#to daniel(which its kinda ironic since daniel was the one that i had trauma with)but i feeling bit distant in aspects of sean

[celibibratty]

I so invested in the w0man now, that i not even know who the hell is sean diaz anymore😂

[cadpadawan]

Day #2 in the Music Challenge

Music Challenge – Day #2: A Song With A Number in the Title

So, I'm a day late, but I think it shouldn't compromise the balance of the cosmic Space-Time Continuum. Not too drastically, anyway...

The challenge of day #2 was to pick a song with a number in the title. No brainer. As a typical 90's post-pubertant, who spent most of the dark 80's listening to heavy metal, I could instantly come up with two options, starting the count from the number 1: Metallica and U2.

Why didn't I start from zero?

A good question.

I did listen to Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins quite a lot in the summer of 1997, so it could be a rather good choice for a song that reminds me of summertime (challenge for day #3), and Absolute Zero by Stone Sour, in turn, could serve as a perfect candidate for a song that reminds me of someone I'd rather forget (challenge for day #4)...

Whatever.

Metallica released their war-themed song One as a single from their 4th studio album ...and Justice for All that came out in 1988. My schoolmate Jarno showed me the music video one day after school, maybe a year later, as the video debuted on MTV on January 1989. The grainy footage on a worn-out VHS-tape rather emphasized the feeling of experiencing some sort of freeze-frame-shot in the passage of time. I had no previous knowledge of the band at the time, and just like that, out of the blue, the WW1-themed thrash metal epic kicked me in the nuts. If I remember right, the music video had just premiered on Finnish national TV also, in some awkward boomer music program of the era. In the aftermath, in the course of the next couple of weeks, Metallica was the talk of the town at school. There was a handful of aspiring young guitar heroes in my class, and in no time at all, the guitar tabs for this Metallica classic were doing the rounds, from hand to hand, photocopied with a second-grade resolution at the work office of some guitar geek's mom. Everybody just had to learn the song, or, as in the case of some lazy fuckers, learn at least the iconic, arpeggiated chord sequence in the song's intro. I was one of those more determined sad individuals, who spent night after night repeating the riffs and licks of the song. Excluding Kirk Hammett's guitar solo, which I honestly didn't think very highly of, in terms of musical taste, anyway, I finally learned to play through the song! Of course, it sounded a bit awkward, played through my cheap 15W amplifier, that had an integrated distortion circuit, which sounded like crushing dry bread, to be honest. The matters of sound quality nicely provide me with an awkward transition to the continued issue regarding the nothing short of legendary lack of low end on this classic Metallica studio album. Some internet scholars assume, that the band deliberately turned down the bass tracks, played by the freshly recruited Jason Newsted, as if to suggest that the band had not entirely resolved the psychological trauma caused by the tragic death of their original bass player, Cliff Burton. A theory like that sounds a bit far-fetched. I have played in a ridiculous number of bands, during the past 25 years. I haven't yet met anyone, who would choose to make the collaborative effort of the band sound bad, for whatever reasons. So, I can fully accept James Hetfield's later account of the situation: the band was totally burned-out. Nevertheless, the herds of teenage metalheads, such as me and most of my friends, didn't really mind. When the album came out, it was the best-fucking-shit-ever for some time. One was Metallica's first top-40 hit on the Billboard charts, and in Finland it reached #1 spot in the charts. Yeah, I'm lucky to live in the land of 1000 lakes, and 1.000.000 tr00 metalheads: we eat cast iron I-beams for breakfast, and shit barbed wire after...

One was also the title of the third single from the brilliant U2 album Achtung Baby, that was released in 1991. The album was recorded at the legendary Hansa studios in Berlin, under the supervision of two producer legends: Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. Whatever we may think of Bono's later trademark way of playing Jesus to the lepers in his head, there is no denying that this particular U2 album is a fucking rock classic. On this album the band kinda re-invented itself.

