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Introductory Text

They crawl up the mountain
The Iwo Jima Narrative Part 02 21st Post Posted 26 April 2016 at 23:43:33 EDT Link to original

They crawl up the mountain, bare hands on the sharp volcanic rocks. The sun beats down on them. It is a grueling test. The island has a secret that it doesn't want to reveal.

They draw close to the man at the top of the mountain, keeping their guns trained on him. He has no weapon. His body is fragmented like an image in a broken mirror, various pieces floating without connection, the brightness of the sky shining between them, the blood of his insides bright red. His head is like a balloon floating several feet over the rest of him.

"Hello, America," the head calls, breaking into a sickly smile. The whites of the eyes are clustered with red hemorrhages. Sweat rolls down the face.

The Marines don't know how to respond. They ask if he's armed. The question strikes one of them as funny and he giggles. A tide of giggling comes from the other side of the ridge, behind the fragmented man. The giggling turns to screaming.

"What's going on here? You alone?" A Marine asks.

The man doesn't seem to understand. One of the Marines tries his basic Japanese. The man makes a sour face. "No Nippon... Korea... Korea person," the man says, and a disembodied hand points to a nearby fragment of his chest. "나는...I... Christian... 예수," the man says. He pulls a necklace out of his shirt. On the end of it is a small metal cross. A tiny suffering Jesus gleams in the sun.

The Marine tries English again. "What's happening here?"

"마귀가 여기 왔어."


 * Translation of Korean to English: "The devil came here."

"What?"

"군인들이 대문을 건축했어. 그 아이의 명령으로."


 * Translation of Korean to English: "The soldiers had built a gate. The child with the command."

"I don't understand."

A wide smile splits the Korean man's face, and he lets out a loud laugh, and the smile flees, and suddenly he is weeping. His emotions seem to follow the giggles and screams that come from inside the mountain. The Marines feel it too: the strange urge to laugh followed by a harrowing fear.

The sound beyond the ridge rises, the screams becoming higher and louder. A wave of maniac giggling joins the screaming so that both sounds fill the air at once. A electric feeling touches the skin on the Marines' arms. They find their minds filling with strange, dark thoughts.

Somewhere in a castle in Japan lies a mad God Emperor who has sent his men across the ocean to defend his glorious empire with their blood. On the other side of the world lies the great humming factory called America, the heart of an empire of commerce, which once forced Japan to join the world in trade. Machines and flesh now flow along tendril-like courses, delivering goods and death, ensnaring the globe.

The sun goes dark, like a light switch turning off. The Marines instinctively duck, then look up and gasp. Above them, extending miles into the sky, is an enormous metallic cylinder, filling the sky, blocking out the sun. It spins slowly above them, pieces of it flickering and disappearing like the image in a broken movie projector. In a day filled with madness, they find themselves confronted with something wholly beyond their capacity for surprise. They simply mutter soft curses and get closer to the ground. The earth seems to tremble with the sound of the screaming and laughing, which swirls like a storm all around them.

Somewhere near the beach, a Marine pats another Marine on the back, interrupting his stunned gawking, and shouts something into his ear. The second Marines pats the man in front of him, and the message goes up the line like this until it reaches the Marines talking to the fractured man.

Pull back.

They are to withdraw from the island.

The men do not question the order for a moment. They turn and crawl away from the Korean.

Below them, the ashen island flashes with pieces of sunlight that manage to slip through the flickering cylinder. When they are almost at the foot of the mountain again, the man stands up and shouts something over the hideous screaming. The Marines cannot hear it and would not understand it anyways.

"마귀가 예수를 데리고 산으로 가서 천하 만국과 그 영광을 보여. 가로되 만일 내게 엎드려 경배하면 이 모든 것을 네게 주리라."


 * Translation of Korean to English (Matthew 4:8-9): "The devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, 'All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.' "