REWRITE

THIS IS MY SKIN

(and it's thick. this is not your skin - yet you are still under it.)

where you used to be

there is a hole in the world

which i find myself constantly walking around in the day time

and falling in at night

i miss you like hell

- 4 -

There is sand everywhere you look. It grinds against your bones as you march across the dunes, half blind from the glare of the sun. Vultures circle nearby and you do an automatic sweep to make sure all your men are still at your flank. Their hazy silhouettes, all present and accounted for, comfort you.

On your left is Manny. He's your best friend, your brother, the only family you have left. He's running his mouth about something, shooting you a smirk and a wink as he makes some comment that has the others groaning. When he nudges your shoulder with his, you can't help but laugh. It's been a long day - a long tour - but the end is in sight, and it's unsurprising that the conversation turns to what's waiting for you all when you get home. Wives, children, families, friends, you name it, your men have it.

What you lookin' forward to, Manny?

Me? Man, I can't wait to see my girl again.

The wistful tone in his voice makes all the men scoff as they turn to you.

What 'bout you, Tommy?

Me? Man, I can't wait to see Manny's girl again.

The men laugh as Manny takes a playful swipe at your shoulder, not letting the teasing before him. The banter continues around you and you have this feeling like you've all walked off the face of the earth, like you've ascended somehow. You've all seen and done things that the people back home couldn't even dream of, and it's like it's changed your DNA somehow. You've learned to breathe in the sand, to see through the scorching sun, to carry the weight of your gear as if it was nothing. Your unit has been made and unmade together, been broken and reborn together on the battlefield and you know you could conquer the world with these men at your side.

The days seem longer under this sun which seems to hang forever in the sky, no matter the time, so you're not sure how long it is before you find the abandoned collection of wood shacks that are half buried beneath the sand. Adjusting the firearm in your grip, you gesture for your men to be on their guard as you approach the tiny village. Most of the structures have collapsed or are about to, though they don't look that old.

You feel odd and just as you're about to suggest you move back, Manny calls you over. You find him kneeling inside one of the shacks, holding open a covered ditch in the ground in which you see rudimentary materials that could be used to make explosives. The odd feeling solidifies and you snap out commands for your unit to vacate the area; it's then that the sound of aircraft steals your attention.

They're mostly just blotches of shadow against the sun but Smithson is peering through his binoculars and he calls over to you, relief clear in his voice.

Friendlies! I can see the flag!

When you confirm this with your own pair, you let the tension fade away, grateful to not be thrown into your third firefight in as many days. Manny slaps you on the shoulder and you feel a bit light-headed like you've had too much to drink. You hear laughter as the others whip out their own flags, ready to wave them high and proud in the air. Watching them, you think that you're still too close to the village and you open your mouth to tell them to move back. Before you can get the words out, the first bomb is dropped.

Get down!

It hits the ground like an earthquake, sending columns of burning sand shooting up into the sky. Manny stumbles beside you from the shockwave and you drag him back to his feet by the lapel of his vest. The men start running, shouting things that you can't hear over the ringing in your ears. You feel Manny push on your shoulder and then the pair of you are being thrown to the side through one of the shacks, and all the sound around you dies with a clap of thunder. You're covered in debris and you're struggling to breathe in. When you look to the side you see one of your boys - Campbell? - and his uniform is crimson, and his mouth is open like he's screaming but you can't hear anything except a shrill keening and when you try to reach out to him, he is swallowed by a hungry mouth of sand.

You crawl out from under the rubble, wiping sand from your eyes with the back of your hand, and you slowly drag yourself in the first direction you think of. You try to form words, a name, but your throat is burning and you keep swallowing something metallic each time you cough. Just when you think your legs are going to give out, you see someone lying face down beneath some planks of rotten wood. You don't need to turn them over to know who it is but it still feels like a punch to the gut when you see his face.

Manny cries out his wife's name, your name, and his hands are scrabbling at your chest as you try to soothe him, spitting out muffled promises that everything is going to be okay. Your training is racing through your head in sporadic spurts but all you can focus on is the piece of gnarled metal that is protruding from his rib cage and there is so much blood that you can smell it over the burning.

You tell him help is coming but when you squint through the smoke all you can see is bodies. Manny stops crying and you hold him tighter just as he goes limp, and you think you're screaming his name but all you can hear is silence as his eyes close and his head falls back. You shake him but he just lies there and your fingers are sticky with his blood, sand in your mouth, and the planes are circling round. You could try to signal them but instead you pray that they have one last bomb to drop because your unit is dead and this is one battlefield you're not planning on leaving alive.

It was still dark when he woke. The house was quiet, like the first snowfall in winter, and Tommy walked through the house like it was made of glass.

When he poured the alcohol into the sink, he didn't pull the plug. He just let it sit, the smell seeping through the walls like rain, the carpet damp with it. The house creaked and groaned as if the foundations were made of old bones, soil caught in the cracks, whiskey stained marrow. The kitchen floor was scratched from all the broken glass swept under the rug, a faint bloody hand print that had been furiously scrubbed at staining the wall. The man who had made it many years ago was carefully tucked into bed, a pint of water and some aspirin waiting patiently on his bedside table.

