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Unceremonious Unveiling

A Short Story

By Blake Theau ThorPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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There are few moments in life that burn itself in your memory on impact.

There are some times you remember being at; sometimes a smell can take you back to your childhood, or a certain feeling of nostalgia when you bite into a peanut butter and banana sandwich like mom used to make you.

These aren’t what I’m referring to. There are a few moments in life where you remember every, single, minute, detail. These moments, unfortunately, usually surround trauma. The kind of trauma that mentally decapitates soldiers after they’ve watched one too many children unknowingly play hopscotch in a minefield and god-dammit they rolled a 5 and then boom! We have a new war amp inductee.

I remember. I remember all of it. The day itself wasn't particularly special. If I'm being honest, I don't remember anything about the day at all, until I saw it. Even now, the nausea rises simply describing the event.

I remember my reaction.

The way my body temperature rose. The heat swelled in the lymph nodes of my throat like I'm going to vomit. The temperature rapidly descended into my gut and my own skin became unbearable and simultaneously sending my microwaved dinner spewing onto the floor.

The pain quickly ignited nausea from the very pit of my being—where the soul is kept. My soul responded by unceremoniously tearing my identity apart. Everything I was, everything I could be, and everything I wanted in life disintegrated into a poisonous dust. As I mentally tried to piece together the mess, what feels like a spear entered my gut and impaled me through my heart. I searched for it, trying to remove it, but found something; the pain remained.

At the same time that my entire mental capacity imploded, like an emergency procedure my brain started flicking breakers. My heart stopped for a second and then restarted. I stopped breathing. My knees gave out and my nervous system failed to brace for the fall. I forgot how to blink. The taste of oxygen burned my tongue; the moonlight scorched my eyes. My muscles spasmed rejecting the truth my mind now knew. My abdomen convulsed in a harrowing attempt to stifle my own cries of pain, but ultimately failed. My hearing abandoned me.

I didn't understand it. I couldn't comprehend it. I searched for the why. I inspected my own insecurities and failures. It was my fault. It was all my fault. If only I did better, if only I... if only I did something somewhere differently.

Then anger took its turn. The pain of your soul pierces from the middle of your gut, and disgust starts in your throat. But anger, anger radiates from the middle of your chest, constantly fueled by the pumping of your heart—as mine now did. I laid in the fetal position as the anger swept over me. My hands, prior positioned to brace myself on the floor slowly clawed rigidly into fists. I contracted my body further as rage tensed my muscles into a rock hard exterior.

Betrayal followed, knocking the wind out of me. It collected the pain, the anger, the confusion, the anguish, and the despair into a cycle. It repeated the process so fast and so continuously that you could only experience the surprise of the sudden onset of each one, but never settle into this new existence.

I was immune to the wretched sound escaping my throat that summoned my neighbor. Here I was, a well adjusted father, husband, engineer, author. Here he was, my neighbor, friend, junkie. Many times I had stayed with him as he tried, and failed, to abandon his crutch. But this time, I needed him. He held me, and cried for me.

All of this mayhem happened inside of a split second. The cognitive realization of what I was looking at actually came after the self destruct signal was in full effect. What caused this? This cataclysmic silent apocalypse triggered by… a receipt?

Yes.

A single receipt.

A single hotel receipt.

A single hotel receipt with my credit card.

A single hotel receipt with my credit card, his name, in a city only she was in.

trauma
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