Diva Down!
by Io Ascarium
Zine #56—August 2026
Diva down is a story about the revolutionary potential of a gay guy with 2 grenades.
Listen to an audio feature and interview with Io on the Tangled Wilderness podcast
”We’re gonna shred you, faggot!”
“Oh, a homophobic mercenary! How original!”
This was all Pearse could think of to spit back before the door slammed and it was just him and the idling engine.
Great. Fucking figures. One misplaced foot and you’re dead.
What was that fanny pack even there for? It was a thoroughfare!
He had never been in that part of the base before—let alone at a full sprint. “Corny fucking scumfucks just leave their tactical fanny packs just laying around!? Just OUT for anyone to trip on?”
Pearse wasn’t sure that’s what did it. In all the excitement he may have tripped over his own legs. He was flying down that lane and the nerves crowded out the feeling of the ground beneath him. Some earthtoned pack that had fallen into the road was fate enough to blame. He wouldn’t go through this blaming himself. They can’t take this from him too, he would meet his end thinking he was da man. He was determined.
“WELL! They FUCKING got me now I guess.” He said sing-songingly aloud in the sealed cab, waiting for them to take him from here to somewhere else. Then put him through one of the worst deaths they could deal up.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck ooooooooo fuuuuuuuuck shitfucknononono.”
The dropout was so close. He could see the boat. He was almost there. Little cigarette boat bobbing there in the water. Midnight blue little thing like the one he was driving on his first deployment. He knew just where to put his hands. If he could aim his ass mid-air just right he could land in the seat and just ZOOM. Whoever was arranging escapes left the engine running for him, he could just make out the tremolo purr of its shaking gullyworks right before it all went dark.
He thinks he tripped over one of those tactical fanny packs some sub-mental jarhead left out like a snare and lobbed his head into a big box of beans. It actually had “beans” stenciled on the side of it. “BEANS” he read as he began to untangle himself as a sea of rough hands washed over him and it cracked up a part that was far away now. He would not know that part again.
When he first got drafted he parlayed his experience on a fan boat in the gulf and volunteered to ferry VIPs hither and yon across the strait. He and the other draftees had a lot of fun with the “strait” puns. Back then you still had the wherewithal to do bits, actually try to keep your spirits up. Trapped in a complicity he could handle. Boat-boy. He was born to be a boat-boy out there in the sunshine. And when he had dropped off his sheikh or jaw clenching general on the dock, he had to get the boat back across all alone. Then he could really tear shit up. It is fun to drive a boat fast, I don’t care who ya are.
But these last few months it was a different phase. He had to fight the actual war. Like send-you-in-places-and-shoot-people-who-threaten-you and not-make-a-huge-fuss-if-your-team-mates-shoot-people-who-don’t kind of war. Pearse missed his old life. When he could ride his bike to the graveyard at dusk and boof drugs in bathroom stalls and not be constantly aware that greedy cowards who loved violence from afar ran the world.
He had never used a grenade before today. He had 2. He thought he would look sick as fuck. Double fisting frags all, “knock knock!” or something. He was definitely gonna say something cool like that before he realized he didn’t have the dexterity to throw 2 at once. Fumbling the other one into his vest he lifted the tent curtain, lobed it. He simply squealed “diva down!” as it kaboom’d and he sprinted towards capture.
Pearse can’t remember whether they confirmed if Honeycutt was actually dead, but as the tent flap fell Pearse saw the grenade spinning in its last resting place beneath his chair. That turns anyone to soup. He got outta there so quick and ran right into the bean box—it’s all but certain. And all the radio chatter he got ears on was a wild din. Lots of people were dead is all he could pick out of the staticy squaks. A whole campaign of fragging’s took place across the region. All at once.
“Fragging” Val called it. Val explained it was something they did a lot in one of the first Republic’s wars. People would just kill their superior officers because war sucks and fuck them. Val told him a story of some black GI blasting a visiting general and escaping into the jungle to found a new dynasty of super-communists who lived in ancient ziggurats and jungle temples and stuff. Sounded cool, but he wondered why he had never heard of this. “Neo-liberal media robbed you of your history,” Val told him. Oh.