Unable to remain in that room any longer, Tommy retreated to the stairs and sat down heavy on the bottom step. As he stared out into the darkness before him with burning eyes, he began to shudder. It felt like insects were burrowing around his lungs, biting and consuming as they went; he was a rotting, hollowed thing, his humanity festering in the empty pit of his stomach.

Broken; lost. He didn't know what to do and it scared him. His whole life had been one loss after the other, each one bringing him to his knees and now there was no one left. No one except him. He had died a thousand deaths and yet still he remained, begging for an end that was never granted.

When he had woken in the hospital after his unit had been killed, he'd asked the nurse if this was the afterlife. She'd laughed and said no. They had all been so clean and sympathetic, treating him like a child with the flu, even when he screamed and threw chairs across the room. When he asked them why his bed was filled with sand, why the water from the tap ran red, why the planes overhead were flying so low, they would just tell him to rest. When he asked them why he was still alive, they had nothing to say.

A few days in, some official looking people had sat across from him, using words either too fancy or too dumb for him to understand. He spent the whole meeting staring at his hands. They spoke about apologies and certificates and medals and friendly fire and honourable discharge or leave or whatever it was that he wanted - there was only one thing he wanted - and that he was to get better because they cared about him and because he was a good soldier: it was all bullshit. It was a group of dogs with their tails between their legs because they'd fucked up and he hadn't had the good nature to die with the rest of the sorry cunts in his unit, so the officials actually had to raise their hands and acknowledge their mistake, god forbid.

When he healed up, they had sent him on his way with a band-aid and a lollipop, ruffling his hair and ignoring the gore that dripped from his hands.

Not knowing where else to go, Tommy had fallen back into the lap of his childhood - and only now was he realising what a huge mistake that was. He had only ever thought about how it would affect him but now he was seeing the impact his presence had on the others around him. Maybe if he had won Sparta it would have been different but in that moment, sat on that step, he couldn't picture tearing his brother apart the way he had wanted to inside the ring. Now, with only a loser's title and an unconscious father in the other room, Tommy could see the mess he had made. His father would still be sober if he hadn't arrived. Brendan would still have won the competition, he was sure of it, and - well, there was no one else in his life, not really. Just a boss, some guys he worked out next to and a pretty girl that he didn't know the age of, and he definitely didn't want to drag her down with him.

He wished that he had died. While he was pretty sure that was different from wanting to die, it all boiled down to the same thing. He was here and he didn't want to be. There was no romance or poetry to be found in this wish, just fear. The nurse was wrong: this was the afterlife and his demons knew him well. The devil sang his lullaby and he wanted it to stop.

At some point during the night, Tommy wiped away his tears and forced himself to get up from the stairs. His feet dragged and he stumbled against the wall like he was the drunk one, his head spinning as he found himself back at the kitchen sink. The horrific stench of booze had sweated into every pore of the room making him feel sick. He stared into his distorted reflection for a long time before it became too much and he plunged his hand in and wrenched out the plug. The whiskey drained away with a hiss but the smell refused to dissipate.

As if on autopilot, Tommy grabbed the bleach from the cleaning cupboard and began pouring it on every surface. He got on his hands and knees like his father and scrubbed the liquid into the dirty tiles. The sweat began trickling down his forehead and he kept seeing drops of blood appearing out of the corner of his eye, making him turn around and clean that bit all over again.

Yet even when he had cleaned the entire kitchen, he could still smell the alcohol. Thinking that maybe it was on him, he ripped his shirt off and threw it into the sink, bleaching it and disinfecting it and soaping it down until the material had curdled and gone a sickly white - but the stench was still there, except now it wasn't alcohol but burning flesh he could smell.

He didn't stop to think and suddenly the bleach was on his skin and it was burning like sand and the sun and he could hear explosions shaking the floor beneath his feet. Tommy collapsed, panting, hands slipping against the damp floor as he tried to pull himself into the present. He focused on the sting of his skin and it took a few seconds for it click that he had bleach on his arms, and he quickly ran out of the kitchen and into the bathroom where he stripped off his trousers and threw himself into the shower. He turned it to as cold as it went and stood under the water until the burning went away.

It was still dark when he got out of the shower - when would it be day again? - and he didn't watch where he was going as he stumbled, shivering and soaking, through into his bedroom. His feet caught on the door frame and he pitched forward onto the nearest bed, face hitting the pillow with perfect accuracy. His eyes closed and he took a deep breath, a new smell filling his senses, one that was familiar but distant, like a forgotten memory.

Exhaustion rattled through his bones like a cold wind and he let himself give into it. He turned his head so that he was facing the wall and his body relaxed into the sheets. Just as he felt the heavy drag of sleep pull at the edges of his consciousness, Tommy realised that he must have fallen onto Brendan's bed because he was surrounded by the childhood scent of his big brother and in that last moment before he succumbed to his exhaustion, Tommy felt like he was fourteen years old again. He felt safe.

This chapter was rewritten on 30 May 2016. The quote is a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay.

AN - you will notice that I have deviated from the canon here by not having Tommy go AWOL but rather be discharged.

xo