Red brick buildings pass by through the tinted windows as we enter town, and the flags of America and the Party greet me at every street corner as the taxi nears Mr. Reeves’ office. Maybe I should have been more specific with the email I sent him; I only titled it anomalously as the one who survived. Will he help me or turn me in? God, I should have just pulled the trigger. Well, at least though, if he turns me in, the Party will probably answer that earlier wish.
“Here’s your stop,” says the cabbie.
I hand him a wad of cash—the last of it actually, I’ll have no use for it soon—and exit the cab. I close the door and walk towards the steps of the legal office.
“Hands up! Get on the ground!”
I turn around to try and see who it is. The cop fires his Taser. My whole body shakes. I feel the pavement on my lips. My thighs become warm, wet—I pissed myself. Then my younger self appears before me wearing pajamas with palm trees on them, his chest covered in stained blood. He starts screaming and laughing at me for being a failure, for not succeeding as he warned me earlier. I lie soaked and stiff as additional cops arrive and cuff me. I feel a cold prick on my neck. “Yep, it’s Private Peter,” says an officer. “We have him,” reports another to his radio.
“Hold on right there!” says someone else.
I raise my head higher, and look through my younger self jeering to see an older man at the doorstep of the office I intended to visit.
“He came to me in good faith,” says Mr. Reeves.
“Do you know what this man did?” says one of the officers shocked.
“And anyway, I doubt he will be having a hearing once the whitetops get their hands on him,” says another.
“Exactly why I am coming,” says Mr. Reeves.
That night I am flown to a New Founding Fathers Department correction facility. I’m dumped into a cell. “Get out of your clothes,” says a Party Representative standing in the doorway.
“It’s fucking freezing.”
The side of my face explodes in pain as I fall against the brick wall for support. All I see is the white beret of the Party Rep on top of his head as I slide to the ground. I watch as he removes his bloodied glove and places it underneath his overcoat.
“Take them off.”
I strip naked. A hose is brought in and they spray me down with ice cold water. I slip and fall onto the ground biting my tongue by accident, and the blood from my face mixes with the water. A towel is thrown onto the wet floor before me.
“Like that will help now.”
Fuck!—I am flat on the cement amongst the soaked floor, cradling my hip. The Party Rep towers above, “Want another visit from my boot?”
I stay quiet. My younger self sits on the bunk laughing and pointing, swinging his legs back and forth to mimic the Party Rep. They leave and the door is closed. The cell’s window that is just out of arm’s reach left open, where the cold wind blows through never letting me fully dry. I uselessly wrap myself up inside the wet blanket.
“I told you! I told you!” says my younger self.
“Go away,” I whisper.
“Why Peter?” I say.
“Yeah, why?” says Peter.
“STOP!”
“I told you! I told you!”
“He’s right you know,” I say.
“Yeah, you fucked up,” says Peter.
“Big time,” you agree.
I crawl up against the corner of the wall on my bunk. “Just, just leave me alone.”
I hear the clanking of the cell door —another morning. “My god, what have they done to you?”
“What would you possibly expect?” I clench the blanket around my body tighter.
Mr. Reeves stares at me for a moment, then leans against the cell bars shaking his head. “It’s time to go to your evaluation.” He throws some fresh clothes on the cot.
I put a shirt on—what is he talking about?
“You are being mentally evaluated. I was able to argue in your favor that someone like you returning from your events, and having committed no heinous crime yet while here, is very possibly mentally damaged. Even insane from their tour they survived, and needs professional help before any indictment takes place.” He guessed me right. I must have given him an expression of agreement as he continues, “What happened, how did you even make it back over here, and your face?”
“If they let me talk, you’ll find out.”
“Oh, they will Peter. See, I believe they are just as curious at your arrival here as anyone else is. Part of the evaluation to determine your sanity is an oral recitation of your events on Nova Terra.”
Jesus, I don’t want to do that. It’s why I wanted to kill myself in the first place. But then again… I guess it’s what I’d have to do anyway in order to reveal my story. “Why are you helping me?”
“Is that not self-evident?”
“No, you don’t know me at all, or I you.”
“On the contrary, everyone in the states knows something about you.” He must be talking about my receiving of the Medal of Honor, before my downfall. “You were cherished as a model citizen, a hero of this country. Your believed death in the Kuplar campaign was made into a national day of mourning. Then, as of yesterday, you were labeled the most wanted terrorist of America, the greatest threat, for crimes coming out of nowhere. It doesn’t take a genius to see the conflicting situation here. There must be something else. Something they don’t want to be revealed.”
“Some of those accusations are true.”
His eyes widen, “Which?”
“The murders, the drug addictions, manslaughter of a fellow marine—”
“Good God sir! Are you really what they claim?”
“I committed those crimes, but only because they made me. And this goes deeper than just obeying orders. They made me do them.”
“Ah, and I am guessing you are trying to reveal how they did that, and the higher-ups responsible for it? “
I nod. “But you know you’re just insuring your death too, talking like that, and trying to aid me.”
“They would never…”
He has the right mind about it, thinking the Party is trying to hide something—a healthy suspicion that took me too long to gain myself—but he is still blind, ignorant to it all. “I will give you one last chance Mr. Reeves. My end is here, and it won’t be a happy one. Go back to your family, your friends, go finish living your life.”
“What could have possibly happened to you?”
“The truth.”
We walk down a hallway, through a nicer area of the facility covered with flowerpots and large windows, to the room where the psychologist awaits my evaluation. My footsteps move in rhythm with the fresh falling rain against the glass. My younger self appears again, cutting in and out of corridors to stare me down as we walk. He jumps out into the hallway and grabs the torso part of his pajamas stained in blood, and shakes it at me. “Why are you doing this? Why Peter! I said not to tell. I said to go back and fight! Go back and be brave so I can become someone. Why are you so selfish! You’re a coward, a coward that would rather let little children like me die, than try and defend them and your country like a hero!”