Oscar’s No Good Very Bad Day, Xoxo Nyx

“Clear,” I breathe, sweat cascading out of orifices I never knew I had. My heart beating so loudly in my ears that I can’t even tell if I said it correctly.

I would say that this is not my day, but would have to extend it to this is not my life.

If I had fingerprints, I’d worry about wiping the bomb down. I don’t courtesy of the AF. Even in my upset I remember that tree fort is mine and Alex’s code word for a safe place.

One that the team of Reapers coming in won’t think to check.

No part of me is capable of dealing with high adrenaline situations anymore. Just because I’m disabled doesn’t mean the AF won’t take me back. One way or another, if I’m found in five miles of this thing, the freedom I’ve found will be as non-existent as the love life Nicky’s trying to fix.

Somewhere inside of me I know that the war is still going on. No matter what the news says. My rubbery legs moving as quickly as they can, is no distraction from the funky feeling I have.

The cops or blueboys may not be able to get away with questioning me on matters of national security, but Rocco’s team can. Squares, military police, don’t care if I’m bat crap crazy.

Even if low-level AF members know what Orcs are; being the devices that started the draft twenty years back. Disarming one is a task for the ranks of the undead.

What little I remember of my time in the military is that every effort was made to dismantle and shut down that particular program. Something that obviously didn’t take.

I don’t know how I knew it was a class x. Anymore than when or where I’d dismantled one in the past.

If it weren’t for Mutt, no way I wouldn’t be dead. Still, half the reason I’m shaking worse than a Parkinson’s patient is the fact that every action felt practiced. Almost like muscle memory.

Everything in my jacket says that I was a Greenie, or field medic, my first three tours. Only promoted to analytics in my last. Something that made no sense since my contract was only for four tours.

Considering that even the lowest ranked Squints, analysts, have to be actively monitored, even after discharge, until the intel they had access to is no longer relevant……

No, none of it makes any sense.

I’m sure a good bit of this is paranoia on my part, but Alex not discouraging the idea I’ll be sent to code name Alcatraz, is more encouragement to get nowhere fast.

Another thing that just proves, I know things I shouldn’t. Common sense alone tells me being aware of a black-site that no one has ever escaped, where every high-value prisoner is kept, let alone where it is……

It’s not just flashing pieces that make me feel like I’m in a brainwashing facility. The ones where they strap people to chairs and tape their eyes open to see the seizure worthy flood of images. No, it’s information.

Reflexes, habits, random bits of knowledge that appear at random. I tried to use the AF as an escape from the worst reality I could imagine beforehand. None of that went according to plan. I don’t need perfect recall to get that.

I can’t say that my time in the military was all bad. Even if there are more days I want to forget than remember… well, out of the parts that aren’t blank that is…..

I mean, the routine and regiment was good for me…….

It’s not worse than what I left……..

Who am I kidding?

I was a medic in the bloodiest, if not only civil war Lumeria’s ever had. Nothing about that was sunshine and rainbows. As much as I’m starting to recall, I’d much rather not. Not even the EIX serum they give soldiers to enhance their E gene and double their healing ability can help that.

No, I don’t want to go back to full infant status, but it’s no lie when people say obliviousness is bliss.

I was never meant to survive. I don’t think parts of me did...... No. I don’t want to remember any of it. Not my time on the front lines. Not my time as a Squint. Definitely not my time as a captive.

That determination to leave the past in the past hasn’t stopped the chopped up memories I’m getting more and more frequently, though.

Maybe it’s foolish. Perhaps naive that I want to chalk the bizarre flashes I see as my overactive imagination. That or my cracked noggin mixed with Nicky’s obsession with action flicks being a bad recipe.

As a former MD, I was able to recognize the signs of regular torture as well as tissue harvesting coming out of my coma. The marks on my body have faded. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel a few face stitches shy of a Mary Shelly novel some days, but I’m not as bad as I was in the beginning.

