Flashback (and not the good kind)

OK, before we get into the heavy stuff, Michael's Michelle asked for an update on The Wife’s cats - down to two now, probably because they had to deal with a Rover when we both left the place for just over a week recently. BTW, they make sure the Rover never sees them during her daily visits to put out water and food

These are pretty much feral cats that are very close buddies (except when the black one occasionally goes walk-about for several days. Then the orange-n-white one, who was lost and lonely during the hiatus, makes the black one work hard to get back in good graces) that don't tolerate me being too close. Here they could only take just so much of me standing 40 feet away before leaping up and running off just after I stopped recording.

The orange-n-white one is pretty damn fast for a wide-body! (I had to blob-out The Wife because she has a thing about being photographed and what with the recent trip and all, life has been stressful enough for her.) But they will stick pretty close to The Wife. Especially when she's headed out to her barn where thier food is kept.

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This rather dark and convoluted piece (spoiler alert. This post is dark and raw so you might want to bail out now) is one of the more recent of my past mussings. It was written sometime around 0300 from a very uncomfortable hospital room chair in the mid 2000’s, but is all tangled up in events, and places, and people, from many decades earlier.

The Wife had surgery the afternoon before to try and put her shattered ankle back together with bits of metal (We were working on the property and later never could find the hole that did so much damage and caused that horrible scream as she stepped in it.), and she never does well on drugs and anesthesia, reacting in unpredictable and undocumented ways. So I was staying close by because on a previous occasion she had experienced a drug-related seizure that never made it into the overnight nursing staff’s reports.

Sometime in the wee-hours I managed to get myself braced between the chair and the side of her bed well enough to fall asleep, but not well enough to avoid being jerked awake by this nightmare, a terrifying mashup of places and events and people and time.

The core of the nightmare is a familiar manifestation of my particular brand of PTSD, though it doesn't pop up near as often as it used to anymore. (Does that mean I'm healing, or that the people involved don't matter anymore because I can't remember their names? - One more thing to keep me up at night -) The new bit this night was The Wife’s involvement.

Not wanting to risk repeating the nightmare in a strange place surounded by people with the ability to give me drugs, and having my laptop with me, I sat there in the dim light of the gently beeping monitors and, between interruptions by staff checking vitals (no seizures that night!), wrote this up while waiting for dawn.

Most of it was easy to recall because I'd had decades of repetition burn every detail into my head. The new bits, The Wife bits, were terrifyingly fresh.

The only edits I've made here were to swap out The Wife’s real name for "The Wife", otherwise I wouldn't have to deal with the dim remains of PTSD anymore because she would, in the venacular of work-arounds for social media policy enforcement bots, un-alive me!

Flashback

I’m in the jungle. I know that instantly. There’s no mistaking that smell. No mistaking that heavy silence that, if broken, means hell has gotten loose again. And no mistaking the painful, knife-edge feeling in my gut that comes from the sure knowledge that the silence will be broken. If not now, then now, or now, - now. No mistaking the hot, greasy heft of a modified Browning in my hands and M16 slung across my back. The weight of the uneasy alliance between them and me pulling at my arms. No mistaking the pain of feet softened by too many miles and too many days inside wet boots, or the nagging rasp that comes with every movement of coarse wet cloth across raw skin.

The air is thick as water and twice as hard to move through. The muddy green light, what little of it survives in this soup, is sluggish and fuzzy and I can’t see. I try. I try ‘til it burns because I know what lurks out there in the murk beyond vision. I know because I’ve found it, it’s found me, before. And I would much rather crawl into a hole and pull it in after me than face the Green Dragon again, but I have to. People – there - there they are - moving along behind me, following like shadows, part flesh, part hope, need me to be here. Need me to show them the way out without waking the dragon. And even though it can’t be done, I have to try. It’s my burden.

How did this happen? How did I become responsible for them? How is it that they look to me for redemption? Look to me for hope with eyes of no hope that skitter away lest the truth be provoked? How dare they shovel the muck of their futures onto my shoulders? How dare I lift it up and take another step? But I must. I don’t know what horrible thing I've done that must be atoned for. But I have no choice. Another step.

As he must, because destiny dictates, the dragon strikes. He strikes fast so there is no stopping him. No deflecting or dodging his steel. Yet he strikes slow to make sure I have plenty of time to see the ultimate despair coming. The murk is ripped away in sharp chunks by the white-orange flash of impacts. Flung away to ensure the jagged black of the end can be seen. The silence is annihilated by the triumph of steel on flesh and the din of hope defeated.

The dragon chuckles and, who was it that winked out this time? Which time? How many times did one of us get torn apart bad enough to silence the screams with death? Was it that kid from Philadelphia? The one that hides his good behind big talk of the bad that got him here and the bad that was never caught? Or maybe it was The Rev, the one that stuck a bayonet into the Montana cowboy one night for lighting a cigarette. Not too deep, but enough to cut him because he deserved it for nearly getting us killed with that beacon of light. Funny too. Just the day before the unapologetic cutter, The Rev, was all upset because the little bible he was always reading from pretty much fell apart from the wet and today he turns around and slices on one of his own. But the rules are different when you are already in hell and trying to claw your way back out.

Why can’t I remember the names? Many came out. Made it back to the real world. We should celebrate that. We should get together every 5 years or so and drink and laugh and remember and cry. But many didn’t come out, and I can’t remember the names.

The dragon chuckles and The Wife screams. The scream rips into me with as much impact as the steel that rips into her. It shatters me, as she is shattered too. Again and again I reach out to stop the scream before it starts. Again and again my failure, all bright and black and impossibly loud, reaches back and sears the skin of my face.

I crawl to her, picking up the bits as I go. If I can put the pieces back where they belong I can stop the screaming and light her eyes again. But I’m fucking it up. There are so many pieces and they keep slipping from my hands. I can feel them being ground into the bloody mud beneath my frantic knees. If I can just get the most important parts put back it will be OK. But I can’t make them fit. They are sticky and dirty and shapeless and I can’t - make - them - fit. And the longer I screw around the more sticky and dirty and shapeless The Wife herself becomes.

I’m fucking it up and she knows it. Not with recrimination, but with eyes draining of hope that cut far deeper than the steel of blame. The harder I grip the less there is to hold. And when there is nothing left in my arms but cooling mud her lingering scream continues to shred my insides.

How dare I take another step?

The ghosts, so many ghosts, agree. They cling like heavy,  shredded fog as I try to move on, insisting that I am one of them and just don't know it yet.

I wasn’t good enough to get all of them out and I can’t remember the names.

I’M FUCKING THIS UP AGAIN!