Val was about Pearse’s height and had eyes like a swamp in bloom. He was southern but didn’t have an accent “because they ran out of em.” He was kind of funny and kind of insane and it was hard to tell which one you were getting sometimes. Val and Pearse knew each other’s real names. He was in some kind of inter-army revolutionary cell that managed to go undetected so far. They had some tedious name like “Peoples Fire.” Something uninspired and forgettable that didn’t really say “we can get this done,” or so Pearse assumed. Even when he volunteered for this job, he didn’t actually think it would make a dent. But damn was he eating crow now. The mad lads really kneecapped the whole army.
It was a long walk to the transit van and the radios were alive and screaming as these rough n ready hungry holes for HGH frog-marched his skinny ass to the van to probably take him to a sound stage. They didn’t even beat him too bad in the meantime. Everyone nervous, heads swiveling like a broken sprinkler, glued to the radio—abuzz with the sounds of a culling of the top brass. It had spread across the whole region. Sounded like a few people got a hold of mobile missile stations in the chaos? Did he hear that right? He didn’t know they had those now. What is “People’s Revolutionary Fire” or whatever gonna do with those? Haha, you nuts.
Val was a conduit for this plan. Val and Pearse were sharing much by now so he folded him in. He asked five nights ago under a moon so thin it pinned up the sky. “Something’s going to happen soon and… I wont see you for a while. These fucking apes don’t revere fire—they worship ashes. We will show em ashes.” Val talked like that sometimes. Pontificating toward the tents ceiling. Using a lot of hand motions. Pearse got distracted when he got like this. He rubbed his chin in a luxurious arch from his belly button to the sharp edge of his hip like a cat leaving its scent. Val taught him what op-sec was and he knew he was doing it badly “If your gonna implicate me through hints you might as well accessorize me through the full plan.”
Val was drafted in the first phase of the war. Back when they were only gang-pressing those they had some sort of leverage over. He got picked up for shooting digital billboards. He was an artist. The second the bullet whizzed through those screens, a sort of glowing green, purple, yellow puddle of static formed around the hole, tagging his oily ripple across these garish glowing pools that littered every American highway. He saw himself as above, the representative narcissism of graffiti, and a vandal worthy of those hardcover coffee table books middle class people who are sort of alternative will display in their homes. He told me when he was young he used a high powered bug sprayer to drench abortion billboards in gas, then shoot flaming arrows at them.
He had a thing against ads, and tech, and civilization writ large pretty much. When he got picked up it was for something less overtly political—think they got him for ventilating some fake law firm’s electronic signage on a road trip through the southwest. The charge was just property destruction, carrying an unregistered firearm, vandalism, and “anti-social behavior.” They didn’t see anything revolutionary in this crime or the army wouldn’t have been an option.
But oh boy did he consider himself a revolutionary—and like to yap on about it. But Pearse liked to watch his mouth move when he was heated, so they had an accord going. And you know what, he was a revolutionary. This thing had a lot of moving parts and he was a big wheel in it. He had bided his time, playing the good corporal til now. They met exactly 7 months ago and had been fucking for also exactly 7 months. But that was enough time to trust he was the real deal. That wasn’t a huge concern though. Pearse was in from the jump—if Val was leaving, there was nothing that would color his days but blood. He didn’t know what goes into all this and didn’t need to. He hated these violence-loving psychos with every piece of him still worth holding on to, he would be a revolutionary too. And at this point he would follow good dick on bloody stumps across a snow covered minefield.
Pearse had been thinking about blowing off Corneal Honeycutt’s dome anyway. Not super seriously, more a fantasy. This tacky fascist creep. How ya like me now? BLAOW! Stupid god damn mustache. Wears a pith helmet in portraits! Preening ugly bitch. Love your country? Get a life. Fucking pussy ass death worshipping psycho.