When I got my driving-licence, on the brink of the summer 1992, Achtung Baby was one of those killer albums I had copied from vinyl to C-cassette, in order to expose my blissfully unaware passengers to some quality music, during those restless weekend odysseys, when I was the appointed driver. With the price of gasoline being as it is now, I'm not sure if the youth today follows this fine tradition of driving around, aimlessly, at the heart of every Saturday night anymore. Probably not. Maybe they're too busy exchanging make-up tips and eating tidepods in YouTube. Times, they are a-changing... However, there probably is no feeling that can come even close to that special feeling, when you're driving home at 6 AM, after a hot long summer night of driving around, watching your dearest friends being entangled in the grandiose act of mental butterfly strokes, in the whirlpool of alcohol and bad decisions, and U2's cordial 90's hit One comes on in the car stereos.

So, I could settle with either one...

Metallica: One

U2: One

Or, I could keep the streak going, and see how far I can get...

For a song with the number two in the title, I could also come up with two options, that both have some personal meaning to me: Iron Maiden and Jonny L. The latter released some quality drum & bass in the 90's, and everybody should be well-acquainted with the heavy metal classics this first-mentioned British outfit released throughout the 80's. After all, the band pioneered the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement.

I musta been something like 10 years old, when Iron Maiden released one of their best albums, IMHO, titled Powerslave. Heavy metal was something that my mom strongly disapproved of, and at the time, my family did not yet have a record player. We did have a cheap ghettoblaster, that I frequently used to record contemporary rock songs on C-cassettes, especially after the brand new rock-oriented Finnish radio station, Radio City, started on the first of May, in 1985... So, I had a habit of going to the local library, that had pretty street-credible music department. My usual after-school activity was to pick a freshly released, kick-ass heavy metal album from the vinyl bins, and then hand it to the library clerks. Then, they would hand me the earphones and show me to the first vacant listening booth. That's how I discovered shitloads of contemporary metal albums, such as:

Van Halen: 1984

Iron Maiden: Powerslave

Kiss: Animalize

and:

Duran Duran: Seven and the Ragged Tiger

I guess, you're wondering now, what kind of contemporary metal did that last band perform, or did I, by any chance, refer to the 80's new wave synth-pop band? Oh, yes! I'm talking about that notorious pop band, that was part of the new romantics movement, or something. It was my guilty pleasure, at the delicate age of 10. Maybe it was also one of the subconscious reasons, why I switched my main instrument from electric guitar to synths and keyboards a decade later. At some subliminal level, I was magically drawn to the textures of analog synth sounds...

Or whatever...

Quite appropriately, 2 Minutes to Midnight was the second track on the vinyl A side of Iron Maiden's gigantic classic album Powerslave. It's a kind of protest song about nuclear war, with the title referring to the Doomsday clock used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. That symbolic clock represents the countdown to potential man-made global catastrophe. When the clock hands align at midnight, quite frankly, we all will be fucked. The clock was originally set to seven minutes to midnight in 1947. The current reading is 100 seconds to midnight. So, in a way, it's pretty evident, that the world is progressing forward – because it's going downhill in every fucking way possible. I've been listening to this timeless Maiden classic since the time of its' release, on a fairly regular basis, for the past 36 years...and I still can't get tired of it.

British jungle producer Jonny L released an EP in 1996, titled 2 of Us, on a prominent electronic music label XL Recordings. A few years later, I was practicing the haute couture art of flaneuring at the music department of the now-defunct Finnish chain retail Anttila, right next to the Helsinki main railway station. I chanced to lay my eyes on this drum & bass gem among all the one-hit wonders at the discount section. The sight was so disheartening, that I simply had to rescue this poor and misplaced music artefact to a good home. At the time, I was fooling around in the role of some kind of an art director of a project band, that sought to mix acid jazz, organic drum & bass grooves, and various electronica elements into a unique and coherent whole. I had written shitloads of original material for the project, that initially started as an instrumentals-only outfit. However, the band lacked a prominent lead instrument, like saxophone, for example. So, when we met a promising vocalist, we thought it might be a good idea to adjust the concept a little. The title track on this 2 of Us-Ep by Jonny L was one of the songs we auditioned the singer with. Alas, the project turned out to be short-lived, due to numerous non-music-related reasons. We never even coined a name for the band. At some point, though, some of those original song ideas were brought to a fruition, with a temporary line-up, that was pieced together for a special occassion. We warmed up for an underground funk outfit D-Note Unity in a private funk-themed party in Helsinki, in the late 90's. I can't remember the year. The headliner act of the party later evolved into Kemopetrol, so I think it must've happened before 1998? The funk party was a night to remember, to borrow the title of an old 1958 British drama movie recounting the final night of RMS titanic, as the night culminated in an impromptu freeform jam session, that lasted for hours...that is, until the members of both bands were too damn shitfaced to play anymore...

