Or How I Learned to Love Senseless Violence and Became a Very Odd Duck...

    Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name. Sorry, just a little classical reference. Actually my name is Jezebelle Grigoryevna Blackburn. But you can call me Jezzy. Everyone else does. Now, you might be asking yourself: how does a sweet, blonde American daughter of Eastern European immigrants turn into one of the baddest bitches on the planet? Well sit down my lovelies and I’ll tell you. It’s a sordid little story, but it’s mine and mine alone. It’s important that I remember it.  You have to know your history. If not, then what the hell are you?

I was born in the small Podunk town of Angel Falls. It’s a little truck stop town west of Sullivan Falls. You’ve never heard of it. It’s just a place where big rigs stop to get repaired or pass state inspection. My father, Grigory Blackburn, immigrated over in the mid eighties from the Soviet Union. But not before he met my mother Nadetta in East Germany. Their love for each other proved stronger than the iron grip of communism, and they both came over to America to start a new life in the land of opportunity. God, doesn’t that just make you wanna puke? I never really knew what the whole story was behind my father getting the hots for some German chick enough to defect from the Eastern Bloc. My guess is that he saw my mom, who I’ll admit used to be a hot Bavarian piece of ass, and wanted to be free to bang her without having to check with the Politburo first. I’ve heard of guys doing crazy things to get pussy, but I haven’t heard one that could ever top my dear old dad.

So yeah, I’m half Russian and half German. Sometimes I’ll joke with people and say “Yeah, I’m a Naz-sky!”. And yes, asshole, I’m perfectly aware the term is Russo-Germanic. Can’t anyone take a joke? My dad certainly couldn’t. I have nothing but bad memories of that prick.

To begin, my father used to be in the Soviet Army. Now before you go crying about how my father was on “the other side” understand that my father wasn’t some badass Spetsnaz commando. He was a tank and jeep mechanic. Okay? He was a goddamned grease monkey. He never heard a shot fire in anger in his life. Here in the states he worked on Ken worth and Peterbilt semi trucks. How he got that job was beyond me. I wouldn’t have trusted that dickhead to repair Radio Flyer wagons, but oh well.
My mother was an interesting case. I don’t know what she did back in East Germany, but in the States, she worked as a truck stop waitress. It was at a little greasy spoon called “Martha’s”. Let me tell you, the boys there loved her. She was so damn exotic to those rednecks. She had the whole package for them: blonde hair, blue eyes, big boobs, big butt, and a husky Bavarian accent that drove them wild. To them she might as well have been little Hedi bringing out giant beer steins. She was probably as close to European culture as those sorry assholes were ever going to get. They loved to listen to her read off breakfast and lunch specials, and they’d pinch her ass when they wanted more coffee. She seemed to take it in stride, but somewhere in those Prussian eyes I could see the pain and humiliation. At least in East Germany, she could be just a normal person and not a fetish object.

Once in a while, I was allowed to follow my mom to work. I’d sit at the counter and eat with the rest of the truckers, bikers, and drifters and overhear all their stories of the road. Sometimes I’d even learn new vocabulary words. One time I was six and enjoying a banana split when I overheard two truckers talking about some lady in Kansas City who had a bad case of the “pussy farts”. I wasn’t exactly sure what they meant, but I knew farts were funny. I then proceeded laugh so hard I blew whip cream out my nose. Ah, memories.
There was really no infrastructure in Angel Falls except for the diners, motels, gas stations, and the local Walmart. Oh excuse, me. I meant Walmart Super center. What a bunch of bullshit. It was just a place for all the brainless rednecks to spend money they didn’t have on shit they didn’t need. I remember it was popular all those Sullivan Falls whores. At the ripe old age of twenty-two they all had at least three rotten little bastard kids they’d herd around the store, screaming and yelling at them to behave themselves. All those broads insisted on wearing leggings as pants, but they had fat guts so they wound up looking like human ice-cream cones. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke. Some of them even had tramp stamps above their flat, blubbery asses ( I have a tramp stamp, too. It sits right above my perfect little bubble-butt and it reads “FUCK YOU” in black bold letters. I like to keep it classy).
So life was pretty dull and empty. I didn’t have much of a future set out for me. I could be a waitress like my mom or maybe because I spoke English the best in my family I’d be a teller at the local bank. At least my little brother Yuri would’ve gone on to become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Yeah, I guess I should mention that I had a little baby brother: Yuri Gregorovich Blackburn. Jesus, doesn’t that sound like some weird exchange student? The kids at school were real dickheads to him. Even in kindergarten the kids kept telling him to “Go back to Russia!”. I guess it was too much trouble to explain to them that Yuri was actually a naturally born U.S. citizen. Not that it mattered anyway. Over time, the kids in his class learned that Yuri had a mean older sister in the third grade that would pound the living shit out of them if they tried anything. Sure, send me to the principal’s office. See if I give a fuck. No one picks on my brother and gets away with it.

