wingborne | and i will be loathing loathing you my whole life long;

A no-good commie and an American hero walk into a bar.

America forgets how the rest of the joke goes.

--

Russia is the one who started it.

Russia pushes him down the stairs.

Except the stairs are endless and they twist and turn and mangle and he ends up lying flat on his back, wind knocked out of him, and only Japan is nice enough to step over him when the meeting begins again.

So America hits Russia on the nose, and the crack is satisfying. Russia’s smile begins to tilt the opposite way of his nose, giving him a perilous look, like a clown trying to balance three poodles and five bowling pins in his hand, except the dogs must go.

In return, Russia swings his metal pipe so America’s mouth becomes a bloody smear. It hurts, but it hurts more to look into a mirror because Russia’s pipe had broken his cheekbone and his jaw and his teeth, so half his face falls into his mouth, leaving only a blackened residual behind. When he licks the right side of his lips, it tastes like tar. His white teeth dodged in and out of his mouth, but his gums are fine, so it’s all right. It’s just that when he looks in the mirror sometimes, the blue of his eyes look like angry shining fires in the middle of a burnt forest.

America takes Russia aside and pulls out his teeth, one by one, ripping them out. He puts them in a box, small pink flecks of gum still stuck to the roots. Russia’s teeth look like little yellow tombstones. Russia smiles and opens his mouth wider so America can yank the ones in the back. America locks the box and makes Russia swallow the key, plunging his fist into Russia’s throat and watching the Adam’s apple bob up and down.

Russia makes America sit in a chair where he makes small slits on America’s neck with a machete, barely scraping the dead skin at first, but pressing harder and harder until America can feel his red muscle spill out from the thin cuts of his neck. He wonders if he looks like a fish. It hurts to think that because he doesn’t want gills.

America tapes the bandages over his half-fallen face and calls it the Cold War.

Russia calls it something else, but America doesn’t understand Russian.

--

In the end, it’s just a matter about dicks.

America says Russia has a small dick, barely the size of a hand. Smaller than Russia’s pinky. Shriveled and cold and wrinkly and ugly, he says. It’s all about compensation. That’s what it’s all about. Russia likes tanks because they’re big and phallic, America says.

Russia says even microscopes couldn’t help see America’s dick. He says that he once had to make condoms for him and that a thimble had been too big for him. Not that he would need a condom, Russia says. Then he says a few choice words about America’s mother.

America doesn’t have a mother but Russia doesn’t have a dick, so it all makes sense.

--

A no-good commie and an American hero walk into a bar.

Hold on, America says. The joke’s really good.

It’d be a better joke if he could remember it.

--

They play baseball.

It’s America’s favorite sport. He puts on his baseball cap and grabs his glove and baseball bat and remembers to bring his friends, because that’s the best part. Sometimes his friends look like skeletons with thin skin covering them, bruises on their skin where their bone protrudes in a bump, but he says they’re okay and gives them their uniforms, too.

Russia brings his friends, except they’re not really friends. They’re thin and gaunt and they don’t say much. That’s okay. America is loud enough for all of them.

In the first inning, America beats Russia’s face in with his bat, watching the bruised face turn into pulpy mangles. Russia smiles and lets first base be stained with his blood because when it’s his turn, he makes America put his hand on the base, but he doesn’t use the bat. He kneels down and carefully pulls back each finger, one by one, pulls them all the way back until it feels like he’s tearing them off, until they’re nearly parallel with the palm of America’s hand.

Russia isn’t unkind. He asks America if it hurts.

America says no, go on.

In the second inning, Russia is even nicer. He beats in America’s kneecaps and sings a song. It sounds like an off-tune version of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, except Russia’s stupid so he gets the lines mixed up, uses words like Proletariat and Bolshevists and Siberia. But America can’t be fooled. He knows that they’re not real countries. When it’s America’s turn, he sings his own song. It’s Elvis, because America likes Elvis. He sings You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog when he breaks Russia’s rib cage.

There is no third inning because it rains, so they head back in and they say they’ll take a rain check until next time, and America offers to pay for Russia’s cab fare, but Russia just walks home, taking his bag of teammates with him.

--

America wishes it wasn’t such a small world, after all.

--

His fingertips begin to look red.

It’s not the normal red of red white and blue, it’s a blood red that looks like all his blood has clotted in his fingerprint. It starts off slow, but when he notices it, his entire hand had turned red and he panics and grabs his gun and shoots his hand and it feels really really good, so he does it again. He wraps his hand up in white bandages and thinks it’s healed.

Then he notices his other hand is turning red. It’s a commie red so he knows that Russia is behind it, so he grabs the bullets off his shelf and balances his gun in between his knees because it hurts to use his hand now for some reason, but he needs to shoot his hand before the red grows over his arm and onto his collar and into his heart.

The smell of burnt skin sticks in the room. It never gets out. Not really. Blood is heavier than water so it sticks to the floor, looking like brown stains after a few days. But even if his hands throb, it was worth it.

He wonders if he can turn Russia blue. If Russia looks at his fingertips one day, and sees a blue that isn’t the normal blue from General Winter but the blue of freedom and maybe it would spread all over his arm and onto his collar and into his heart. He thinks and thinks and thinks.

But then he forgets.

--

A no-good commie and an American hero walk into a bar.

Then they take the bar and hit each other with it.

It’s a good joke, America says, because the hero wins.