The Marine

The soldier sits in a big easy chair, his head tilted down and resting in his large hand. He sports a bandana, gray, covered with skulls and crossbones, and a black t-shirt, much too small with the words "Marine Sniper" stamped in gold, encircling the United States Marine Corps logo on its upper left. The too small t-shirt highlights the bulging muscles of his arms and chest.

His legs, visible due to a pair of khaki shorts, are equally well-defined and muscled. He balances on the edge of his chair and intently reads a textbook that sits in his lap. His concentration is complete. From time to time, he lowers his hand from his head to steady the textbook as he writes brief notes in its margin and then lifts his hand back up to support his head. Every so often, he pauses to look up at the people walking to and fro around him before returning back to writing his notes.

All of a sudden, his consciousness fills with the images of blood covered Iraqi soldiers with weapons drawn. They scream in an unintelligible language and rush at him and his buddies while they sit in their foxholes on the outskirts of Baghdad. The images, vivid and disconcerting, are becoming less and less frequent, but even as their regularity decreases, their intensity increases and the soldier begins to sweat. The desire to defend his country and accept the challenges lain in front of him made his decision to enlist in the Marines at the start of the Iraq war an easy one, but the consequences were more than he could have imagined. Night after night without sleep. The pervasive and ubiquitous illusions of enemies and hidden explosives greeting him at the mall, the shopping center, the gas station, and even in his own apartment building threaten the soldier's sanity and he fights to break free.

The craziness of the war and the horrors he has seen are taking their toll on his studying, but now that he is back stateside, out of active service, he is determined to finish his schooling and rejoin society.

He turns the pages of the psychology textbook in front of him as he studies for his first exam. People swirl all around him as they search for books or just provide companionship for their book enthusiast friends and family. The people, the civilians, could be decoys. They could be a threat. What does that lady have in her purse and what does that man have in his briefcase? He thrusts himself into his reading as his heightened senses, honed razor-sharp in the deserts of Iraq, scream of the potential danger that encompasses him. He looks up again, looks into the random faces of those shopping around him. They all look the same. Maybe it was a mistake coming here, to Barnes and Noble to study. Before the war, he used to love to come to these stores or to Starbucks and sit and read. He would wile away hour after enjoyable hour with his grande latte and current favorite book and just read. Now, all he can see is the enemy, hidden where no enemy should be, where no enemy could be, yet in Iraq, it was places like this and situations like these where the enemy was always found.

After an hour, he places his pen behind his left ear. He closes his textbook, stands up, and walks away. The images, the people, the hidden enemies, and the danger are still there in his mind. Once again he exerts control over his thoughts and emotions and at that moment he notices that along with the images and hidden enemies, along with the people and the danger, are passages from the textbook he had just been studying. A smile of victory crosses his lips as he realizes that while he may never be able to completely vanquish the negative thoughts, at least he is able to crowd them with other thoughts, ones that interest and calm him. The smile remains as he exits the mall and marches to his car.