So, to cut to the chase, the nominees for a song with the number two in the title are:

Jonny L: 2 of Us

Iron Maiden: 2 Minutes to Midnight

Next up: the number 3.

Again, it's almost impossible to make the choice between two options: Jane's Addiction and Between the Buried and Me.

I guess, it was a pure accident that I found out about Jane's Addiction's alt.rock in the early 90's. I cannot remember hearing the band's songs on radio, until much later in the 2000's. I have to thank the Finnish grunge band Slumgudgeon for that. I never actually listened to this band, but I remember reading an interview in the Finnish music press, in which one of the band members praised Tom Waits. Or, if I recall right, the band actually deemed Rod Stewart to be downright gay for deflowering the beauty of the Tom Waits original Downtown Train. The interview was so clever and funny, I just had to check out, who the hell was this Tom Waits, anyway. On a side note, the musical primus motors of Slumgudgeon later ended up as the founding fathers of the Finnish metal juggernaut Mokoma. So, one day I went to the local library to check out whether they had any of those mythical Tom Waits albums...and voilà! I actually spotted the magnificent Heartattack and Vine album! But I spotted something else, too. My eyes were exposed briefly to the exquisite cover art of the Ritual de lo Habitual album by Jane's Addiction, while I was looking for something else completely. I thought: if a band has balls to put something like that on the cover, the music simply cannot be that bad! I borrowed both of these albums. I just had to check them out! And I think I must've been happy like a dog with two tails, for hitting such a bull's eye – twice in a row! I guess, that by now, most people of my age are familiar with the more radio-friendly tracks on that Jane's Addiction album, such as Been Caught Stealing and Stop! In my honest and humble opinion, though, the absolute pinnacle track on that album is the 3-part meditation on death and rebirth titled Three Days. It would make a perfect choice for a song with a number in the title...on the other hand, though...

Fairly recently, some two years ago, or something, Devin Townsend was performing in Helsinki, with the warm-up acts being none other than the Norwegian prog-metal mindfuck Leprous, and the band that I wasn't really that familiar with, Between the Buried and Me. To be honest, BTBAM did not exactly win me over with their performance. Such AD/HD metal sure had its' moments of high entertainment, but an hourful of circus music was a bit too much to chew in one take. In a way, the band's music was like a perfect auditive match for a bad crystal meth experience. However, my wife later spotted the band's magnificent cover of the King Crimson original Three of A Perfect Pair. After hearing this, I simply had to re-adjust my view of the band. Actually, this BTBAM interpretation of the song is much better than the original. I guess, Robert Fripp is going to sue my ass for saying this in public, but that's the undisputed, motherfucking truth. It's not a matter of taste, nor is it an opinion. It's a fucking fact. With all due respect. The song lyrics resonate in me with a particular clang of irony, now that I've got my midlife issues sorted out.

So, the most touchy-feely songs with the number three in the title would be:

Jane's Addiction: Three Days

Between the Buried and Me: Three of A Perfect Pair

Then...the number four.

Well, whadda'ya know...the number four proved to be the easiest so far: I could only come up with one option: Four Chords that Made a Million by Porcupine Tree. I refrained from resorting to any progressive rock suites with multiple parts. This particular Porcupine Tree song is from the album Lightbulb Sun. I think I was introduced to the band by my dear bandmates in Souldump, with whom I played for a couple of years cirka 2005. I kinda passed the torch, by introducing the magnificence of Porcupine Tree to my wife later, in 2009. I've got my beloved wife to thank for quite a lot of new artists, that I mighta never discovered, if it wasn't for her tireless hunt for new music via Spotify and such. So, just before this magnificent British post-prog band, fronted by Steven Wilson, went on to an indefinite hiatus, it performed in Helsinki in 2009. I bought the tickets, and took my wife to see the show. After the gig, she was a full-blown fangirl. This particular track here might not be the exact Porcupine Tree song that I love the most, but it's good stuff nevertheless.

