EXTRACT FOR
Requiem For A Bubble Head
(Author Unknown)

In my day I've had to suffer such insults as being called a Canoe Driver, an Underwater Knife Fighter and a Bubble Head, mostly, it has to be said, by those sad, useless wankers in the SAS. Right this instant, however, it's none other than the Grim Reaper who is whispering insults into my ear. 

      He's telling me that I've finally taken a bite out of the big one and it's time to be giving up the ghost and calling myself dead. Too much. There's an edge to his tone, he's sounding just a wee bit miffed at this decision of mine to cling on. I can only assume that he's of the opinion that since I've been in his employ for most of my adult life then I should be just as eager as I've always been to be at his beck and call. 

      No chance. Strangling, shooting, field-knifing, blowing-to-smithereens or simply drowning the opposition into his arms is one thing, what is going down right this instant is way too close up and personal to be treated with such a casual, off-hand manner. There is no way that I am departing this life without putting up a fight. Not in my nature, I'd be damn near useless at what I do if I gave in that easy and he knows it.

      It's only when the shit hits the fan that you're forced into asking if your life's been worth the candle. Until this happened to me I thought I was doing okay. Not perfect, nobody gets away with that one but until a few hours back I was downright happy. I mean really happy. A good, loving wife, a good life and terrific prospects.

      In my time I've been on the wrong end of enough lies and betrayal to fill a bucket. In Special Forces it comes with the territory. You have to learn to lie even to your mates to cover things like your true identity, your mates have to lie to cover their identity because everybody betrays everybody in the end. Eventually either you get caught or they get caught. 

      You see torture ain't the gentlemanly sport it used to be. Believe me, everybody gives up what they know these days and nobody fancies the opposition knowing their home address or where their best mate's wife and kids live.

      So what I am saying is that I've grown used to betrayal and lies, learned to live with them. But when all of this is said and done what has just happened to me is the betrayal to end all betrayals. There have been enough lies going down to fill a mine shaft, much less a bucket. It made me so sick to my stomach that I couldn't live with it so I reacted, as our American neighbours will have it, with extreme prejudice.

      There's no point to be going into the whys and the wherefores at this right good moment in time. Sufficient to say that I have been on my back, out here in the open, way up on an exposed hillside, unable to move, for more than two hours now and the gloaming's closing in. 

      This does not look good. I do know what I'm talking about. I come from a very long line of professional warriors who have adhered strictly to the code of the Samurai all of their lives. Unfortunately, like the Samurai, it now seems us modern guys are facing a similar sea change in the general scheme of things. Extinction has become a very definite possibility.

      Lying here, I see the face of the only woman I have ever loved with the clarity of the day we first met. She was alive and kicking only a few hours ago, right up here on the hill beside me. I am still, to this day, held in awe of the moment we met. She was never my type. 

      In those days I went for the very tall, the very stunning, long legs and tits as big as they come sort of woman. Every last one of them a head turner that frequently made me the envy of every officer and squaddy in the Special Boat Service.

      Thing was, meeting her, Seonaid, in one single instant my whole outlook altered. When I looked in the mirror as I shaved the very next morning I no longer recognised myself. None of those head turning qualities are there in her. Nothing to attract a guy, not really. Plain Jane would about define her. Any guy, down to the lowest squaddy, would walk right on past and never give it a second glance.

      For me it's her eyes that first astonish but what astounds me to the point of distraction is the fact that I immediately see her as somebody of equal standing. She simply doesn't give a toss whither I find her attractive or not. She doesn't give a bugger. She comes across as being as wild and as untameable as the wildcats that roam these hills.

      All of the women that I had been with to this date have been stunning but to the last one all of them have made the conscious decision not to enter into the adult world. They prefer to remain within the safety of their childhood throughout their entire lives. They insist upon being cosseted and pampered and looked after and told what to do and when to do it. 

      I had never viewed any female that I happened to be going out with as being anything other than being from a subordinate gender whose only value in this life was to serve me or any other guys on the planet as a convenient shag. Don't go condemning me for this, it was them who put themselves up for it and they were never in short supply.

      Seonaid was strikingly different. She was a marine biologist. Once in a wet suit and in the water she could even out-swim me. No mean feat. Mostly, however, she swam naked. Hated restriction of any kind. What a creature, what a discovery. We laughed, we danced, we shagged each other brainless and then we laughed again. God did we laugh. Never since I was  kid had I laughed so freely.

      Strangely, this image of Seonaid comforts me in that I am left with little choice as to how I should now proceed. I am no longer able to recognise myself. All I'm left with now can't be called a life, all it can be called is a pointless farce. The appeal of the grave is moving in my direction. Why not. It might be the wound, it might be the toxins that my brain is now producing but I'm in and I'm out. I want to live, I want to die.

