases into the