Short Story Beginning

	The wheels of the bus rattled beneath me, shaking my legs like sugared-up children on a Sunday afternoon. I sat there, surrounded by people just like me: young, white, confident men with crew-cut hair and wild excitement shamelessly advertised on their faces. I was ready. I’m finally going to fulfill my destiny, I thought, bouncing my thin, veiny fists on the meat of my thighs. A few people talked with one another, but for the most part the bus was silent; the quiet hum of the engine filled the stale air. The ride took hours, but I slept through most of it, so when we pulled up to the large gates, darker and more menacing than the souls of evil men who loomed in the shadows, manipulating the marionette-strings of the feeble-minded, I was briefly startled, I couldn’t believe that we were already there: Great Lakes, Illinois—boot camp.
	The pitter-patter of raindrops assaulted the roof of the bus as the man dressed head-to-toe in camouflage, colored the same as the deepest crevices of the ocean, stood up and began to hurl words at us with his thundering voice. “Hello boys, my name’s Petty Officer 1st Class Rowland. You’ll refer to me as Petty Officer: not ‘Sir’, not ‘Mr. Rowland’, Petty Officer. P-E-T-T-Y-O-F-F-I-C-E-R, got it? Now… welcome to the worst eight weeks of your lives.”