Porcupine Tree: Four Chords that Made a Million

I guess, I could go on forever...

Maybe I'll just list the rest of the songs, and see what number I can reach up to:

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Take Five (one of the first jazz tracks that I fell in love with)

Sneaker Pimps: 6 Underground (everybody had that triphop phase in the mid-90's, right?)

Sting: Seven Days (Ten Summoner's Tales is a kick-ass album!)

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (who's to NOT like the Beatles?!?)

Jimi Hendrix: If 6 was 9 (the best guitarist of all time, no questions!)

Juan Atkins: Track Ten (Techno is intriguing stuff)

Sigue Sigue Sputnik: Love Missile F1-11 (this was in the Levyraati TV-show, back in the day...)

Creamstar: The 12th of Never (A random finding from some discount bin, Anttila, probably...)

Pantera: 13 Steps to Nowhere (It's a shame I didn't find Pantera any earlier, like when I was 20...)

Swallow The Sun: April 14th (from a killer album!)

Radiohead: 15 Step (In Rainbows is probably their second best effort, after OK Computer!)

Billy Idol: Sweet Sixteen (Nice song, despite the dubious connotations, considering the artist...)

Stevie Nicks: Edge of Seventeen (yet another song about death...)

Skid Row: 18 and Life (Nostalgia...eww...)

Paul Hardcaste: 19 (the chorus was a reason for much laughter as a kid...)

Isis: 20 Minutes/40 Years (went to see their last ever gig in Finland, with a fever of 38 degrees...)

Green Day: 21 Guns (who didn't like skate punk in the 90's?)

Iron Maiden: 22 Acacia Avenue (and who did NOT listen to Iron Maiden in the 80's?!?)

The Brother Johnson: Strawberry Letter 23 (via Jackie Brown, obviously...)

Stevie Vai: Ballerina 12/24 (One of the few guitar wankers that I like, in moderation...)

Chicago: 25 or 6 to 4 (that particular track that converted me to like this band in the early 90's!)

Tuomo: 26 (one of the best Finnish nujazz-or-whatever-jazz artists!)

Walking Across Jupiter: -27 (a recent finding, interesting stuff indeed!)

John Murphy: 28 Theme (one of my favorite film composers, check out Adagio in D minor, too!)

Robert Plant: 29 Palms (This too, was in the Levyraati TV show, back in the day...)

August Burns Red: Thirty and Seven (I guess, djenty emocore is my guilty pleasure nowadays...)

Aimee Mann: Thirty One Today (she has a way with words, been a fan since mid-90's...)

Carpark North & Sandra Nasic: 32 (there's something rotten in Denmark, their indie/alt.rock scene rocks! Awesome bands, like Mew, Carpark North, Veto, and I think Vola is Danish, too...)

Protoculture: Thirty Three South (of course, everybody needs a bit of trance music now & then)

Cult of Luna: Thirtyfour (awesome sludge!)

Egotrippi: Asunto 35 (Class A Suomi-rock)

System Of A Down: 36 (is AD/HD metal an official genre now? It should be.)

Drowning Pool: 37 Stitches (everybody went thru a nu-metal phase in the late 90's, didn't we?)

Eclipse: 38 or 44 (a random finding via Spotify, decent enough to include here)

Tenacious D: 39 (you simply cannot dislike this band!)

Static-X: Forty Ways (I guess, you could write this band off as a Korn rip-off, but they DO have a few decent tracks...)

Azam Ali: Forty One Ways (Enigma-esque etno artist, with nice ambient soundscapes)

Coldplay: 42 (not entirely crap band, though this is not their best track)

Karma to Burn: Fourty-three (Some stonershit is called for here...)

Megadeth: 44 Minutes (I'll hafta admit, that I'm more of a Greatest Hits-type of a fan, when it comes to Dave Mustaine's endeavours...)

Shinedown: 45 (this band: pure fucking awesomeness!)

Tool: Forty Six & 2 (Ruisrock in 2006, a gig to forever remember...)

Boards of Canada: Seven Forty Seven (these electonica bastards are onto something...)

Bones: 48843 (A fresh finding...not sure yet, if this is pure genius or not...)

Röyksopp: 49 Percent (from the kick-ass album The Understanding)

Paul Simon: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (killer drum groove by Steve Gadd!)

