Sleepwalking

Noxious diesel exhaust makes my stomach roil and I am miserable in this sweat baked days-old uniform.  I’m filthy, but rarely are we able to look our best at that defining moment. 

The long flight through desert darkness has my head swimming in exhaustion.  The smells from this cramped briefing room assault me with the odor of a hundred sets of festering feet.  I want to throw up, get started, or just leave but there are maps and routes and frequencies to remember. 

Every detail is critical for that “just in case” situation; a drill I haven’t exercised in years.  I am almost frantic inside to hold tight to each shred that might make a difference.   

Then it clicks in my head and confidence returns; I’m an orchestrator of death these days, bringing it to the enemy with a subtlety that slips in like a thief and undermines their cause.  I take away those they love most along with those they would subvert; I strip them bare and publicly shame each and every one.   

I push aside my daydream and reach for some clarity and focus just as Dan punches me in the arm and calls me a REMF.  We laugh the last vestiges of fear away and as it dissolves a singular purpose to protect and survive come to the fore. 

We bicker over the turret but Dan claims the seat to watch over me –  while I will focus every ounce of energy and concentration I can muster on our purpose.  I am the bringer of death to the true ransackers of faith, and so we roll out.

We move quickly through the streets with precision and purpose.  Onlookers pay us no mind as we roll on toward death’s gate; a warren of evil, tormented souls. 

We aim to find the proof of their crimes and use it to orchestrate their demise; driving the wedge deeper between them and the masses with truth.

Two more turns to breach this city and as we clear the wall at the outer edge it strikes me curious that the people have vanished. 

Blackness and silence.

Confusion rolls through me like a mad tide, reaching hands attached to steely white faces paw at and around me but I feel nothing.  Their expressions grow ever more desperate as they pull and twist and strain to free me.  From what?  What is happening?

What is wrong with you people?  Stop touching me!

I exist in some kind of illusion.  I try to speak but nothing comes out and all I hear is a constant wash of static all around me and an annoying squeal emanating from the center of my head.    

I take a deep breath to clear my head but as the air fills my lungs dread begins to cover me like a shroud.  That smell, it triggers a gag while my mind processes a buffet of odors so foul; charred and rancid meat, rotten eggs and spent fuel.  I gag again from the bile creeping up to my throat and note the smell of feces, shit everywhere.

The feeling starts to come back and I realize I’m wet, soaked all over my face and body.  I bend my fingers and wrists and reach to investigate while outside hands continue to pry at me.  It’s wet and sticky so I move my head slightly and look down.  I’m covered in red and brown tissue, a mass of blood and foulness.  It’s everywhere, on me and all around where I lay.

A short jolt and I am sliding backwards, past a smoking wreck with its twisted black empty turret. 

Blackness and silence.

He’ll make it they keep saying.  I feel only searing pain between and behind my eyes as I try to open them just a crack, breaking the lids free of the crust, to see a man’s face grimly nod. 

“You’re okay,” I think he tells me.

I try to get my bearings and catch flashes and Danny mounting up so I ask for him but it’s like talking through an ocean so I try harder and force out the words. 

“Sit tight,“ he shouts, “You’re going to be good to go, just sit tight.”

The air begins to swirl, summoning dust and hot air.  It grows stronger like some hellish tempest as shadows threaten to fall on me again, leaving me to frantically beg for my friend.  I try to steel myself, to stay long enough for an answer that doesn’t come. 

Sweet silence and blackness begin to win over.  I give in to the darkness and embrace the release from this waking dream.  I process the occasional flash of a quick glance into my eyes and a confident but grim expression.    

I can’t tell you what happened in those days and weeks that followed.  I lived in a world all a blur, like a Russian film I had no interest in watching.  I know that I saw the friendly, sad and stern faces of people I didn’t know, didn’t care to know, who tried vainly to coax me from my retreat of dark silence.

I found familiar people in my mental refuge, family and friends, the people I loved and the one I loved most.  I recounted the days of my life and basked in that heaven of the past.  I started to glimpse old dreams and plans and felt a stirring in my chest. 

