When writing Book #4 – Dead Thoughts – I completed a great deal of PTSD research and uncovered a treatment called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT). According to Dr. Barry Krakow and Antonio Zadra, IRT is a cognitive therapy approach used for the last twenty years. The concept of IRT enables the person with PTSD to modify their dream or nightmare experience with an alternative outcome that reduces or eliminates the stress of the original nightmare, thus reducing or eliminating the stress from their terror. I have taken poetic license to rejigger this concept and plugged the alternative ending scenario into a dream sequence architected by AIMEE, the research team’s AI.
For this story, the participant, in this case, is Russell Carter, the former Marine ForceRecon Scout Sniper. What follows is the segment from Book #4, Dead Thoughts. The research team’s approach shows real promise, thanks to AIMEE. The University earned bragging rights in the articles that touted a PTSD solution through Central State University Psychology Department’s newest breathrough, which I chose to make up a very cool name Alternative Outcome Dream Therapy (OADT).
Hey, it’s real to everyone in the story.
Excerpt from Dead Thoughts:
The nightmare began as always, with him lying prone in the afternoon heat, a dry breeze offering no relief, and Peter “Set” Druthers, his spotter, lying beside him. Russell “Spike” Carter was a Marine Force Recon Scout Sniper. This pair had been together for eighteen months as overwatch for Force Recon ground teams. Pete’s job as a spotter was to call the shot, feed details regarding distance and windage, and deliver the fire command ‘Fire, Fire, Fire’ when it was the right time to press the trigger. Pete set up the shot, and Russ spiked it with one-shot-one-kill efficiency. Neither man played nor followed volleyball, but their precision skills as an effective team notched 87 set-spike kills to date. Neither kept count of the grisly score.
They laid several hundred yards above and to the south of the village streets. Their ground team headed toward what was supposedly an enemy bomb-making house. Set and Spike’s job as overwatch was to cover the team as they worked their way through the streets below them toward an intersection where a left turn would take them north toward their target.
Pete broke the silence, speaking softly through his throat mic, “Sweep right to the intersection and track north. Maybe thirty to forty yards. See her? She looks hinky to me.”
He was looking through his M40A5 rifle scope, a powerful Schmidt & Bender 5-25×56 with a P4F reticle, as he swung his scope eastward from watching the team track slowly along shattered buildings and storefronts to the intersection and northward. He saw her standing in the middle of the road in a black chador that moved gently about her in the breeze.
“Talk to me, Set. Define hinky,” said Russ just above a whisper.
“She’s standing in the middle of the street, not moving. Hands hidden. What’s she hiding? Is it a detonator that blows our guys to hell? Hinky as fuck, man. Crank up the mag. Watch her, Spike!” said Pete, escalating intensity beyond his normally even and calm voice.
“Got her,” Russ said, “and yeah, hinky for sure. I can’t see her hands. That damn chador is hiding whatever she’s holding.”
“Hold for the go!” said Pete. “Set elevation for 325 yards. Wind from the west at five mph.”
Russ adjusted his scope per Set’s instruction and scanned up to her face through high magnification to center the cross hairs on her forehead, and that’s when his blood ran cold. “Jesus, Set, she’s a child. She’s a fucking little girl. I can’t…I, oh Jesus God help me…”
With precision protocol and zero emotion, Pete spoke to him, “Hold for the go! We go as soon as I can see what’s in her hand. Focus, Spike! Wait for the go! Wait…for…the…go! Spike?”
Russ tried to wipe tears from his eye to clear his vision with the pad of his index finger, then pressed his eye hard into his scope to see what she was doing and…wait for the go. Unlike the burka or the niqab that hid a woman’s face, her chador left her face fully exposed, and he could see smears of dirt and tears streaming downward, leaving tracks over her cheeks. She was crying, and her dark brown eyes spoke of sheer terror that her life would soon end. Her shoulder moved as she began to pull her arm out from the folds of the chador. Russ’s finger came off the guard, flipped off the safety, and took the slack off the trigger even as his conscience continued to scream NO!
Her arm withdrew from the folds of her garment, but this time, in the dream, she did not hold a detonator. This time in the dream, Russ would not take the life of a 12-year-old little girl.
“Hold, Spike! Abort! Abort!” Pete hissed into his mic.
In her hand was another hand. She clutched the hand of a little boy who stepped out from behind her chador. They both turned and ran into an alley as the ground team turned the corner.
“Sweet Jesus,” gasped Russ as he moved his finger back to the trigger guard and flipped the weapon back to safety.
The intensity of his nightmare evaporated with a suddenness that snatched him out of the dream and awakened him with an audible gasp, causing him to sit up abruptly in bed. He exhaled loudly, rubbed his face with both hands, and began to cry.
Cara, who had already been sitting up next to him and waiting for him to emerge from his private terror, gave him the space he needed before pulling him to her, as she had done many times before. Her arms encircled him, and she said what she always said, “I gotcha, Marine.”
Russ nearly laughed as he spoke through his tears with tremendous relief, “I didn’t…I didn’t kill her. I never took the shot. She wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t trying to kill the team. She was trying to save herself and a little boy.”
Cara was as stunned as Russ appeared to be. This was not the all-to-familiar script where Russ pressed the trigger, and the little girl was blown into a million pieces by an explosive vest, leaving him guilty of killing her. He never knew if he had killed her before the vest exploded or had the vest blown her away before his round arrived. He found no consolation either way. He had been the one to press the trigger on a little girl with the intent to end her. He knew in his mind, heart, and faith that his actions had convicted him. He was convinced he was unredeemable and that would be his burden to carry for the rest of his life.
* * *
That scene was emotional for me to write and rewrite and rewrite…never got any easier. I struggled nearly as much as Russ’s original description of what happened in Book #1 when in reality, he did fire a 7.62mm round at a twelve-year-old girl with murderous intent.
She exploded into bits and pieces from the suicide vest she had been forced to wear. She had been terrified, and the tears were real when it went down in real life. The tears were no less real in the dream. The dream was real. It was as real as it was when it was real. Did his round impact her forehead and kill her, or did the explosive vest kill her before his round arrived?
Sadly, the truth Russ would never know, and not knowing made his nightmare more terrorizing. To him, it did not matter if the vest or the bullet took her life. He routinely condemned himself for the intent of his actions. What happened a split second later did not matter; he had been the one to press the trigger, and that made him unredeemable every time he experienced it.
His actions from that hot, dusty hilltop over a no-named Afghan village left him in misery. It did not matter how she died. Russ knew in his heart he pressed the trigger.
Sometimes, writing segments like this makes me step away to cool down or cool off or whatever will allow me to come back and write more. I have no clue where it comes from, and I know I could blame it on the relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach, but it wasn’t her. It is a blessing to know there’s a sense of realness in a story I’ve written when I find myself reading it once again and crying with Russ. That’s just hot…
Peace! G.