Presented with a chance to not only turn his boss into blood but escape this conscripted fucking nightmare with Val and his pals was a no brainer. Val said something about “safe passage” across the border. Sounds cool if true. Something about tunnels? Something about meeting up with a group whose name was just a bunch of letters? I don’t even really know about this whole “find a big hole in the desert and build the hole commune” plan Val kept mentioning, but that would be a little more down the line after this. A nice dream. All this planning had given him something to dream of. This violent act, completed, gave him something else back.
“Wish I could kill his ass again. Take me from my cool life to ruin someone else’s country? Fuck you.” He muttered into the lightless back cab of the armored car
“My life was just getting started....” he whimpered to no one.
“Thats my part. Done. Dusted.” He said, in a lower register, head bowed, blood dripping freely from his nose. “Tried my absolute hardest. Think I earned my place on this planet. This wonderful world full of oak trees and ceramics and oral sex and beers in the park and big silly dogs and terrible dance music and foggy sunrises over the delta. This world they wanna make into ashes to sit atop and I won’t see if they do because of one misplaced god damn crisis-masculinity ass fanny pack put there by some sewer-beast sub mental jarhead. I hope they get killed!!!! Who leaves a fanny pack in the middle of a fucking thoroughfare?! A FUCKING FANNY PACK! ITS GOT THE WORD FANNY IN IT AND IT KILLED ME!!”
He was screaming now. Outside there were voices, they were scared and confused. It was cold comfort considering he was surrounded on all sides by like 8 inches of steel and at the mercy of evil men. He thought of Val. #1 good boy, doing stunts as he escaped.
“They truly may win this thing... whatever winning means anymore. Not me. I’m dead. They are probably gonna cut my fucking head off. And I’m probably gonna go to hell—ooooo and I bet the devil’s just laughing his ass off about it. I’d have been killed on sight if they didn’t have me dead to rights in the bean pile.”
He would probably get taken to the closest HD camera. They need the propaganda. Live beheadings get lots of engagement lately—but with more pomp and pageantry than the jihadist beheading videos the hardest fascists in this army grew up watching. And it would be the HARD nationalists he’d be dealing with from here on out. The harder you adopted the ideological underpinning of this life they trapped us in, the higher you went. Honor the rigors of your putrid nature and rise through the ranks. Promotions relied on outstanding service and a sweaty demand to “show overwhelming pride in getting to be on the winning team.”
“They’ll regret counting out the underdog, big dog,” he heard Val’s imperceptible drawl somewhere behind his eyes.
“Woof woof woof,” he barked out in slurring yelps that degraded to sad, limp moans.
He barked there in the dark for a while.
Then the truck shook, just a little bit. Someone stepping into the cab, but feels like they took a run at it. Must be excited. “Oh boy we get to kill a guy!” These guys were all one note. Murder, rape, exerting force propped power over others, dont they have real hobbi—
There was the sound of the stick shift crunching into first, then a loud boom. Not far. The van started rolling then jerked to a halt, jostling Pearse every which way. Boom. Boom. BOOM! BOOBOOBOBOOOBOOMBOBOOBMBOBBOBO-
BOOBOOOOM! This is a lot of booms. More booms per average than usual. Gravel thwacks metallicly across the flank on his box truck.
He forgot to ask what to do if he was captured. What would happen to this place after he escaped. It was all just “gimmi gimmi gimmi those frag grenades daddy-o!”
A whole choir of explosions sang to him through those dark steel walls. Screams. Confusion. The truck felt like it got up on two wheels there for a second. It thumped to earth to nod a bit. Back and fourth. Something with weight to it thumped against his ribs. Then nothing. It felt like a long second til he thinks: “I guess they have been shelling us more recently...”
He heard debris crunching underfoot as feet from far away marched toward the van in a rhythm he could almost place. He waited there in the shivering darkness.
About the Author
Io Asunder is God’s favorite mistake. If you must find them, they can be found @bum.lung