Van Halen: 5150 (The soundtrack of my childhood)

That's how far I managed to go...I counted that I've got 37 of these in cd format, in my personal collection, and the rest of the songs are ”just” in my Spotify playlist, or as a mp3 on my laptop. Tomorrow I shall challenge myself again to dig into the dark depths of my conventional wisdom, in terms of music.

Stay tuned! Cheers!

[dimenovelsfromoblivion]

The Collective

As inhospitable as the desert can be the parched, arid lands are ideal for preserving the ancient cities built in the early days of civilization. These mostly abandoned settlements were scattered across the landscape quietly being buried in the sand.

Still, there were some cities, archaic remnants of ancient kingdoms that had long since vanished, but life went on even as the old dynasties crumbled back into the enteral sand and the people settled around the ancient walls for hundreds of generations went about existence much the same as their vanquished ancestors. These places although mostly forgotten these forerunners of civilization existed alongside the electrified concrete and steel megalopolis that had come into existence in the final terminal stages of human-settled life.

Just as in previous epochs this seemingly worthless place was where empires fought life and death struggles.  Just like the innumerable men of arms who were sent here to pacify these lands over they millenniums Corporal Keller of the US Marines couldn’t comprehend exactly what it was that kept drawing the armies of the world back to this same desolate place.

Keller and his unit had spent the last few days watching drones and bombers, the latest and greatest in hi-tech siege weaponry blast the prehistoric city to rubble. Now it was time for the grunts to go in and blow away anyone that survived the barrage.

The helicopters hovering overhead stirred up the sand into a storm. The air was saturated with the grainy particles that stung at the eyes and skin, but it was at least a mild morning. The desert dew still gleamed in the morning sun and a place white moon lingered in the bright morning sky. The Marines moved cautiously but kept up the pace. Today it was Corporal Kellers turn to be the point man, which meant first one inside, first one to take any fire.

The young soldier and his company had surrounded a courtyard. He was hugging the corner wall at the entrance when the signal was given. Flash grenades were tossed into the open space, and the soldiers quickly moved in. They only ran into each other though. The courtyard was empty.

“Clear,” Keller radioed in.

Keller felt something tap on his shoulder. There was a spot of blood soaking into his uniform.

“What the fuck?”

He looked up corpses were hanging from hastily constructed rafters above their heads in various stages of decay and dismemberment. The helicopters had scared away the scavaging birds, but it was easy to see on the soft decomposing flesh where they opportunistic animals had been feeding.

Keller felt queazy he called it in. “We got bodies hanging here.”

There was the sound of something stirring behind the walls and the jolted Marines raised their weapons. Keller looked at the west and could see two deep red circles. He moved closer and brushed away the sand. It was a drawing of a woman with a plump body and what looked like iron wings. She wore some kind of ceremonial headdress, and her bird-like feet had large sharp talons.

“What the fuck is this?” Keller muttered.

“RPG!” Startled Keller looked up and saw a rocket flying down from the top of the wall, then an abrupted impenetrable blackness.

James jolted awake in his chair. A layer of sweat covered his waxy skin, and he had to catch his breath. “Holy shit,” he cracked as he reached for a nearby glass of water.

The foundation of a collective unconscious is the transcription of memory into the biomolecular structure of the human being. Evolution is by and large a process of trial and error the psyche is where the experiences of our predecessors echo across the gulf of time adding to the notional sum of existence. One of the ways it manifests is through instinct, an innate reaction a sentient being has to a situation it may have never encountered. The enigmatic process is one that straddles the line between the rational and the mystic. It was a painstaking process limited by the crawling pace of evolution.

Legions of faceless specialists directed by an institutionalized disdain for the natural order were activated to construct a more valuable and efficient model for the collective unconvinced. Their nanotech monster was decentralized and of course, data-driven. The microscopic machine was a synthetic virus that transformed sentient human beings into data banks of human memories. The natural incubator for this emergent intelligence was the military, where of course psychological programming is a paramount concern. Unwitting soldiers were merged into a micro-collective conscience. Their experiences of war could now be shared through a real-time data stream. Minature machines bound their minds together and turned their most horrific memories of war into shared experiences.