I guess it was because Yuri had enough time dealing with our jackass dad. My brother had a problem with wetting the bed and had to have rubber sheets. This of course led to my wonderfully understanding father to stand over him and scream about “being a man”. Yuri wasn’t allowed to cry during these “inspections”. Because a real six-year-old “man” can stand up and admit with conviction that yes, he pissed himself in his sleep and he embraces the consequences of his actions with full responsibility. What a bunch of bullshit. You don’t have to be a behavioral psychologist to know all this yelling and bullying just made Yuri piss his bed more.
“I don’t know,” my father would snarl. “I don’t what we’re going to do with you. You little coward! I wish I didn’t have a fucking coward like you for a son!”

I wanted to tell him that maybe if he didn’t play Soviet drill-sergeant and actually was, I don’t know, a good father maybe Yuri wouldn’t have those little problems. But I guess that was too much effort for an asshole like him.

    Every Friday night was special at my house. My dad would come home piss drunk and start hollering and throwing things around the kitchen. It was really something, like a piece of classical music. He’d start small kicking a chair or two and pounding on the table. By the end he was foaming at the mouth and smashing anything that wasn’t plugged it. My mother would try to calm him down but it was no use. It was like trying to stop a boulder rolling down a hill. Yuri and I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen. I’d hug him while we listened to my father’s cheap vodka fueled rants. He used to swear in three different languages. He’d swear in Russian if he was saying something he was guilty about (it was the only time that piece of shit was honest). He’d swear in German so he could insult my mom, and he’d swear in English for the whole house to hear. That sure was nice of him. He’d say sweet things like how Yuri and I were “spoiled rotten” and he “didn’t ask for this shit” and he should left my mom to “die at the border”. In case none of you are catching on, my dad pretty much said he should’ve let my mother get machine-gunned by the guards at the Berlin Wall. Nice, huh?

    These moments really upset Yuri. I didn’t like seeing him like that. So I’d take him back into his room, shut the door, and played him with him. Sometimes I’d do the voices of his stuffed bear and dog. Mostly we played with his action figures. I always let him be the good guys. He used to whoop my ass in many creative ways while he was Batman and I was Cobra Commander. Whenever we played army men, I was always the evil tan army while he was the heroic green army. And for a little bit, it made Yuri forget about the nonsense unfolding downstairs. Sometimes through the door we could hear my mother scream or my dad would smash a plate. Yuri would get startled and I’d say: “Hey, you got an army to command. Don’t worry about them. My troops are going to take the hill!” We’d go back to playing and Yuri would start to smile again and get into the action. In some ways it made me forget about what was going on too. To be honest with you, being there for my brother Yuri was probably the only good thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.

    My father hated politics. When he’d watch the evening news from his recliner he’d shout at how President Clinton was an “asshole” and Boris Yeltsin was a “disgrace”. He was always muttering about the old days and how much better it was when the Soviets ran half of the world. Once I told him if it was so great, why didn’t he just go back. He then threw an ashtray at me and said how I knew nothing about politics or history. Well, I might not know a whole lot about politics. That’s true. But I do know a spiteful, hypocritical old grouch when I see one.

