Summary: A man named Jim, who is suffering from PTSD, is having strange dreams, or nightmares, where he is someone he does not recognize. Someone who goes by a different name and has different thoughts. He thinks his time spent in Viet Nam during the war has affected him. He calls his wife Patience, though that is not her name, because of her calm and patient manner. In a previous chapter he is awakened from a dream, or so he thinks, by a phone call from someone who calls him Randy.


Once you tell your story you might as well stick to it, because it's all anyone will believe afterwards. You can't deny, change, or add to it. Anyone else can though. They have final editorial rights to embellish, downplay, or substitute anything you have previously said. It's like once you've said something it has a life of it's own.

I remember the spring of '69 as being a moment of undecided individualism. Everyone was fighting for a cause, or because there was a cause, or just because. Rag-tag middle income hippies displaying the uniform of the decade to show their individualism. The rule of the road was to trash the previous decade, and things regressed from there.

It was about that time I looked around and realized that I didn't fit into any particular clique. I started thinking in terms of my own French Foreign Legion. It was after watching the movie "Catch 22", made from Joseph Heller's novel, that I decided to join the Air Force. I knew there was a good chance I'd get drafted so I decided to try to join the service on my own terms.

It was during basic, and a few following advanced courses, I learned important things about being a soldier. Things like how to cut sand, paint rocks, swim in mud, blow things up, dodge bullets and like pain. Oh yes, and how to kill people, and the importance of staying alive. I also learned joining the armed service was like signing a bail bond and organ donor card at the same time. I couldn't seem to take the whole fiasco seriously, so I actually managed to have fun. At least until I was sent in country. There they were really trying to hit us with real bullets, and we were really trying to kill them. Holding onto the handles on a mini gun, I almost felt sorry for Charlie. A single guy on a hill was shooting at our Huey with an AK 47 when the co-pilot's head exploded, spraying everyone with the remains. A single burst from the mini gun vaporized the lone gunman.

There are two things I learned in the military. One, there are no winners and no runners-up. Two, when it's your word against someone with more stripes or, God forbid, an officer, you are wrong. Then there was the time I was busted back to airman and given an article fifteen for getting a sunburn. You see, by doing so I had damaged government property.

Back in the real world, or at least I thought it was, I was beginning to have my doubts, I was staring in the mirror, wondering who was the old guy looking back at me, and thinking how much he looked like my dad. Except this guy looked demented. The memory of that phone call, the one where some guy called me Randy, came back to me. Who the hell is Randy? What does he have to do with me? Was that just another part of the dream? I checked my phone and found there were no incoming calls. This kind of thing had happened before, more times than I can remember.

The shrinks at the V.A. hospital all tell me there is nothing wrong with me, I just need to readjust to civilian life. That's easy for them to say. They can't see what is happening inside my head. The dreams I've been having lately have been really scary. The military teaches us to kill for our country, to preserve our freedom, to defend our constitution and our way of life, it's our job, but can it take away a person's humanity? Can it take a person down to the point where they will kill people for other reasons? People they've seen in a picture, been given an address for and a time and place where they will be? That's not me is it? That is the dream I've been having lately. I've seen myself as a hunter. A hunter of the top predator in the world, human beings.

My eyes looked like a road map with red lines painted over the white background. Patience tells me I look tired and should try to get some sleep. How do I tell her that I'm afraid to go to sleep, that sleep does not mean rest?