Retired Major James Fullerton had no inkling of this grand design or his place in its growing web of consciousness. Neither did the doctor who pointed to the small innocuous shadow on the translucent gray and white image of his brain.

“We don’t know if it’s a tumor, but it’s not operatable. I’m sorry, but all we can do is wait and see.” The doctor informed him in his professional but compassionate manner.

Daniel Princip, a friend from his unit, was given a similar prognosis barely six months ago and now he was dead. Granted it was a bullet from his service pistol that released him from his mortal coil and not any sort of cancer or degenerative neural disease, but James knew, and Daniel must have been somewhat aware that the mysterious blemish on his neural tissue was an omen of doom.

James and Daniel were both combat veterans who became friends while witnessing some of the darkest and most blood-soaked excesses of modern war. When they heard the sanitized euphemism for a massacre, their minds conjured up scenes of crushed and mangled bodies. They had both seen mothers carrying the dismembered remains of their children after a “surgical strike” or families wallowing over bloated fly-covered corpses of fathers and sons killed in “counter-insurgency” raids. Despite this, they managed to integrate back into society and keep isolated the contagion of violence that infected their souls.

James was divorced, but amicably so. He had two daughters in college and had enjoyed years of success as a financial consultant. Daniel hadn’t fared so poorly either. He was a lawyer and confirmed lifetime bachelor. The experience of war instilled in him a sense of just how indifferent the universe is and the inevitability of tragedy and undercut any desire or incentive for him to have a family.

Whatever was consuming Daniel from within worked quickly. His body withered away from his bones, and his colorless eyes sank into his gaunt face. He endured every test and consulted every specialist, but there was no conclusive answer. When he told them about the dreams, they suspected his ailment was purely psychological. He was just another soldier being ravaged by the malignant trauma that had been planted in his brain like a ticking time bomb from his service days.

“I keep having these like flashbacks only it doesn't feel like their mine. It feels like I'm in someone else's body watching what they’re watching,” James said with a faraway look in his eyes.

James was intimately familiar with the terror the twin specters of regret and shame could unleash upon their victims gave a sympathetic and understanding nod.

“It’s like watching a movie, and I know something terrible is about to happen but no matter what I can’t stop it. It’s like being a voice screaming inside that kid’s head, but he couldn’t hear me.”

“Boy?” James repeated.

Daniel nodded. “Yeah, his name was Lance Corporal Thomas Johnson that’s who I am a lot of times,” Daniel said before taking a sip of coffee. “At least that’s what the other guys call me. Poor kid, he’s on his second deployment, and his mom’s just been diagnosed with cancer,” Daniel said matter of factly.

When Daniel gave those strangely specific details, Jame’s felt his stomach tie into knots and swell up into his throat. “Huh, that’s kinda weird,” he replied casually.

These visions always a rare occurrence were now steadily commandeering his subconscious. His sleep was now drowning out from the incursions of these living nightmares just like what happened to Daniel. He wasn’t sure how but James knew it was this smudge on the MRI that was the source of these aberrations of war.

The sleep-deprived James was retracted back in his recliner dulling his senses in the ultraviolet lite of the tv mounted on the wall. He absently cycled through the televisions line up, which at this time of night was mostly infomercials. He finally gave up the futile search for entertainment and settled on one of the many twenty four hour news networks.

The screen was bifurcated between an attractive blond news anchor and repeating B-roll footage of a middle eastern battlezone, by now a familiar television backdrop.

The blonde was listening attentively, indicated by the occasional nod to the static voice of field reporter who was summing up all the action that had apparently just happened a few hours ago.

“Around 8:15 this morning the Marines declared the city liberated,” the faceless voice explained while footage of marines putting in a battering ram through and a tank firing a round into a building played in the background.

“The city has been liberated,” the anchor confirmed “but we’re being told combat operations are still ongoing. Why is that?”

There was a short delay between the question and answer while a new loop of battlefield footage started to play.

“Yes, that’s true. Marine units are still engaged in mop-op operations in and around the city. While the military is in control of all municipal and administrative buildings, there are still some terrorist strongholds scattered around, but the military spokesman we talked to says they’ll be clear before the day is out.”

