Tough Day for the Army by John Warner

position in order for Schmitty to work the lower portion of his pectoral muscles, and also because when you waterboard someone you place a cloth over their nose and mouth and then pour water over them to simulate drowning, and if you don’t place them in a decline position, the water does not run over the nostrils in sufficient volume to simulate drowning.
    This is what we emphasize to Schmitty, that the drowning is simulated, not actual, because he’s starting to alternate between looking anxious and angry, pulling harder and harder on the ropes as we drape an old gym towel over his face. We’re not really going to kill you, dumbass , we say. We’re pretty sure Schmitty agreed to this, but in the end it doesn’t matter, because we’ve decided that this is what needs doing.
    There is very little light in the weight/boiler room, just a sixty-watt bulb dangling from a single fixture. The sweat on Schmitty’s pectorals shines in this light. Schmitty can bench 305 for 12 reps, which is impressive. The floor is concrete slab with long cracks running through it, some of them patched. Schmitty is trying to blow the towel off his face, thrashing his head around, but we remedy this by grabbing the towel ends and pinning Schmitty’s head to the bench. The tendons in his neck flex memorably.
    It is hot in the boiler room because it is the boiler room. Generations of water stains that look like Rorschach blots mar the brick walls.
    We only have enough rope to tie Schmitty’s arms, so we decide to sit on his legs, which had been thrashing around like he is treading water, which we recognize is not an example of irony.
    Schmitty is making noises underneath the towel.
    Is that crying? we ask, and then decide no way because Schmitty would not cry.
    We ask ourselves How much water? We shrug because we figure that Schmitty’s reaction will tell us how much is enough, and how much is too much.
    It’s important to note that in this moment, we love Schmitty. We love each other. We love ourselves, but most of all we love Schmitty because he is one of us. We are brothers, all. We would never do anything to hurt Schmitty because that would be like cutting off our own legs. In fact, we maybe have never loved each other more. That we are waterboarding Schmitty is the proof.
    Under the cloth held over his face, Schmitty gags and retches. We pour the water in intervals, five seconds on, five seconds off. This, says the Internet, is how it must be done to avoid consequences like the subject being waterboarded passing out, which defeats the purpose of waterboarding them. Soon, Schmitty stops trying to kick us off his legs and no longer pulls at the ropes. He’s only gurgling now. His limbs are slack. The towel, taut over his face, is sucked into his mouth with his breath. His wrists are raw. They may scar, but no worse than a brand, for sure.
    We waterboard Schmitty until it is no longer interesting to water-board Schmitty, until we know what there is to know about water-boarding, which is astoundingly simple and doesn’t take all that much time, it turns out. We remove the towel from Schmitty’s face, and for a moment we worry that maybe we did it wrong, that we killed Schmitty, because his eyes are—how can we put this?—absent. They are open, but no one is present, like this is a life-sized Schmitty doll in front of us, eyes black and staring and lifeless, except we know Schmitty is not dead because his chest rises and falls.
    We say his name, Schmitty! Schmitty! We slap his cheeks and say his name, Schmitty! Schmitty! Some of us in the back giggle nervously. Holy fuck , we say.
    And then Schmitty returns, except that clearly it is Not Schmitty. It is Schmitty’s body and Schmitty’s face, but we know it is Not Schmitty because Not Schmitty raises his head up and looks us in the eyes and says: You motherfuckers better leave me tied up because if I ever get loose I’m going to