I would like to tell you that I have been busy, writing. Blogging, and discovering myself, and a way to deal with PTSD.
But I can't.
Yes, I have been writing, and blogging, but I haven't been posting. I write up posts and then my own fears and doubts manage to move the cursor to delete instead of publish. As the days marched on since my last post my world has grown cold, and dark.
My PTSD, or my event, was not caused in War. War did not help it get better. It in fact made it worse. The main event, the very second I remember my life changing, I was in South Korea. I was drunk, and I was lost.
I tried to find my way around, I was alone, I shouldn't have been. I had no idea where I was, or how I'd gotten there. The blackouts were coming like the tide. It was dark, I remember being in an industrial part of some town. I remember getting out of a cab, and walking away. I remember the lights not fully on, like they were warming up to turn on. But they never came on, the street lights just hummed, a slow warm off yellow color. Enough light shown for me to see the streets, but no definition. No detail. It was either that, or I was far more drunk than I remember.
I remember walking, slowly sipping on the Soju bottle I had gotten from one of the blackouts. I remember seeing a red door, not movie red. Where it is painted in stark contrast to everything else, so your eyes are drawn to it. No, this door was faded, if had a blue sign on it, Korean letters were painted across it. I couldn't read it.
I remember thinking it looked like a cafe in the town outside where I was stationed. I thought if it was that same cafe I knew the owner and I could get a cab. I opened the door, and I walked up the stairs.
Ah, it was nice to be on familiar grounds again.
I crawled up the steep steps, hands on both walls in the slim hallway, up the stairs I went. I reached the top, and I smelt smoke. The bitter stench triggered my hands, and they went for my own pack in my pocket. I lit a smoke, and stopped for a minute. This was not my cafe, I did not know anyone here.
There was a table in center of the large room, a young man sat behind it inspecting clothes. To each side of him there were four rows of tables with sowing machines. Children stood behind the tables, working fabric into the machines. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Boys wore stained white underwear, no more, no less. Girls the same, but they were allowed small tank tops. With every child's head shaved it was the only way to truly tell them apart.
Dead eye glazed over crept up at me, cigarette in my mouth, bottle in my hand. Back down the eye slid. Back to work they went, scabs inched up their legs, like the lines of a ruler. The man at the table looked up, and said nothing. He picked up a cane leaning on the table, and smack it hard against a table on his right. The children flinched, their little hands quickened. The cold staring man, went back to work as well.
I was nothing to him. These children were nothing. He felt nothing.
Around the corner came a second man, a man of equal threat to these children. They noticed his entry, but showed no sign of slowing their work. With him he held the hand of a young girl, hair had been let to grow out, it was still shorter than normal. Tears streamed from her face. She held up her underwear with the other hand, blood flowed between her shaking knees. Her top was ripped, and shout at me, it told me what had happened moments ago.
The man, rather slender and tall, smiled and greeted me. Dragging a small puff from his cigarette, he twisted and leaned into the small child. Blowing smoke in her face as he tried to kiss her. She fought and screamed. Crying, she fought this monster. His tongue flicked out, lapping at the smoke and her small face. He enjoyed the pain and misery he spread.
My body shook, my cigarette dropped, never once being puffed on but all ashes. I dropped my bottle, it shattered. The slender man, slapped the small girl away, blood flowed freely from her mouth. Angry words in a language I didn't understand flew everywhere.
This is where in movies the hero comes to his senses and fights to save the day.
I wish I could say that, but I can't. I remember reacting, and everything going blank. I remember hearing the bleeding girl scream once more. Than I don't know.
I tried to find that red door once more. I tried to remember the blue sign. I tried to save them after I came to, I tried. And I failed. I failed to save anyone. I let them be hurt, and exploited. My inability, my intoxication, and my inaction has caused me to dream of the small girl getting raped, and beaten every night. The slender man laughing and breathing smoke in her face, all while the cold eyes of the undead children watch on in unchanging empty emotion.
The two men uncaring, so much so, that my very presence wasn't enough to alarm them. The casual nature with which they handled the entire situation left me empty.
