Page 2 of The Darkness Within

It’s rare when I make my father laugh or smile. To see it on his face now fills me with pride.

“Well, don’t let your mother hear you say that. Now run along outside and play. Be back for dinner and don’t be late.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Sir… Sergeant. Can you sit up for me?”

When I open my eyes, it’s not my father I’m staring at, but the nurse. “Just… Stand back. Please,” I beg in a panicked voice.

“I’m just going to set these right here on the table until you’re ready to take them yourself,” she says in a patient voice, backing away slowly like she’s confronting a frightened animal.

I guess I am. Even from across the room, her presence feels suffocating, like she’s crowding me out of my safe space, and I know she won’t leave until she watches me swallow these pills. It’s all they do, shove pills down my throat. But no one talks to me. I sit in this bed, rotting away, day in and day out, with the exception of physical therapy. They deliver my meals in silence. And when I have an episode, they come in and tie me to the bed and shoot me up with drugs until I become as silent and distant as they are. Grabbing the pills off the table, I shove them down my throat and swallow them dry. The soft soles of her shoes whisper across the linoleum as she sees herself out.

In this hospital, things work on a reward system. If I want to be rewarded with solitude, I have to take the drugs. If I take the drugs, I’m rewarded with another kind of solitude, from the dark shadows that haunt me. When I’m high, I disappear. I become so invisible they can’t find me. Like hiding in the darkest corner.

A dark corner in my mind so isolated that I can’t smell the blood and the urine.

So isolated that I can’t hear the echo of shouting in Pashto.

So isolated that I can’t tell if it’s dark or light, if I’m above ground or below it.

The green and golden leaves begin to blur until all I can see is a muddy shadow that dances across the floor, creeping closer to my bed. If I don’t run, the roots are going to wrap around my limbs and drag me below the ground, into the darkness. But I can’t run. I can’t move at all because my legs feel so heavy from the drugs, like dead tree limbs. It flows through my veins like a hazy cloud, turning my blood thick as molasses, until it reaches my head, where it drops a heavy blanket over my consciousness, and I can feel myself fading away. My heartbeat slows to a crawl and my eyes become heavy, my field of vision becoming narrower with each blink.

I never know how much time has passed when I open my eyes again after blacking out. Could be a day, a week, or just a handful of hours. Not that it really matters—the passing of time no longer holds any importance. I have nowhere to go, nothing to be late for, and no one is coming to see me. I have no reason to measure time.

Time is for people who have a life. They worry that they are wasting it. I’m not worried about wasting time. I’m not worried about anything.

A knock on the door brings my head up, and I open my eyes to see my physical therapist standing in the doorway. He looks hesitant to approach, and I wish he would just go away. I have little respect for the man. He’s terrible at his job. He has no spine, no patience, and he does nothing to motivate me. Am I supposed to be excited about physical therapy? It fucking hurts. Every step I take on my broken left leg is excruciatingly painful.

“Sergeant Sommers, it’s time for therapy. Are you interested in participating today?”

“No.” My reply sounds as flat as paper.

“Okay then, have a good day, Sir.”

It’s that easy to get rid of him. If only it were that easy to get rid of everyone. Sometime later, my nurse comes in to check my vitals. She doesn’t speak to me. She comes back with a tray of food, again, not speaking to me. All the while, I stare out the window at the giant oak, watching as it changes colors in the waning sunlight. The golds and the greens become darker as day turns to night.

The sound of a dog barking echoes in the hallway, and suddenly, I’m transported to another place and time as my hold on reality slips away. The last thing I see is red. Nothing but red as the smell of blood comes back to me.

Day 1 in captivity

Our mission was simple: sweep the building, confiscate any weapons we found, and clear the fuck out. The tiny village on the outskirts of Kandahar didn’t seem like much of a threat. Intel hadn’t alerted us to the fact that the place was hot. The team split, with Gutierrez and I taking the bottom floor. We cleared three rooms before crossing a large, woven rug that covered a trapdoor in the floor. As soon as we fell through the hole, insurgents pounced on us, securing our mouths and hands with thick tape. I could feel my heart pounding in my throat, like I had swallowed it, and tasted bitter fear as I heard gunfire through my comms.

My team was under fire, and I had no way to assist them or alert them. Gutierrez screamed behind his tape, and I kicked until they tied my feet together as well. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, sharpening my senses, and giving me a tremendous surge of strength. My fight or flight mode kicked in, making me feel practically delirious with rage that I couldn’t unleash on my captors.

I knew in that moment I was fucked. We both were. They hadn’t captured us just to turn around and set us free. The trap we’d just fallen into might as well have been the gateway to hell, and I was just another hostage. A prisoner of war. At least, if I were lucky. Otherwise, I was just going to end up dead in a matter of minutes or hours.

I could hear my team shouting through my headset and knew that at least one of them had been shot. In minutes, the gunfire became sporadic until it ceased altogether. Either my team had fled, or they were all dead.

Taliban soldiers shouted through my comms and in my face, and I knew others were getting closer, converging on Gutierrez and me.

Shit was about to get real.

They dragged our resistant bodies through dark tunnels over dirt-packed floors until we reached a short, dead-end hallway. Like an alcove cut into the hard-packed earth. With our backs against the wall, and our wrists and ankles tied, we were pretty useless, unable to do anything but curse behind our gags. They shouted at us in Pashto, and I couldn’t understand a fucking word. They shoved guns in our faces. They kicked us in the ribs. And when they finished ‘welcoming us’, they left behind one armed guard and two dogs. The dogs sat still as statues, snarling, and drooling, and I knew without a doubt, if I so much as moved one muscle, they would tear my limbs from my body and dine on my bloody flesh.

I didn’t know how much time passed while we sat there. It could have been hours or days. My stomach growled with hunger. My body was covered with cold sweat. And when I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I whimpered behind my gag as I pissed myself, choking on a sob as warm urine coated my thighs and ass, soaking into the packed dirt floor beneath me. And all the while, the crazed dogs barked, and barked, and barked.

The smell of urine assaults my nose as my agitation mounts. My fingers tighten in my hair, grabbing fistfuls and pulling the strands loose from my scalp as I scream. The barking echoes inside my head, building to a deafening roar, drowning out everything else. Drowning out reality and rationalization, and the four walls of my hospital room. Behind my closed lids, all I can see are dirt walls. The machines hooked to my chest beep maniacally as my heart rate spikes, and my blood pressure becomes so unstable that my head feels dizzy.

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