The last memory Chris retained when he came conscious a week later was being dragged away by three men, while screaming like a devil and flailing his bloodied arms. He was then held back and was struck in the head with an e-tool. His unconscious body was then dragged through the mud and simply left at the closest air field. This great patriotic man was left like a homeless vagabond. His acts of bravery and courage were simply null and void in the minds of his brothers who saw him snap. They simply did not want to believe that this was possible. Chris Davis was a priest and warfare was the religion that he spewed from the pulpit, and when he died that day his brothers died too. They took him and dumped him off in the mud to forget about him, to bury him deep within their memories so he could never come out.
Chris spent the last three months of his tour in a hospital. Life was good. He slept on a bed and received a shower everyday. The food was out of this world compared to what he was used to. However, Chris hated all these things. He hated the fake smiles that were given to him daily. He hated with the security that the nurses and doctors lived in. He hated that he was stripped of his knife and rifle. He felt naked sleeping with out his rifle by his side, or within an arm reach of a buddy. It hurt more to lay on a hospital bed than it did to sleep in a hard foxhole.
On the eighty-seventh day Chris Davis stepped out of the military hospital with discharge papers in hand. The first thought that crossed through his head was to go visit his parents. Waiting by his departure gate, he seemed apart from the normal routine. He sat straight up in the chair, observing everything that moved. His head twisted franticly side to side. His eyes darted nervously around picking up every single movement and reporting them back to his brain in nanoseconds. He knew how many people were waiting in line to board, and he knew exactly where all of the exits were, and he knew how he would walk down the cabin of his plane into his seat. He knew how to look for potential danger, and he could evaluate anybody after three words left their mouth. However, Chris Davis was just an empty shell of what he one was.
The visit to his adopted parents house was drab. He was pestered about the life he lived over there. He was asked about which side was winning. He was asked if he had seen combat, and Chris gave a curt nod and said yes with no emotion. With eyes watering, his foster mother asked him if he took anybody’s life. Chris Davis gave another calm yes, and his foster mother broke down in stifled sobs. Chris sat there, as an eye of a hurricane remains motionless, Chris sat neatly with his hands folded on his knee. He peered into his mother trying to get a sense of any feeling whatsoever, but he lost this ability a long time ago.
When he shut the door behind him, he was still trying to feel a feeling, but he still could not. He wanted to forget; he needed to forget. He idly drove around in his pristinely kept ’88 Chevy. This truck reflected Chris Davis. It’s exterior was new and shiny, but the interior was ready to fall apart at any second. One jolt would cause both of them to break down.
He didn’t need to look at the clock to know that it was 3:45 PM. He did not know where he was going. He drove trying to remember who he was before boot camp. Memories of parties, friends, and girls flowed through his brain, but from all of those memories he was unable to decipher who he was. In a last desperate attempt he drove down an old dirt road, which lead to a hill.
He sat on top of this hill, until the sun began to set. It was here where he fell in love, and it was here when his heart broken. He was seventeen, and he fell in love, or what he thought was love. Many teenagers profess to be in love, and they are not. However, Chris’s love was true. Nobody can attempt to understand how he felt, but what we do know is that what he felt was true and genuine. He had plans for the future, plans to go to college, and plans for a family. It was at the spot that he currently laid at where he had spent countless nights with his love. It was on the same night that he planned to profess his love and propose to her was the same night that she left him. They were both in love, but her love was the teenage love that is infrequent as the wind. She decided to move on; he did not. He stayed their forever. If she knew what devastating effect that this would have on him, it is probable to think that she would have loved him forever, dreading the beast he would become.
By going to this long forsaken spot, he hoped to find him-self hidden in the overgrown forest. When he finally arrived, a deluge of memories flooded back into his conscience. We must understand that these powerful memories have been suppressed for years in the deepest and darkest corners of the mind of Chris Davis. After not experiencing emotions for a long time, Chris was not sure how to handle such an onrush of sadness. For forty-seven seconds, Chris stood there, not feeling anything. He had a complete lack of emotion. After that eternity passed, Chris knelt with one hand on the ground and began to cry. These tears did not trickle down his face and fall on a flower like they would in a poetic and fake story. His tears fell down like a severe thunderstorm. Big and fat drops did not land daintily on the flowers; they destroyed them. They created havoc wherever they fell, just as they were created by the chaos in the mind of Chris Davis. Just as it would in a fake and untruthful story, it began to rain. However, there was nothing soothing or pitiful about this rain. This rain tore down everything, as well as Chris Davis. We leave Chris looking up into the rain screaming like a man who has just lost everything. He screams like this, because he just realized that he has nothing left.
