Screamscape 

Can you tell me about your dream?" the VA hospital psychologist asked.

Dream, I thought. Not quite the word I'd use. Dreams always implied wishes and cotton candy

and big-ass red Corvettes and Tahiti and tiny umbrellas in coconut drinks and beautiful babes and children flying kites in April and money. I wasn't having dreams.

Each night for the past eight months since out-processing, leaving Afghanistan, shedding the heat like sheep sheared of their winter coats, seeing the sand diminish from the DMZ like time lost, the portholes of my transport plane misting in misery, I landed in nightmare.

Here’s what I had earned in my tour of duty: Sergeant’s stripes stitched on my sleeves, a purple heart hung around my neck, PTSD pinned to my chest like a service medal, and night terrors buried in my brain like IEDs stuffed inside a dog’s carcass.

Each night, I'd hear the howls of shattered bones sprouting from the desert like death totems, see blood dripping from splintered words spoken through mouths of broken teeth, taste the smell of cordite sizzling torrid air, feel my fingernails ripping through hope like skin shredding on concertina, touch shrieks of cluster bombs dappling my conscience like hypodermic needles. And see them, victims of war. The men beside me on dirt trails that wound like intestinal coils through cold mountains. The villagers who saw our presence as ghouls, eating their valleys like flesh.

Each night my head screamed. Each night I turned my sheets into wet gauze, encasing my body in surgical bandages. Each night my eyes blared red like sirens. Each night my blood pulsed through my veins like rotor wash. Each night I woke shouting dead men’s names, this my Cocteau Rimbaud screamscape. Each day I feared the next night. 

After waiting for a response, the psychologist asked again. "Can you tell me about your dream, Sergeant?"

I reached into my back pocket for a handkerchief, raised it to dab at sweat pocking my forehead like shrapnel, brought the cloth down quickly to wipe away a tear I hoped the doctor had not seen, and said, "No. I can't remember anything."