*If you’re lost, start “Prison Of The Mind” at the BEGINNING or POTM 13 for review.*

Vision narrowing, the light I stare at above me is a quasar pulsing in time with my racing heart. I’m so hungry, shaking, wired, it’s so bright…

The sun radiates through the window, a shaft of brilliance illuminating the otherwise dark room. In the blackest of back corners, Matthews scans the bazaar through his Unertl scope.

We’ve been here for 48 hours watching this neighborhood for HVTs. He pushes back from the M40 sniper rifle to make eye contact.

“Jenny is divorcing me.”

“How long have you been holding onto that?” I assume this is why he’s been acting weird these last few weeks.

“Dude, she told me right before we deployed, said she couldn’t live like this.”

“Like what?”

“I know, right?! I guess she was talking about us coming back to Iraq so soon after we got home from the invasion? I told her it wasn’t any different than me going to the field every week.”

“Except you get hazard pay and a chance to shoot at people.”

“Right, so actually she should be happy for me.” He looks down at his sketchbook and log but it feels more like a nonverbal cue to change the subject.

This momentary silence was different than the past two hours. There was tension interlaced with the lighthearted words of this exchange. I don’t know if Matthews’s head is in the game.

“Hey, you good?”

There’s no response but I see his eyes tracking in the log now. He looks at his watch and then at me.

“What time you got?”

“It’s 1423, why?”

“That’s what I’ve got too. I just realized that one guy didn’t show up today.”

“She already filed? You guys seemed good when Emily and I came over before we left.”

“We were OK then but a couple days after, Jen caught me cheating.” He looked up to gauge my reaction and then back into the scope. “Brown shirt is down there now, log it 1430.”

“Why would you screw up a good thing?” I ask as I note the event and put the book down beside him.

“I dunno, why do we do anything? Why did you join the Corps? Why are we here?”

“Don’t start answering questions with questions again, Socrates.” Will my sarcasm lighten the mood?

“Earlier you asked if I was alright. No, I’m not. This is effing with my head and you need to quit asking.”

“You’re the one who screwed around. I could never hurt Emily like that. Forget about it, sorry I asked.”

From the shadows on the other side of the room I hear Mike’s voice.

“Since it seems you don’t want me to sleep, I’d just like to say it’s not all bad Matty. Now you’re a free agent. Hey, first round at Cheetahs is on me when we get back.”

Matt’s expression shifted. This wasn’t great right now. What if Emily is cheating on me? I could never do that to her.

“Hey, you remember when Cpl Dwiler locked his keys in his truck while it was running at the gas chamber?” I watched Matt’s face. There it is, that stupid grin.

“Yeah, he had you break his window because he didn’t want the MPs to give him a ticket or something for bringing his POV into the training area.”

“We almost had a bigger problem when PFC Smith thought he could break it with the pommel of his Ka-bar and it bounced off the window, barely missing his face!” Mike said laughingly.

Memory after memory come steadily on, each trying to be funnier than the last. Switching tracks at the last second, I avoided the impending train wreck. I’m standing on the caboose of this thought, looking rearward toward home. There’s a vulnerability here I can’t allow to be exploited. I walk one car up and uncouple the caboose. Home and all the past connections begin to grow smaller in the widening expanse between us.

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