Runaway World

Trauma Therapy

     "We never believed it, Dad!" David told him.

     "I know that," Andrew replied, reaching across to pat the back of the boy's hand. "I know it up here." He tapped the side of his head with his finger. "But there's still a part of me that went to dark places, especially in the small hours of the morning. No matter how silly you know you're being, there's still a part of your brain that whispers things that you know aren't true, and those whispers made me afraid, at least until it was full daytime and I remembered just how great you guys are."

     "You're pretty great too, Dad," said Jasmine, leaning forward to beam at him.

     "So that's that kind of fear, and then there's the fear of your life actually being in danger, like when Cheval and I had to go outside to disable the sentry weapon and when Fox was shooting at us on the slopes of Etna Mons."

     "And when you jumped from one moving rover to another!" cried David, his eyes shining. "That was badass!"

     Andrew grinned despite himself. "Thanks," he said, "but it was also scary." He turned to look at James. "So you can believe I know what it's like to be afraid. I'm not ashamed to admit it and neither should you be." James nodded solemnly but said nothing.

     "But there's a third kind of fear," Andrew continued, his voice dropping without his being aware of it. His children noticed, though. They sensed that he was getting to what he'd really come to say and they stared at him, giving him their full attention.

     "I told you about the time we fell through the roof of a library," Andrew continued. "Fox had placed some explosive charges and waited for us to drive over them. I didn't tell you what we found in that library, though. I wanted to spare you from the horror of it, but that was a mistake. You need to know that the world cares nothing about our delicate human sensibilities and sometimes shows us things that we're not prepared to handle."

     He went on to tell them about the room in which a small group of people had tried to stay alive during The Freeze by burning books for warmth. And when their food had run out, they had turned to eating each other until there was only one man left; the mummified remains of a man who had probably been perfectly decent and civilised before the arrival of Hoder but who had finally been driven to eat the flesh of his former friends in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. Jasmine's face grew white as he spoke and David stared silently at him, hie face showing no trace of the fascination he normally felt at hearing the grisly details of horror stories. This was no story, he understood. This was real, and it had done something deep and profound to his father. He looked away, staring blankly at the movie posters decorating the wall, and Andrew could see him wishing that he would stop talking. Andrew didn't stop, though. This was something that he now knew the three of them needed to hear.

     He was speaking mainly to James, though, and as he spoke, his voice breaking as the emotional memories threatened to overwhelm him, he was relieved to see something happening on his son's face. Tears were beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes as if powerful emotions were rising up inside him. He understood, Andrew thought with profound relief. He understood that what his father was really telling him was that it was okay to talk about things like this. It's okay to reveal that you've been affected by something. It doesn't mean you're weak. It means that you trust the people you love enough to share the deepest secrets of your soul with them.

     "His head had broken open," the teenager suddenly said, interrupting his father in mid sentence. He squeezed his eyes closed and tears flowed down his face to drip from his chin. His voice trembled when he spoke again. "He must have hit his head on something. Hit it hard, on something sharp. It broke his skull open like an egg. I mean, really cracked it open. Half his brain had spilled out, all broken. I thought..." He paused, took a desperate breath. Andrew and the others waited patiently for him to continue. "It looked like Davey's birthday cake when he dropped it that time, you remember. The crust broken open and the soft centre all spilled out on the carpet." He closed his eyes and his body shook with misery and shame. "I saw his brain and I thought it looked like a broken cake."