It was almost time to wake up so my mind methodically wrapped itself in armor for what lay waiting outside.  If I must come out the sole survivor then I would with hopes and emotions locked away with the fear and pain.  I came out, time to get on with the charade.

People hear what they want to hear so if you know the answer you win the prize.  All I wanted was time and space to myself so I rattled off the answers. 

Yes, I missed my friend.  No, I couldn’t remember what happened.  No, I don’t blame myself and of course it was hard but I had my duty to think about, too.  Yes, I would see his family when my time here was done.  Yes, I feel like I can get back to work in some capacity.  Of course I’ll take it easy.

My body was healed but my mind required a distraction from this death I felt I so desperately deserve.  I would find a full load of work to keep the demons away, to keep the focus sharpened on other things. 

It was only through coercion that I finally spoke to my parents, to assure them that I was fine despite the hysteria a uniformed man caused when they first learned of the incident.  I knew there were likely others wondering about me but I couldn’t bear the pain of answering the questions all over again, so I shut them out and sealed that life away behind an impenetrable wall of brick.

I went back to work, eager for a fast pace though my colleagues seemed reluctant to indulge me at first.  Maybe they saw a shadow of resentment in my eyes for having survived when others did not.  I would have gladly traded fates to end my guilt but it was not to be.  I think they knew that and for it they feared for me.  

So I took on more and even began to grin a little, poking fun so they would stop worrying.  People heard what they wanted to hear and saw what they wanted to see so they put me back in front of the orchestra and I conducted the greatest symphony of destruction ever wrought on my adversary.  Our victory was headlined for weeks around the world.  I had my vengeance, was hungry for more and would find it.

The day came when I had to go home.  I was filled with anxiousness, remembering at last that there were people I would have to see, to talk to and explain things to.  With the dread came the need to reinforce my shell, to create the conditions for distance with those who did not know and could not understand what this was all about. 

I barely remember talking to Dan’s family.  I don’t know what I said but what came out must have made them very.  Mostly I recited the reports I read because there was so little that I could actually remember.  They were grateful for what I could give and I was grateful to see some of their sadness lifted.  I felt some of my own lift through that experience. 

I stepped out of the terminal, took a deep breath of warm clean air, and made my way to the parking garage and on for home.  Gradually I started to build a new life and filled in the empty spaces with the hobbies I missed and even new people.  I locked my anger away and decided to find a way to earn the life I’d been given a second time. 

I worked harder and lived even harder, placing new experiences in the remaining gaps I felt inside.  But these were gaps that couldn’t be filled and I was clueless to the reason for the emptiness I felt. 

I dreamed of the sea, of being adrift far beyond the breaks in the roiling churn and waves.  Sometimes a hand would reach for me, out from the mist, but I sat there unmoving, afraid to reach out and take it.    

In the waking world some part of me knew what it meant but shrank from it, patching the brickwork and resealing the cracks in my wall.  I couldn’t bear to revisit my old life, the old friends and those I loved.  That life left a part of me numb but it was a part sealed away so I endured and continue to pretend I was this person remade. 

The best advice I may have ever gotten was advice I gave to someone else.  I finally talked with someone who could help, a disinterested party with experience in these matters.  Over the course of the next months I began to remember and compartmentalize the fragments and feelings from that horrid day a year earlier.  I started to dissolve the illusionary life and feel something real inside but I also began to understand the source of the gaps and empty spaces. 

What bitter irony that my days have become less troubled, but the darkness now haunts me.  It’s those nights when I am alone in the churning sea that I am most afraid now because I know the hand that reached for me is gone now, has been gone for some time. 

What bitter irony that I should be at a place where I have begun to crave life again yet the sweetest part that was my life faded away while I was lost in the blackness.  So I embrace the days and do what I can to endure the nights when I am left drifting on that moonlit sea.  I breathe in the fresh salt air and pray that this will be the night when your hand reaches out for me one last time.