The Taliban donates a box of bugs

Brickyard pizza with banana peppers and olives, water, later bowl of cereal.

I'm in charge of the rec room for the troops, stationed out here wherever we are. There isn't much to do here, I have little work with. It's mainly a big open room, conference center sized, one side is bounded by a raised hallway about 3 or 4 stair steps up from our floor. There's a folding table at the opening of the main stairway down, and I keep going back to it to check some sort of ledger.

A local mullah or warlord is donating a game for our boys to play, a little-man game like Risk. I figure that these guys can get into a little war strategy game, blow off some steam, have some amusement. There's gotta be some old gamers here, right? The stuff arrives, and it's a big cardboard box, about 24x18x10 inche, and rather full of the game pieces. A little more than I expected.

But then I realize that this thing is crawling, full to the brim with bugs, because that's how the locals play the game, with a host of insects instead of plastic playing pieces. Holy moley. I gotta kill these things, our boys are never gonna play with a box of bugs. But I also don't want to offend the old man, tall, stern, long black robe and black turban. (cf Taliban Ambassador in Tree Cups of Tea last night) I decide that I can microwave the whole lot, kill the bugs, and solve the problem. So I put the box in a microwave and set to going for a few minutes. I take it out and the bugs have all turned into plastic playing pieces. Or not, from underneath the remaining bugs come lurching and streaming out. A giant black centipede rears up, waves in the air, before the rest of him slides out and moves off at a clip. I've dropped the box, maybe even turned it out. There's a lot of centipedes and roaches or beetles still alive, but as they crawl away across a surface covered with newsprint paper, they stop, they die, they give off fluids.