We all file back into our cages, there are no chains, but we shuffle anyway. I become trapped in my room, but things are different this evening. The nurse walks in. Hello, she says, I respond in kind. She gives me new medicine, she says this will cure your tendencies that got you here, it will make you feel so much better, Bobby. I swallow because I am a dog.
That night, I am restless and covered in a sheen of sweat. My sheets and mattress soak through, it is not particularly hot in my room, but I am so warm, I am in pain as well. My back aches and my legs feel stretched. I am moaning and groaning, and no sleep comes for me. I want to scream, but I feel like if I were to do it then my tongue and all my teeth would fall out of my mouth and I do not want to eat the slop they give to the disabled, young, and old. I hate the steak because I know what it is, but I can not eat the slop.
I roll around in my bed, looking and searching for some comfortable position so that I may sleep, but I never find it and sleep never comes. I am subjected to torture and this is it. Sleep deprivation is torture. This I know, I know it from when I was in the war, I know the war crimes, I know the torture, why am I being prepared like meat?
My tongue and teeth be damned, I start to scream. I tear my throat raw. I notice how bad it hurts first, and then I see the small chunks of flesh and specks of blood pattering down like rain on my white padded walls and floor. I feel my own anguish tearing me apart as I scream my rough and pained scream. My molar falls out, and then I begin to choke. I cough and pound my stomach with my fist until my incisor shoots out from my airway. My canine and then my molar all fall to the ground, clinking against each other. They do not blend in with the white floor because my mouth is flooded with blood, and they are now all dyed pink.
Nurses run in once again with feigned looks of worry on their faces as they try to calm me down and more medicine is forced down my throat. I feel so sleepy, but my pain keeps me sharp. They restrain me so tight and put me where my screams can not be heard. But I can still hear things, I can still hear the chopping and then grinding. They do this to me on purpose.
Robert was drafted by the U.S. Army shortly after his daughter's 5th birthday. The letter shook in his hands as he held it for his husband to read. He cried that night, heaving sobs into his husband's chest. But he did go.
It was a grueling few months before he went out to war, and he fought well. He saw his brothers thrown to the ground by bullets, their heads exploding and showering Robert with gore.
He was sent out on patrol with three other men, towards the end of his time, and as they walked, something felt off. Robert tried to tell his comrades, tried to let everyone know that something was wrong, but nobody listened.
From far away, a crack, and Robert's cheek was split open. Blood covered his face as he reached for his rifle and returned fire. The three men with him did the same. One of them was shot from afar, his head erupting like a geyser, leaving his body standing for a moment while blood shot out of his now exposed neck.
One of them turned, heard footsteps and whipped around, only to be greeted by a man with a knife. His throat was slit, red pumping out of him for every slowing heartbeat as the last man's chest was split by the knife. Robert stood against the shooter from far away and the man with the knife, all alone, and somehow he survived.
There was a moment where he blacked out, where all senses disappeared, and when he came back, he was kneeling on the man with the knife. The man's face was caved in, his eyeball bulging out, hanging by just a thread on the side of his face. The man in the trees was dragged out to where Robert's patrol was, torn apart, with bits and pieces of the gun he used shoved through his body. Rifle parts pushed through flesh.
Robert breathed heavily. He stumbled back, and was praised. They praised his ability to fight, to get out of such a bad situation, but all he could see was the blood that covered his eyes, the blood of his men. When he cried, the red was not washed from his vision. So he instead became more of a fighter. And he killed many more men.
The war ended shortly after this, and Robert returned a changed man.
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