Memoris Part V (Old Part III)

Part V.

          When I returned from my VA appointment, I was welcomed by an empty home. The time I was able to spend alone, by myself, I cherished. My mother had returned to the office after coming home for lunch to check-in on me, my sister was still at school and my brother was most likely fighting traffic trying to get home in one piece. The house was mine; I could sit down and watch TV or listen to the radio without anyone asking if I needed anything or if I was all right. I could be as screwed up as I was, or I could retreat into something all together different and new.

          After pacing my room like a caged animal for almost fifteen minutes I decided to watch TV. There wasn’t much to choose from in the middle of the afternoon, but something was better than nothing. It’s funny the things you wont watch, can’t watch after you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, or been through what I have been through. Anything that might have gunfire is certainly off limits; I flipped past the History Channel. Anything that might cause me to get too jumpy is also a bad choice; I flipped past the USA afternoon thriller movie. The only thing left to watch was some damn Lifetime movie about a kid who got snatched at birth and how the mother never stopped looking for her son, then they were finally reunited when the boy was twelve and he didn’t have a clue who this strange woman was. Yeah, it was real uplifting. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of it.

         …Their faces are covered in blood, the four of them kneeling on the side of the small deserted dirt road. Their hands are tied behind their backs, fastened to their ankles with more rope. They look like broken souls. Their uniform tops are soaked with the blood pouring from their mouths, noses, eyes, and ears. The blood has run down their bodies completely, solid dried red hides the green of their uniforms. They have been beaten badly, bones broken, eyes swollen shut from hours of beating. Cavernous lines of blood outline what once were young faces, their images focused through one eye, the other has been so badly beaten that it no longer opens. I can’t hear anything, other than the godforsaken ringing in my ears. The side of my head and face has received such a beating that my eardrum has succumbed to the trauma inflicted. My jaw wont move and I can barely breath through my nose; it’s been broken and has swollen almost shut.

          I’m in the back of a large open bed canopy truck, a duce and a half. My wrists and ankles are still bound behind my back. Walking up to the helplessly bound men along the side of the road, a tall blonde man holds a handgun to the first soldier’s head. I struggle against the ropes that bind me, yelling out in protest. I can’t do anything to stop him, he simply laughs at my words and pulls the trigger…

          “Anyone home,” my brother called through the backdoor just as the man in my nightmare pulled the trigger of his handgun. “Leigh, you home,” he asked as I nearly jumped to the floor in front of the couch taking cover from the startling yell.

          My heart was pounding, “Yeah, I’m home,” I answered whipping the sweat from my face.

          “What you watching,” he asked more quietly sitting down on the couch a few feet away from me.

          “Ah, some damn Lifetime movie,” I said trying to act as though nothing was wrong, “but I’m not really watching it,” I continued handing him the remote before standing up. “Thanks. Mom is bringing home pizza,” he said giving the TV a perplexed look, “so she’ll be a little late. She said she tried calling the house, but no one answered.”

          “Hum, I didn’t hear the phone ring. Maybe I wasn’t home yet.” I said as I started towards the backdoor.

          “Maybe.”

          “I think I’m going to take a walk, get some fresh air.”

          “Have a nice walk, it’s raining.” He called to me as he changed the channel to something more uplifting, the Cartoon Network.

          Sure enough, it was pouring outside. Not just a slow drizzle, but an all out downpour. I hate the rain now, but as much as I hate the rain, I hate being inside a building for too long.

          I put on my rain jacket and grabbed my pack of cigarettes and lighter before stepping out onto the porch; I needed to get outside, to get away, to catch my breath.

          I’m not sure how long I had been sleeping, long enough to start dreaming I suppose. Their faces haunt me when I sleep at night, but not so much during the day. I rarely feel rested after I wake up from a nap, I just feel more tired and on edge than before, it hasn’t been a safe place for me since my last deployment.

          I stood under the small over hang of the porch smoking and watching the rain fall softly to the parched ground. I felt a million miles away from anywhere. My ear was hurting me, but I knew it was just because of the nightmare. The injury to my ear happened two years ago and usually only acted up on a plane or if it was raining continually over a few days, so the sudden onset of rain had nothing to so with the ringing pain I was feeling.

          Sometimes I have a hard time clearing my ears. My left eardrum was ruptured after being beaten about the head for almost six hours. The nightmare wasn’t a figment of my imagination; it was a living, breathing terror. My jaw had been broken, as well as my nose, and my cheekbone. I don’t know how the hell I have any teeth left in my mouth. A lot of things besides body parts were shattered that day. That was the day I stopped caring if I lived or died. My soldiers on the other hand, I cared about them, I did everything I could to bring them home to their families. That since of duty managed to bring myself home to my family too, albeit with two gunshot wounds to the lower abdomen. But that’s not the point. The point is I didn’t care about much of anything anymore. It was the first time I had become a shell of myself.