**TWO MONTHS LATER**
I was walking around in what looked like a desert. I was in my shorts and a t-shirt, and barefoot. The sand was hot and burned my feet with each step. I felt exhausted, thirsty, and confused. I've clearly been walking around for a long time, but I don't remember how I got here. Suddenly, something sharp in the sand pricks my foot when I take another step. I flinch in pain and look down to see what seems to shrapnel metal. I look ahead to see that there's even more.I gasp as I walk forward and see a helicopter propeller sticking out of the sand, and the rest of the helicopter destroyed and debris all over the sand.
I look around in horror as I begin to see dead bodies scattered around in the sand, but there's too many for them to all have fit in the helicopter. I notice that some are dressed in active combat uniforms and some are dressed in tattered looking clothes and their heads were helmetless. I can feel my chest getting tight like I'm about to cry but I can't. Instead I start coughing profusely, unable to catch my breath. A gust of wind sweep a blast of hot sand in my face and stings my eyes. I want to scream out for help, but my voice doesn't work. I try desperately, but not a sound escapes. Suddenly, I hear a voice screaming in the distance. It sounds like my name, but I'm not sure.
"Hayden!" the voice shouts. I turn my head and start running in the direction, ignoring the burning and stinging pain of my feet. I make my way up a small hill of sound and lose my balance, sending my tumbling down to the base. When my body finally stops, I feel too weak to even raise my head. "Hayden! Help me! Please!" the voice shouts again. I bring my head up to see that two men are right in front of me. One of them is Chase.
Chase is being held by his hair and he's sitting on his knees with hands bound behind him. He has a pained and tortured look on his face, and he's covered in blood and burns. The man above him has Chase's hair gripped in his fist while he points a evil looking rifle at his head. His face is covered by what looks like a ski mask to me, and his eyes stare my down dangerously. "You were wrong, Hayden." the man says, his voice low and gravely.
"What?" I soundlessly ask, confused and dazed.
"He's not coming home after all. Stupid girl." he says again. Then out of nowhere, he throws Chase forward toward me and Chase starts scrambling for me, but it's too late. The masked man pulls the trigger of his rifle and shoots Chase in the head, killing him instantly. I scream and shout Chase's name, but my voice is still gone. I want to move to him body, but I suddenly can't. I just stare and try to scream for Chase's lifeless body in the now crimson sand. But there's still someone calling my name. This time the voice is different, and it sounds like an echo in the distance. I look around me, the sky now a bright orange from the sunless sky. I see a figure running towards us in the distance. I squint as hard as I can to make out Daisy. She's running, crying, and hold large pregnant belly. I blink the sand from my burning eyes and she's suddenly close, and I notice there's blood on her hands, and it's comping from her belly.
"Help me, Hayden. Please, save the baby." She pleads, falling to her knees right next to Chase's body. Her face is dirty and tear stained, her skin raw and blistered. The masked man comes up behind her and holds her hair the same way he held Chase's and points the rifle at my sisters head. I try screaming for him to stop and beg him not to shoot, but throat is dry and my voice nowhere to be found.
"She left you when you needed her the most. She deserves this." the masked man says. He pulls the trigger and shoots my sister in the head, letting her now limp body fall beside Chase's. The amount of pain I feel in my body is unbearable. My chest feels like it's going to implode, my heart feels like it's about to burst from the adrenaline, and my skin and eyes burn like someone is stabbing me with a white-hot iron. I try again to move to my lifeless lover and sister so I can hold them and tells them I'm sorry for what I've done, but my body is stuck in invisible concrete. The masked man approaches me and lifts up my face aggressively. I'm forced to look into the eyes of my familys' killer, and I'm confused when I see how feminine and familiar they seem. Then they pull the mask off, and I see it's not a man at all, but Billie-Mae. She looks down at me in disgust, with hatred in her eyes. I want to scream out, "WHY!?" but I can't. She just looks at me and shouts my name, as she holds the rifle up and points at not me, but herself .
"Hayden!" she shouts. I shake my head and urge for tears to escape my aching eyes. "HAYDEN!" she outs again. I see her finger pull the trigger back farther and farther. . .
