The mind of a Soldier

                                             By, Richelle Titus

He is haunted. The past torments and tortures his once sane person. He’s in hell, locked in a frame of mind, damning his soul. Escape, impossible. Surrender, inconceivable. Survival, agonizing. Unfit to provide, but too proud to accept charity, he is in a place only fit for nightmares. They call him mad, say his mind is weak. A revered soldier. A mocked man.

He awakes, covered in a sheen of sweat. His hand reaches for his weapon, but grasps nothing, just peaceful air. He is home. He reminds himself of this daily but his mind won’t believe his urgings. For a murmur brings back the wails of the dying. A hint of perfume brings back the stench of decaying souls. A subtle graze snaps tension into his battle honed muscles. He clenches his eyes, to block out the images, but the scene continues to play on, inside of the walls once used for protection. He looks to his companion sleeping beside him and wonders if she is safe with him next to her. He fought for his country, for the red and the white, but it changed him. Keep the peace, his main goal. To save lives, his calling. These are the things he was sent to do, if only these were the things he was made to do.

The war is over, or so they say, but it still rages on, unseen but devastating all the same. The battle between then and now, nightmares and dreams, moral and immoral acts, deranged and rational thoughts. The faces of the living he passes on the street morph into the profiles of the men he lead to slaughter. They were boys, just kids, who were sent to defend something they didn’t understand. Naivety and innocence lost. Thoughts of them plague his weary mind dwindling down the reserve of sanity hoarded in a time of horrifying brutality.

They have sent him home, decorated and esteemed, to be the man he was before. What a glorious concept. He cannot find a man to be. For he cannot return to the man before but, they will not accept the man he was during the war.  How is he to live in a world where people have moved on, when notions of peril harass his mind?

 He is not mad; he swears it’s true, he is just locked in a place and time, with a door none can defeat.