The talking heads on the screen started to sound further and further away until their banter became obscure mumbling. James passively watched the medley of battle and sank deeper into his chair. Whether he wanted it or not he was slowly slipping back into sleep. His eyes fluttered, and his jaw slacked. His head gradually fell back, and the room started to fade away. He was on the edge of sleep when a scene on TV jolted him awake.

It was the courtyard from his dream. The dangling bodies had been taken down and the gangrenous limbs removed but James still recognized the scenery even after it had been thoroughly satisfied. On the west wall was the same etching of the plumb winged woman with crimson eyes.

The ringing doorbell startled James.

“Who the hell could that be?” he muttered. Deciding to ignore the door James picked back up the remote and started flipping around again but whoever had come calling was persistent. The doorbell rang another three times in quick succession.

“Jesus fuckin christ alright,” James snarled.

The ringing continued as he made his way to the door. “Alright alright!” James Hollard.

He looked through the peephole and saw a man probably in his mid to late twenties in rain-soaked clothes with shaggy hair and a beard. James kept the chain lock on the door.

“Can I help you?” He asked visibly irritated.

“Are you Major James Fullerton?” The man asked.

“Yeah, that’s me who are you?” James replied.

The stranger on his stoop pulled out a gun at hip level and pointed it through the space between the door and the frame.

“I really need to talk to you,” he said calmly.

“Oh shit,” James mumbled.

The armed intruder followed behind James with his gun pointed at his back.

“Where’s a place we can sit down and talk?” he asked with a raspy voice.

“Look, man, I won’t give you any trouble. Just take what you want and get going,” James said.

“It’s nothing like that. My name’s Luetenant Phillip Speers second airborne.”

“I retired from the military eight years ago if you have any gripes with them I really can’t help you,” explained James.

Phillip didn’t reply. When they got to the den, he directed James back to his recliner while he sat down on the couch. James paused for a second when he saw Phillip’s left arm was a robotic prosthetic.

“I’m sorry I have to do this, but I considered all the options, and this was the only way,” Phillip explained.

“What’s this all about?” James asked calmly.

Phillip leaned forward. “I got out of the service three years ago, and about a year and a half ago I started having all these fucked up dreams. Now I know what you’re thinking,” Phillip sighed “PTSD right? Well, that would have made sense but these dreams I was having weren’t mine. In fact, I don’t even think they were dreams. It was like seeing through someone else's eyes. Night after night I was back in the desert doing recon missions in a place I’ve never even been before, and for some reason, the guys on the mission all called me James, James Fullerton. I lived through your time in the Subsaharan,” said Phillip. “I know about Daniel, and I know about that boy in the Michael Jordan jersey.”

James was speechless. He’d never told anyone about that kid, but James had spent years and years begging his ghost for forgiveness, or at least what his mind thought his spirit might be like. It was James’s unit that called in the drone strike that incinerated him. Even though he left behind no mortal remains his face was forever seared into James’s memory. He never could forgive himself for sacrificing the child to the cold mechanical hunter

Phillip saw that he had touched a nerve and decided to press his questioning further. “Have you ever met or heard of a marine captain Peter Harding?” he asked.

James shook his head.

“He came to be about a year and a half ago and told me about the same thing I’m telling you now. He knew every dirty detail of my deployment. He knew about friends I lost people I wasted I mean everything. He even knew how I got this,” Phillip said holding up his robotic arm.

“Have you heard of Corporal Keller?” James asked.

“Have you seen the picture on the wall too?” Phillip asked with wide eyes.

James nodded “yeah the woman with the wings and the ruby eyes.”

“Christ,” muttered Phillip “Yeah that one really fucked with me.”

“So what do we do about it?” James asked.

Phillip set the gun down and vigorously rubbed his eyes. “Look, man, I have no idea what they did to us. The VA never told me anything. It wasn’t until I went to a private doctor I found out about the thing in my head.”

“Yeah, the shadow. I have it too.” Said, James.

Phillip sat back. “Well they’re not going to help us with this thing that much is clear, and the doctors tell me they can’t cut it out. So really there’s only one thing to do only one way we can disconnect ourselves.”

“Yeah?” James shrugged.

Without a word, Phillip picked up the pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. A cloud of red mist saturated with pink particles blasted into the air and sprayed the wall behind him.