"HAYDEN!" Billie-Mae shouts. My eyes fly open and I sit up abruptly, panting heavily like I just sprinted for a mile. I felt hot and I could feel my t-shirt and hair sticking to my skin from sweating so much. My heart pounded in my chest and I could feel the trails of tear marks on my face from crying. "Calm down, shh, it's okay." Billie-Mae coos. She rubs my back soothingly, trying to get me to calm down. I looked around to see that I was in my bedroom, and my bed was completely disassembled. My blankets were tangled and barely on the bed, one of my pillows was halfway across the room. I reached out and gave Billie-Mae's are a squeeze to make sure I wasn't dreaming anymore. She gave me a reassuring look, telling me she's actually there.
"I had that nightmare again." I say, still trying to catch my breath. I frantically wipe the tear marks off my face and smooth my damp hair back. I've been having the same, reoccurring nightmare for two months now. It doesn't happen every night, but it was pretty regular throughout the weeks. There was a point where I was afraid to sleep, and I would just stay up all night taking care of things on the farm. I re-fenced the entire horse pasture, I cleaned out the chicken coop and pig pen, and cleaned out their troughs. I even replaced all the horses' shoes, brushed them, repainted the front and back porch. When Billie-Mae and Daisy realized what was going on with me, they begged me to sleep and told me it wasn't healthy to avoid sleep. When I told them about my nightmare, they started staying in my room while I slept so when I stared dreaming, they'd be ready to wake me up. Eventually, the nightmare started coming less and less, and the girls were able to stay in their own rooms again. But, every now and then my screams and cries will wake them up in the middle of the night, and they come rushing to my aid. The nightmare itself is always the same thing, yet it never seems familiar until I wake up, sweating, out of breath, and terrified.
"I know. I realized that once you started crying out for help, again." Billie-Mae says. "Have you told Chase about it?" she asks, standing up from her crouched position beside my bed. I stare at my hands as I fiddle with my blanket.
"No. I don't want him worrying about me when he's got an important job to do. A stupid bad dream should be the least of his worries." I tell my cousin. I tried so much to avoid the topic of my nightmare when I wrote my letters to Chase. Every time I run out of things to fill him in on here at home, I go back and forth about telling him. Then, I think about how tasked he probably is, and how he's already worried enough about me, and I don't want to be the reason he can't do his job the right way.
"Do you plan on telling him?" Billie-Mae asks. I glance up at her and shrug my shoulders.
"I don't know. I just keep hoping it'll stop coming and I can just forget about, act like it never happened. Besides, it's just a stupid dream." I say.
"Hayden, that's not a dream. That's a nightmare. Every other day, Daisy and I are waking you up from screaming and crying, begging for someone to stop shooting. You wake up in a mess, and you're exhausted the next day." Billie-Mae says. She was the most concerned out of the two. She was always asking how I slept, and if anything changed in the nightmare. "I think you need to talk to someone. Maybe this is more serious than we think." she suggests.
"If you're suggesting that I go to a psychiatrist, you've got another thing coming." I say, fixing the blankets to that they sat on my bed properly and getting up to grab my pillow from across the room.
"Well, not necessarily a psychiatrist, but maybe someone who's in the same situation as you?" Billie-Mae says. I look her confused. "There's this website where wives with a military spouse give out advice and tips to newly married military spouses, specifically wives and even children. I'm sure if you came into contact with someone and talked to them, maybe they could give you some tips about dealing with the situation." she explains.
"I don't know, Billie." I say unsure.
"Come on. At least try it. Maybe you'll be able to cope and the nightmare will finally stop." Billie-Mae coaxes. I look at her and I can see the concern in her eyes. She really was worried about me. I guess I was so worried about making Chase worry about me that I didn't realize how it was affecting the girls.
"Fine. I'll check it out in the morning. I'm going to try and get some sleep." I tell her. She gives me a soft smile and exists the room, but leaves the door open. I knew why she left the door open, and it bothered me. I felt like a mental institution patient. I didn't know how much help one person could be with this kind of stuff, but if calmed Billie-Mae's and Daisy's nerves down, then it's worth a shot.
I sat my bed with the laptop on my lap. Billie-Mae already had the website pulled up on the screen, and I was staring at it like it was in a foreign language. I felt like an idiot being on this website. I never needed this kind of help, not even after my parents died. I shook my head as I clicked on the screen until I found the page titled "Get Connected". I had to fill out some information like what my name was, where I'm from, what Chase's name was, what branch he's enlisted in and what his job was. Then, the website gave me a list of women around the area that either had husbands or boyfriends in the Marines, or had the same job as Chase. Each woman had a profile picture, most of them either with their military spouse or just themselves smiling with a patriotic theme around their face. I read each woman's description about their lives, and they were all so similar.