    Things came to a head one day when I was twelve. He came barging in my room and ripped my Marilyn Manson “Smells Like Children” poster off the wall. I was really pissed. I spent eighteen dollars of my hard earned allowance money at Sam Goody on that poster. And now he was ripping it up because he got a hair up his ass about something.

    “What is this subversive crap?” he hollered.

    Now, I didn’t know what “subversive” meant. But I did know that I liked Marilyn Manson. So my response to him ripping up what was my property was: “Don’t touch that, you fucking asshole!”

    You know what he did next? Take a guess. He grabbed my face and put my head into the drywall. What kind of a sick bastard does that? When I came to, I remember my mother sat me on the toilet while she rubbed a hot cloth on the back of my head. You know what she told me?

    “Jezzy, you can’t be making him upset like that.”

    What kind of bullshit logic is that? He puts my head through a wall, yet I’m the one who needs to be more mindful of my actions? It’s my fault he’s a mean, belligerent prick?

    After a while it bothered me less and less. The more he hit me, the harder I became. And you know what else? The older I got, the more I got to see him the pathetic worm he was. I knew what he was angry at. He was angry at the fact he was still an outsider at his job and around town. He was angry that men lusted after his wife. He was angry at the fact that being a dad took work and effort. He was angry that the American Dream didn’t work out like he wanted. He thought he was going to be able to sit on his ass while the checks rolled in. He was going to be like the Great Gatsby. Instead, he was going to be nothing more than “Greg the little Ruskie Grease Monkey”. And that pissed him off more than anything.

    I was right, too. My mother should’ve seen it coming. But she was still in that “I must’ve done something to make him upset” mindset. And wouldn’t you know, one day it cost her everything.

    I distinctly remember one Friday night my dad went off on one of his rants again. Yuri and I were trying to play “Goldeneye” when we heard a huge crash in the kitchen. I told Yuri to stay put while I went down to investigate. That’s where I found my dad slapping my mother on the ground telling her to wake up. I remember her eyes had rolled up in her head while her mouth hung open. He tried pouring water on her, all the while he screamed at her to wake up. Soon it dawned on him: he just killed his wife. Apparently all those conks to the noggin had sloshed her brain around in her skull. Who would’ve guessed?

    For the first time in my life, my father looked at me in a state of helplessness. I remember he was down on his knees begging me for forgiveness saying that he didn’t know anything bad was going to happen. What could I do? I called the cops and had his ass tossed in jail. Looking back, I really should’ve cut his throat. But this is actually much better. He now gets to live out the rest of his American Dream in the state pen. Good. Fuck him.

    I was about seventeen when that little incident happened. Yuri was around thirteen and got sent to live with some nice family up in Vermont. I got stuck with living with a host family in the Sullivan Falls area. I never met the family that Yuri got hooked up with, but from a letter he sent me, they seemed like nice people. Mine was a childless couple who took in exchange students that were going to the local high school, Van Buren Academy. Man, did they drive me nuts. All over the house were crucifixes and little plaques saying “God Bless This House” and all that other meaningless bullshit. The host mother tried to bond with me. We baked together and did menial yard work. All the while she told me stories, but I don’t remember any of them. They were just boring coming of age tales. I would just grin and nod along. I wasn’t in the mood for bonding, especially with a woman who insisted on saying Grace before anything on the fucking dinner table was touched. What kind of lunatic takes Grace seriously, anyway?

    My stay there didn’t last too long. Long story short, I got caught giving one of the exchange students a blowjob. He was some kid from Croatia who told me he had never kissed a girl. So, I decided to give him that and something extra. I really wish you could’ve been there when the host mother walked in on the two of us. The gasp she let out while she watched me slurp up a teenage cock was so loud it bordered on a scream. I feel bad in retrospect. That poor guy simultaneously had the best and worst sexual experience of his life. But at least I got a laugh out of it.

