Some sounds are universal. None more so than that base, primordial scream. Whether a child, a full grown man, or an animal, that scream sounds the same. That scream terrifies me. It's the sound that echoes in the hallways of this hospital. The sound of panic - of realizing that someone or something bigger and stronger than you are means to kill you or doesn't realize that they could. It's the sound of fear - the kind you never forget. That sound marks a point in history that you will remember for the rest of your life. The moment you realized your own mortality. The moment you realized that you could trust no one, because nothing could save you if that thing wanted to kill you.
The screams that filter through my door - broken people tortured by the killing things in their own mind - are familiar. They sound exactly like my own screams. When the whole house shook because I hit the wall so hard with my dad's hand around my throat. When the last of my strength bled onto a cement floor in a cell in Vietnam, and I slipped into darkness. When the water filled in my lungs in a Russian prison, and my final flicker of hope went dark. When I died.
I hear those screams all the time now. They're as much a part of me as my memories. The fear defines me; the drugs make it real although I'm no longer capable of feeling. I have been replaced. And in my place lies a shell, a man who once was: son, pilot, agent... human.