Face Value

6. The Desert

  The only sound reaching my ears was the whispering of the wind in an environment that I could not yet see.  I was fighting a feeling of intense weariness, my limbs heavy and laying prostrate against my body in what felt like sand. My mind drifted casually between the planes of consciousness and a dream state just outside of my reach.  

   Reluctantly,  I attempted to pry my eyes open but was immediately blinded by the bright light searing down from a pale blue, cloudless sky. I sat up and blinked rapidly. Expecting to feel the ground beneath me, I reached out without a thought to look but my fingers sank into what felt like sand. In fact, there was nothing to see but sand in every direction. A few rock faces cast shadows over the dunes and loose boulders that lay beneath them. Tall palms sprouted up from the sand, swaying in the occasional dry breeze. I was willing to bet that somehow I was somewhere in the Middle East. 

   The landscape reminded me of Iraq and Afghanistan; the world I'd been exposed to during my two tours with the Marines. I could vividly recall trekking through the loose earth and looking through the scope of a rifle from the roof tops of stone buildings. The sand here is soaked with blood and screams reverberate off of the boulders. I dreaded this place and the chaos that enshrouds it. 

   I stood up on shaky legs, searching desperately for  a mode of escape; a vehicle maybe. It was only then that I was able to observe my attire; it was the standard  desert utility uniform issued to everyone enlisted in the Marines. The sleeves of the four pocket, digital desert camouflage print blouse were rolled up just below my elbows. The legs of the matching trousers were tucked into the tops of tan colored combat boots that were laced up tight. My head was shielded from the sun by the utility cap and I could feel the familiar weight of my sniper rifle against my hip as it hung from a strap on my left shoulder. It was as if I had taken a step back into a memory but some aspects of my present self still remained. My hair was much longer than it had been back then, flopping over my forehead and brushing the tips of my ears under my cap. On my right forearm, there were the two of my most recent scars, about a year old, that I hadn't received in the Marines. They were two distorted crescent shapes from a knife attack with a suspect in a fifteen year old homicide case that I'd taken the liberty of reopening. 

   In an unconscious movement, one that was more a force of habit than something that served any real purpose, I ran my fingers over the stitching of my surname into the fabric of my blouse above my right breast pocket. Our uniform, specifically that particular stitching set us a part in these foreign countries and I could recall a certain unsavory memory of it usefulness:

   During my first tour, there was a riot-- some locals protesting against the surveillance by U.S. Armed forces in a small town outside of Afghanistan. By night fall, the situation seemed to have been laid to rest but come the next morning there was the sound of wailing and a cloud of smoke engulfed the buildings. Some time during the night, some of the locals thought it fit to express their dissatisfaction by assembling a few bombs. The sound of the explosions woke me up at base camp just a hundred yards away and I spent the next few hours scraping up the scattered remains of my fellow soldiers who'd been targeted. Miraculously there had been more than a few body parts with the uniforms still preserved. Obviously, they were the easiest remains to identify.

    I was 18 when I joined the Marines and 21 when I left and that was one of the memories that has stuck with me for a decade. I tried to leave those memories behind when I came back home: running through hailstorms of gunfire, human beings blow to bits and the pain filled stares of widows and orphaned children. This was my past and Alice was my future. Why the two points in my life seemed to meet full circle at this very moment, was a concept I couldn't grasp. 

     In the distance ahead of me, the shape of a human form seemed to be moving towards me, the silhouette appearing to sway in the waves of heat. My senses immediately shifted into overdrive, my body and minded suddenly hyper aware of my surroundings. The fingers of my left hand slowly crept toward the base of my rifle and I began mentally preparing myself to defend my person. Gradually, the form came into focus and I could make out the familiar curves of a woman. I could see the tanned skin, long legs and the blonde curls of my Alice.

   And it was my Alice. She was less than 5 feet away from me when I saw her glossy baby blues, the sun forming a halo behind her head. She was barefoot in the warm sand and clothed in a loose white dress that hung from her shoulders by thin straps. Without her a word, she walked into my arms, her arms snaking around my torso. I clutched her to me, reveling in the warmth radiating of her body. I released a breath that I hadn't known I'd been holding. The pressing desire to embrace her; to hold her in my arms and kiss her and make sure that she was alright was overwhelming. Seeing her whole and complete before me released a tension within me. My heart swelled with relief but the moment was shattered as quickly as it began. 

    Alice took a step back from me, remaining silent as she stared up into my eyes. I felt the cold press of metal against my left side.

   "Alice what are you..." I asked leaving the question hanging above us in the air that was now thick with tension. She didn't respond, dragging the the hard metal up against my side until it was pressed firmly in the center of my chest. I could see clearly that it was a handgun that she was gripping in her left hand; a Smith & Wesson 9mm by the looks of it. 

    "It'll be alright, Damian," she whispered, her voice a gentle chorus of bells. With her free hand, she reached up to stroke a few loose strands of my hair from beneath my cap. "This will be quick." I heard the tell tale click of the gun's safety being switched off. 

   "Don't do this, Alice." I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. Cautiously, I took a step back and she followed me, taking a step forward to keep the gun pressed on my chest. "I know you won't hurt me." This was not my Alice. She wasn't capable of violence. There was no way that she would pull the trigger. 

  "You don't know anything." Her blue eyes had frozen over into icy pits. There was nothing there. No feeling. No emotion. No humanity. It was as if she could see me but she truly didn't know who I was or what I had meant to her. What we meant to each other. I took another step back and she let me, making no move to corner me. So keeping my hand raised, I took a few more steps back until I was able to put a few feet between us. Alice kept the gun leveled at the center of my chest. "I love you," I murmured, trying to appeal to the woman I'd spent the last 8 years with.

   "They're coming for you."  Something like fear crossed her face and she glanced around wildly, her curls bouncing about her shoulders. It looked as if she was looking for something in the sand beneath us. My wife tossed the gun into the sand and took off running in the direction behind me. I turned and watched her sprint off into the distance, the tail of the dress floating behind her. I wanted to follow her; to grab her and stop her. I wanted to keep her here with me but I couldn't move. My feet felt like they were made of lead. She kept on running for several feet until she just... disappeared. Her sprinting form becoming as a cloud that was carried off in the desert wind. She dissipated like a mist; it was as if she had never been real at all. I stared, speechless into the distance at where she once stood. 

   Then from behind me, I heard the rumbling of something huge barreling through the sand. The earth rumbled with the force of it. Heavy metal gears shifted, wheels tumbled and an enormous metal beast rushed toward me.