VIKTOR
They didn't feel like dreams. Dreams had a narrative, a sequence, a sense of time passing. This was a museum of my own atrocities, and I was a permanent, captive exhibit.
I was back in the frozen mud of Chechnya, the smell of cordite and decay so thick I could taste it on my tongue. Then, without transition, I was in a Damascus alley, the sun a brutal, white hammer, the body of a man at my feet, his blood a dark, spreading stain on the dust. I felt the ghost of the knife's grip in my hand, the slick warmth of his life on my skin.
The faces were blurred, thank Christ. My mind spared me that much. But the sounds were crystal clear, preserved in perfect, hellish fidelity. The wet, choking gasp of a man drowning in his own blood. The shrill, animal terror in a boy's scream, a sound that had kept me awake for weeks after. The metallic clang of a round hitting body armor, the softer, more final thump of it hitting flesh.
