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It started the same. Her blue eyes brimming with tears and the hot shame burning in his chest for lying to her. He tried to reach out to her, to cry out and explain, but she wouldn’t listen, running away from him and into the burning ranch house.
Flames shot through the upper windows, licking the siding. A thick black smoke billowed out, blocking all of the stars, mixing with the purple night sky. He tried to call to her, but she ran inside, out of his reach. The choking chemicals suffocated him, burning his throat. He had no voice. As much as Troy called out, the howling of the flames roared in his ears.
He lost sight of Megan, now replaced with the shadows of someone in front of him. First it was Adam, then it was his mom. Both of them stood side by side in the burning kitchen with distant smiles, waving to him as if he had just come home from school, unaware they were in a literal hell. His voice screamed in a muffled, painful cry. His mom opened her mouth to speak. Adam was saying something too.
What? What? Get out of there!
Neither moved, but instead got up and turned away to walk from him. He tried to reach them, but they turned around and walked through the flames deeper into the house.
Troy tried to follow but was paralyzed. The weight of his legs held him welded to the spot as the flames edged closer to his boots, taking over until he was not in the ranch house anymore.
That’s when the smell came.
Burning flesh lingered on the soul and in the mind. It was one of those smells that you couldn’t forget, as if the body knew it was fundamentally wrong and got stuck trying to process the sin against its nature.
It was Simon. His eyes peeled back wide with fear from within the window, too weak to fight back but still present to understand. The look in those eyes would’ve cured anyone of a love for war.
Troy clawed at the door’s searing metal, trying to wrench it open, paying no mind to the flames crawling up his arms, chest, and shoulders.
There was screaming everywhere. He couldn’t tell if it was his own or Simon’s or the roar of the flames, but Troy would’ve paid God himself a million dollars to make the screaming stop.
But Troy didn’t have a million dollars, and if God was real, he’d stopped listening a long time ago.
Troy wasn’t asleep now, but nothing was working. He had lost control of his thoughts. They just kept looping over and over.
Sometimes he would try to do the dishes at the start of his dad watchingJeopardyand find himself still standing in front of the sink when the show was over andWheel’s theme had started. By then the water was cold, and he wondered where he had gone for that time.
Troy’s dad knew something was up, but only asked a few times about Megan before he dropped it. He couldn’t remember what he had said when they had been painting—the color she had picked out— but clearly his tone or face or whatever he had said had been enough.
Troy had tried grounding techniques, switching from tapping to stretching. The Coke can wasn’t working, and looking at the clock just reminded him of death. He wasn’t an idiot. He recognized he needed help.
One more week. In seven days he would be back on post and he could get back with his therapist. It had happened before, and treatment had helped.
At first he hadn’t thought he needed help, that he could handle it, but the nightmares had been regular companions. He had joined every dating site and had found a new person to chat with at least once a week to keep the looping thoughts at bay. It didn’t affect him at work. If anything, it was nice to have something else to focus on, until he had a bad day at work. He barely held it together until he got home, then while cooking he got lost in his thoughts, burned a steak, and beat the shit out of the counter with a sheet pan. That was when he realized he might need some help.
Last night, Troy had messaged his therapist to set up the appointment for next week, only to find out they were on emergency leave for the next month.
Megan had been right. He didn’t want to be vulnerable and would rather hedge his bets than risk losing everyone. In the process he had lost her along with any interest in other women. Troy lay awake at night trying to reconcile everything she had said.
He tried the lonely man’s way to put himself to sleep and work out the kinks, but only found himself wanting her more, lying awake alone with his thoughts.
During the day, he pushed himself at the ranch house until his back was sore and his arms trembled. Today was no different.
“You’re going to go blind if you keep painting the trim with your eyes that close.”
“Gotta get it done before I leave. Aren’t you always the one that said not to do a job unless you’re going to do it right?”
“That’s true, so that’s why you should call her.”
“Gotta love that blunt honesty.”
His dad must have shrugged, because next he heard the telltale sound of his hands slapping the thighs.
“I’m right.”
“Not about this. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“What did you do?”