    Well, the laughter didn’t last. The host parents gave me “the talk”. All that shit about “inappropriate behavior”, “violated trust”, “expected more from you” it all just culminated to “we don’t trust you in the house anymore.” Good. I really couldn’t see myself in that place anymore. However, it did mean the only place that would take me was a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. I had to stay there until I was eighteen and earned my G.E.D.

    Once I got turned eighteen and got  my G.E.D., I was down and out with nowhere to go. I had no family or trustworthy friends. My only income came from pickpocketing drunk guys at bars. Looking back, I don’t know if it was destiny or just really dumb chance but one day I was coming out of an IHOP enjoying a meal courtesy of some stolen cash, when I was approached by a guy and a gal in full Army dress uniform. They were both staff sergeants. The gal spoke to me and said: “Hey there, young lady. How would you like an exciting career?” They told me about job skills, opportunities, and how Uncle Sam would take care of me while I was being trained. It was right after 9/11, so I guess they were looking for all the help they could get. So, I said sign me up. The next thing I knew I was on a Greyhound bus headed south to Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

    I didn’t take well to the Army at first. The first few weeks of basic at Fort Jackson really pissed me off. It was all do this, do that, stand here, be quiet, and fuck you. I got enough of that with my dad. But once I learned not to resist and be such a stubborn asshole, I got yelled at less and things went smoother. Soon I was learning the cool things like hand-to-hand combat, bayonet fighting, and how to qualify with different firearms. I was a pretty good shot with the M16A4, but I surprised myself with how well I could use to AT4 rocket launcher. You just have to know how to lead the rocket into the target. Everything else falls into place.

    Because I was female, they couldn’t put me in the regular infantry. So I got placed in the 11th Transport Battalion with the 119th Inland Transport Company. It wasn’t a bad gig. I got to drive the big five-ton M939 trucks I learned to operate back in Fort Eustis, Virginia. It only sucked when they moved us to running supplies to and from the Baghdad International Airport. “Route Irish” they called it. Seven and a half miles of ass-numbing suspense. It was like sitting on a razor blade. At any moment some bastard could drive a car packed full of explosives at our convoy. Or better still, there’d be some old Soviet artillery shells rigged to blow under the road. I did my tour of duty around 2003. That was before Congress got the idea to put some fucking armor on the convoy trucks. Aw well, I guess they had more pressing issues, you know?

    Every day was like the old Sword of Damocles story. It was just a matter of when something shitty would happen. And one day, it did. Some of those old artillery shells I mentioned earlier, they were planted in the ground. And my truck set them off. The sound of the blast nearly turned my eardrums into gloop. The explosion itself was powerful enough to lift five tons in the air and flip me ass over head in the cab.

    I was fading fast. All I wanted to do was pass out, but something made me stay awake. I could hear the sound of gunfire over my ruptured hearing. There was more “pop-pop-pop-pop” of AK fire over the “brat-bratt-bratt” of our own guns. It was an ambush, and unless I cut myself out of my seatbelt, I was just waiting to be executed. Or worse.

    When I stepped out of the cab it seemed like angry hornets were whizzing past my ear. The Ba’ath assholes had us pinned down and were on the verge of giving us all lead enemas. I almost couldn’t breathe with all the flames and burning diesel fumes in the air. I tried to find my friends, but they were all dying slow deaths from shrapnel wounds. Soon I could see the pricks that had ambushed us. I saw them through the haze and fumes of the fires everywhere. That’s when I knew they wouldn’t take me alive.
    I looked down and saw a buddy of mine, Jack Crenshaw, blowing blood bubbles out his mouth from the hot shrapnel that ripped into his lungs. He was gone. But he left behind a little present for me. His M249 Squad Automatic Weapon was still intact. Not a shot fired from it.

    I took off my helmet and flak jacket. I didn’t give a fuck. I was too fed up with all the bullshit that had accumulated in my life. As far as I was concerned, I was going out like a Viking Berserker. I remembered how the good the SAW felt in my hands when I qualified for it back in Fort Jackson. The first Sunni Ba'ath cocksucker I saw out from the smoke and flames, I lined him up front to rear sight and dumped five rounds of hot 5.56 NATO right into his stinking guts. He had died by my will. For once in my life I had the power. I had that sacred dominion over life and death. And it fucking rocked.

