Richard Greyson is (agentacrobat) wrote in repose, @ 2015-12-27 01:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, dick greyson |
Who: Richard Greyson
What: Narrative -
Where: His trailer at carnie land
When: 4 AM Christmas Morning
Warnings: Nada
The firefight went on around him, enemy fire raining down on his regiment while they dove for cover and fired back with what they had. Sand, rock and shrapnel erupted in explosive blasts and leaving only the echoes of the screams of his brothers. Brothers who were still faceless and nameless. Well, not nameless, he'd been given a list of names. Names he'd committed to memory as soon as he'd gotten home. Names he refused to forget as if he'd somehow single handedly keep their memories alive and somehow regain all of what he was missing.
The doctors called it selective amnesia, told him it was the PTSD, said he'd need to continue his treatments, and stay on his medication, and keep fighting the battles internally to get well again. But every night the dreams were the same. Exactly what they should be. Cold sweats, and terrifying battles. Blood baths, and the replay of the exact moment he suffered the injury that sent him home from the combat situation in Afghanistan, and got him a medical discharge from the Marine Corps. He remembered details of Camp Pendleton, but he couldn't remember what it smelled like.
He remembered his way around like he'd been there a hundred times, but he couldn't remember what the food tasted like.
He'd remembered his wife, but her touch had been foreign.
Just like these dreams, he remembered the fear and the battle, but he never saw any faces. He only heard names and he swore they changed each time. New names that he'd memorized inserted where a name was needed as he dreamed and remembered the battle that had done him in. He'd known it was real. Had seen the news - had seen his name on the news as wounded, missing, seen his homecoming as a brave POW. Replayed it time and time again in the months following. He suffered the dreams still, on nights like tonight.
It wasn't long until the dream shifted slightly, as dreams sometimes did, with a click of a button like a changing channel on a remote control. This time the dream was in black and white instead of technicolor. But the shoes he was wearing in it fit. Black boots. Not marine issue, not combat fatigues, just black. He was crouched under something, smile on his face, saying something he couldn't hear to someone he couldn't see, but he wasn't watching it. He was living it. He could feel his own heart beating in his chest telling him it was time to be excited - not forcing him to be afraid because he was meant to be afraid.
He couldn't hear, couldn't recall his own words, he just knew this was the right place to be. He struggled, his body, back in his trailer, tossed and turned and his eyes screwed themselves tightly shut as his body and mind almost willed itself to sleep harder and dig deeper as he dreamt something that felt terrifying real for the first time since he'd woken up a war hero in that hospital bed all those months ago. He needed to hear, he had a comm link in his ear, he was speaking, smiling even, but he couldn't make anything out. It was silence, there was maybe white noise, still deaf from the previous explosions. He didn't know. He couldn't force it. He had to force it.
He could still hear the vague sound of Afghanistan in the distance, two dreams colliding, competing for purchase in his mind. When could finally hear words it was him speaking, hollering for medics, and ground support. They needed back up, they were taking heavy fire. No, that wasn't right. He was safely crouched in a crawl space, he was fine. And safe. It was too many memories. But this one wasn't real. Or the other. One of them wasn't right. Outside there was a loud explosion. He looked behind him, the crawl space he was hiding in became the room he'd been held prisoner in Afghanistan. But he wasn't in his fatigues then either. He was still crouched, still in black. He got up and walked around. It was loud and silent all at once. He looked around, it was all familiar and not at all. He heard a familiar voice smirking at him in his ear, coming through the comm link. "Okay Dickie, time to make your entrance."
The sounds of multiple rounds being fired off and humvees going up in explosions woke him as he sat up in bed in a cold sweat was familiar. This part he knew. He'd never incorporated outside events before. Certainly not new random nicknames, and his eyes shot to the cabinet above his stove that housed the medication he kept on hand in case things became unmanageable. But he rode it out. The deep breaths, and gasping coughs and tears that stung. He shook and clenched fists. He was stronger than this, and he firmly believed it was the medication keeping him from the truth. It all meant something. Maybe it was the ramblings of a truly crazy man, that hadn't escaped him, and this wasn't a breakthrough at all - he was self aware enough to know the likelihood of it all being a conspiracy was slim to none, and the likelihood of him being a truly disturbed person was highly possible. But he'd ride it out for just a bit longer. He settled on the loud noise being the tarp whipping against his trailer, bundled up to fix it and tie it down, and crawled back into bed for a sleepless night of trying to figure out where on earth he'd heard the name Dickie before this week. It felt too familiar. Too safe. Too dangerous. Too easy to answer to. No one in his life had ever called him that, nor would he allow it, it was ridiculous name.