      It was only a few hours ago that I arrived home unannounced, what a cliché. I copped for it in Helmand Province of all places, another cliché. The shrapnel barely grazed my arse making it look as if I was lying face down with my head buried in the dirt during the fire fight. Anyway it put me on compulsory sick leave. 

      Home is the sailor, home from the sea. I don't 'phone, I don't text. I want to see that special light in Seonaid's eyes when I arrive. The overwhelming gratitude to be gained from that fact that not only have I arrived but that I actually exist. 

      In one those very still moments that is only accessible between bouts of perfect love making, she once confessed that she had almost come to the conclusion that she would never experience love of the kind that is only made available to matching souls. She and I, she said, were matching souls.

      Flowers, chocolates and an extremely expensive necklace in hand. This is going to be the night of all nights, there have been some great ones but this is going to be spectacular, this is going to put all of them in the shade. I've been ramming multi-vits down my gullet for almost a day now. It is my intention to shag her until she screams for me to stop before she dies of ecstasy. I am going to walk her hand in hand through the gates of paradise into our own personal version of heaven on earth. God, this is going to be the night of all nights. We might not be able to tell our grandchildren about it but we'll be remembering it ourselves, even then.

      Seonaid is not in the sitting room. I search our bedroom which is to the back. I look in the conservatory. Her car in is the drive so I know that she's at home. It's then I hear it, shrieks, not of terror but of pleasure. The sort of moans that only come from someone on the very fringe of an orgasm that promises to top all previous orgasms on earth. These are the shrieks and moans of a woman. If I wasn't so bewildered then I would find myself envying her.

      It's coming from my parent's bedroom which is yet another impossibility. The room has been empty for years. These days it's a sort of mausoleum. I actually freeze. Petrified. Afraid not only of the room which I almost never enter but of what I am about to find. 

      I don't for one moment believe in ghosts or apparitions or any of that bunk but poltergeist immediately spring to mind. Have we been invaded by them? It's nothing of this earth, that's for sure. 

      I am petrified. It takes me all of fifty seconds to get my legs to function. I move forward and throw open the door. There she is, Seonaid, the love of my life, in my father's bed, with portraits of both him and my mother up on the wall and gazing directly down onto their heads. I say they because there are two of them, both naked.

      That Seonaid, who will from this point forward be referred to as The Bitch is in this bed of all beds is sufficiently shocking. I move closer so that I can see who the guy is, the guy who I am about to beat shitless. Seonaid isn't with a guy, she is with a girl, a teenage girl. Not only is she with her, Seonaid has her head between the girls thighs and it is the girl who is screaming like a bitch on heat. 

      My father is being defiled. My mother is being defiled. I am being defiled. My home is being defiled. The family, our tradition, all of it being swept away and this is taking place on my watch. This place is under my command and yet I remained ignorant as to what has been going on in my absence. I am not fit for the purpose. In one single instant I've become a joke. A clown. A creature to ridicule. A cuckold.

      Of course I lose it. My wife with another fella would have been sufficiently devastating but with a woman? I am insufficient, I am not up to it, I am inadequate. Not up to the task. So lousy and inadequate as a guy that my wife has to find sexual satisfaction in other women. My brain just explodes. I rush into the lounge and dig out my reserve pistol a Sig Sauer p226 9mm from behind some books on the history of the Royal Marine Corps. 

      The situation is about as dire as it gets, I cannot imagine being this wired without something deathly in my mitt. An M16 would have felt better. I don't know why I do this. To be honest at that right good moment I need reassurance more than I needed oxygen. Holding a weapon of some sort, any sort, just makes me feel more in control. I feel as if I can get the situation under control immediately by simply waving a weapon. This is what I do for a living. We do it all of the time with rowdy crowds of Hajjis or the like.

      I point the pistol at the teenager and turn her naked out of my home. She takes off down the path and out into the street where she gets some looks, I can tell you. The village of Drymen just north of Glasgow is not populated by the sort of individuals who will tolerate public nudity in any shape or form.  

      While I'm doing this The Bitch grabs a housecoat from the bottom of the bed, runs into the conservatory to collect something and then does a runner out of the back door and up into what she sees as the safety of the hills. 

      I have PNGs so I grab them, I use them for spotting night life amongst the animal kingdom, wildcats and the like, sorry, Passive Night Goggles, not evening yet but it will be along soon so I am keeping my options open. I follow knowing that I can easily catch up on her. She is fast but no longer trains. I train whither I like it or not, one of the virtues of being with the SBS.