    I was the wrath of God that laid waste to Sodom and Gomorrah. I was Joshua at Jericho. I was one of  the Valkyries that rode with Odin. Every time the SAW spoke another life was taken to Hell. And I loved every minute of it. I screamed “You motherfuckers!” until I was hoarse. The bullets whizzed past me and I kept charging forward. I had a two hundred round box. I could’ve been there all day wasting the pricks. Soon I couldn’t see any more of them. The dead lay before me scattered on the road. All my handy work. Not even Dante or Milton could describe the intense heat behind me or the bloodshed that unfolded. In that mad minute, I got back at everyone. I got back at my shitty father and stupid mother. I got back at all the bullies, assholes, and popular whores at my school. I was the Angel of Death deciding who went and who stayed. It was beautiful.

    Would you believe they gave me a Silver Star for that? I killed twelve men that day. Twelve Ba’ath loyalists. Apparently my actions scared the rest away until backup came. I single handedly turned the tide until the reinforcements showed up. I was a hero for a day. And they gave me a medal. Can you believe that? Now if I did that in a McDonalds back home and ruined everyone’s morning Egg McMuffin, they’d put me on the table for lethal injection. Murder, kiddies. It’s all negotiable.Except when you kill a cop because you have PTSD. Then you spend a year in a correctional facility being "Rehabbed."

    I guess that’s why I’m in the mercenary business now. What was I going to do? Go back to Angel Falls and be a former war hero prison waitress? Not a chance. I found my calling that day on Route Irish. That day I learned my natural talents and to never deny who I really am.

    From there I got hooked up with the company Diplomatic Leverage Incorporated. I wanted Blackwater, but they were getting some bad press. Besides, DLI was little more quiet and cloak and dagger. I can still remember one of my first assignments was in the jungles of Thailand. It was mostly to help the government put down some separatist rebels. DLI sent me to meet with this general in the Thai Army. He didn’t know they were sending a chick, so he took one look at me when I first arrived and said: “I cannot use you. You have no balls.”

    So I said: “Oh yeah, fuck-face? If I had a pair of balls they’d each be as big as your head. And I’d have a dick like a PKM machine gun. Now cut the bullshit, and tell me who you want dead.”

    And that’s what I did. I went out in the jungle around the insurgent's base, and strung up claymores and Bouncin’ Betties in the foliage. I blew a whole fucking platoon of separatist guerrillas to pieces. I even took the heads of the guerrilla leaders, packed them on dry ice and sent them back to the general. You gotta love it when you make someone eat crow, and I was never happier in my life when that commanding pencil-dick wired me one hundred fifty grand for a job well done. Moral of the story: never doubt Jezebelle Blackburn. I get off on that. Danger. Can't seem to help myself. Guess I'm a fairly odd duck. Sort of like that cartoon about odd grandparents, cept' I'm just fifty shades of fucked up.

    So that’s what I do. Call me up if you need some dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Well not cheap, but we’ll work something out. For a little extra, I’ll do something creative. It’s your call.

    I haven’t spoken to my brother Yuri in years. From what I understand he took the name of his foster family and now lives under the name of John Peter Anderson. He’s going to college up in Vermont and he has a pretty hot girlfriend too. Way to go, little bro.
    You might ask if I feel sorry for my mom. Not at all. She came from this background where the wives stayed silent and passive while the husbands ruled like drunken, tyrannical assholes. She got what was coming to her. Whenever I start to feel any emotion towards her, I just remember her words: “Jezzy, you can’t be making him upset like that.” Sorry mom, but you were covering for a drunken, cowardly waste of life. And I can’t find a single tear for you.

    Oh, and if you happen to be strolling through the Michigan State Penitentiary and you see my dad, tell him: Jezzy says “hello”.