Met through mutual friends, fell in love, got married after two years. Met in school, fell in love, he enlisted, got deployed, came home, got married. I was beginning to think that no one was going to be able to talk to me because they all dated for either two years of more before tying the knot. Then, I landed on the profile of a woman about three hours north of me named Megan Janson. Her and her husband dated only for three months before they fell in love. When her husband, Sam, got word about being deployed to Syria, he and Megan decided to get married at the courthouse in her town, and they've been married for almost five years now. Megan's picture was of her and her dog. She had dark brown hair and warm brown eyes. Her skin was tan and her smile was very welcoming and made you want to smile too. I bit my lip in hesitation and decided to click on her profile and message her. I stared at the blinking cursor in the text box, unsure of what to actually say.
I type out a small paragraph about mine and Chase's story, and reread it about a thousand times before sending it. When I hit the send button, it felt like a hundred pounds were just remove from my shoulders and chest. I remove the computer from my lap and set it on the sport where I was sitting and leave the screen open while walked to my closet to get my clothes for the day. Suddenly, I hear what sounds like the ring of a small bell come from the laptop. I turn around and see the screen lit up and a flashing notification. I abandon the closet and sit back down with the laptop. Megan had responded to my message. My heart pounds a little when I click on the message. I don't know why I'm so nervous over this. I click on the message and read Megan's response.
'Hello Hayden! Let me start off by saying that your's and Chase's story sounds like a romance novel and I want to wish you both congrats on your recent marriage and wish you the both of you the best. I completely understand everything you went through during your time with Chase, my husband and I weren't too fond of each other when we met, either. I would love for you to talk to me about what's going through you mind with all that's happened. Maybe it'll help relieve some stress? Feel free to message me or even video chat me whenever you need to talk about it! --Megan'
I felt like I was an emotionally challenged teenager in high school, like i had to seek out help through the internet in order to relieve all these stressful problems. I typed away in the message box, asking Megan questions and for advice on what to do. I even asked her personal questions about her relationship just to see if I was really going crazy or if it was a common side effect of our situation. Megan was nice and kept giving me useful advice and used examples of her own relationship. Her family is super religious and was against all things military because they believed violence of any kind was a sin. But Megan said she grew up with a very different views on the world and didn't really agree with her family on a lot of things. When she met Sam, she felt like she finally met someone that understood her and took her for who she was. When they fell in love, Megan's family was so mad that they threatened to send her to a saving camp for sinners if she didn't end things with Sam. Instead, Megan packed her things and left her family's home in Virginia and moved in with Same, two weeks later they were married. Megan hasn't see her family in the five years her and Sam have been together, and they refuse to have any contact with her. I felt sorry for her, but she said she learned to cope with it. She said never regretted marrying Sam, because even though she lost her first family, she gained Sam's family, who I guess adore Megan.
Talking to Megan was like talking to the best friend I never really had. True, I always had Billie-Mae, but cousins are different than friends, and my sister and I grew apart for so long that I was afraid to tell her anything like I used to. Besides, they wouldn't ever be able to understand the situation I'm in, at least not the way Megan does. The two of us chatted for hours, talking about Chase and Sam, and our plans for the future. Megan told me that I should keep writing him letters, and that I really need to tell Chase about the nightmares. She said it's not fair that I'm keeping secrets from him when he's already overseas constantly worrying about me as it is. I understood her point, but part of me just can't bring myself to do it. I realized that I was on the website for too long and decided to call it a night, and said my goodbyes and thank yous to Megan. She offered to get together sometime and talk about more than just military stuff, which I more than willingly agreed to. I closed the laptop and reclined back on my pillow. It was just barely the afternoon, and the sun was starting to get really bright.
However, this didn't stop my brain from drifting off into blankness. for once, my mind was able to relax without fear of falling asleep. For once, I was able to find comfort in my own bed again. And, for what seems like for the first time in weeks, I was able to fearlessly, and peacefully, drift off into a deep sleep, with no nightmares, and not even dreams. I was finally at peace.