My positive attitude may seem bizarre, but this is my one life to live. I hate being scared, sad, even angry, but firmly believe that happiness is a choice.

I have survived too much to believe that everything happens for a reason like I once did. I’d also have to wonder what a truly horrible person I had to have been in a past life to believe in reincarnation.

No, I can’t say that I still believe that it’s all part of some greater picture or plan like the good book says, but the time I have left is a gift.

A gift that I’ll cherish the very best of instead of letting them win.

I am healed. I am free. I am capable of an honest day’s work and standing on my own two feet in a city I’ve loved since the moment I stepped foot in it.

There’s nowhere else in this world or the one I came from like it. Something about Haven’s energy just draws me and makes me feel like it is, or that could truly be home once I work out the kinks.

“Kinsley Nyx Knight!” My brother roars when I give the green light of being at a safe distance. “Corrective surgery wasn’t enough! Now you see fit to give me palpitations?!”

“Gee, almost like naming me after a catastrophe cat was a bad idea, Nicky.” I stifle the urge to vomit from the massive amounts of adrenaline pumping through my system.

Having no real clue if it’s raining or if I’m just drowning in a puddle of my own sweat.

“If you are not on the first train home, so help me almighty CHER, I will pack up my broom and ride it straight up your..... ”

I smash rather than just hang up on Nicky by smashing the phone. Half in anger, and the other half to destroy any link between myself and a terrorist attack.

The burners I use are not supposed to be traceable, but every conversation spoken over the waves is stored in servers and can be listened to, if they are triggered before the files get dumped.

Alex and Nicky both know I’m safe.

That’s all I can manage before I give in to the spiral of sheer panic, and the episode that’s about to take over just to prove the Witch’s point for the next forty-five minutes at least. Where he says I can’t live alone after what happened.

That I need to come home so he can take care of me.

Where I will continue to be a burden on the people I love the most.

By the time the panic attack passes and I travel back to the present. My body stops tingling with my shot of nastiness Alex insists I take, but the fatigue and overall rubbery feeling remains with my hellish device in my brain powered down again.

I still feel like living death, and need to get moving. Even if I’m half numb and wobbly at best. The sun isn’t even up yet when I slip, trip, and slide on the scummy concrete and knock my head on the curb of the back alley I’m trying to navigate out of.

Sure that at least an hour has passed, and I can attempt to rejoin the world of the living. I feel much like Oscar, and his No Good Very Bad Day, laying there in absolute defeat; dizzy, nauseous, sick and in pain when the rain starts to fall down on me.

Or at least when I notice it’s raining. I just close my eyes, giving into the crying fit that won’t change my past or present any more than reliving it. I hear a whimper and am covered up by an oily smelling thing.

It’s five thirty am, and none other than the homeless man, and the pooch who’d so generously cleaned my bottom earlier in the morning that won’t end, have been watching over me in my melt down.

Their makeshift blanket covering me rather than themselves through the storm.

I can’t say why I assume he’s a vet. I just do, and I smile brightly at him. Insisting on getting the man and his canine a good breakfast at Zach’s.

It’s a twenty-four-seven diner run by a woman named Helen and her brother Zeke. Their brother, Zack was lost in the war, which is why they named it that.

With Zeke’s PTSD, it’s not as if it’s winning any awards for quality or consistency. However, it’s the place all vets feel comfortable going, I guess.

While I’m not big on using the disability checks that were handed out, during the two years I was reverted to a toddler, in this instance, it’s not for me but for them.

Henry and Cerberus.

After a big meal, Helen offers Henry a job washing dishes and other minimal things in exchange for feeding him and his sweet brindle pooch.

One who needs a bath as much as the one legged Gunner does.

I wave away the tears of my moment, feeling that comradery that makes at least part of my morning worth it. So at six thirty am, I leave Zack’s with a new-found energy to face the day, and wouldn’t you know it. I’m sporting a new pair of period pants, having completely forgotten my medicine and tampons back at the Turkey’s.

Meaning another trip to the corner store, where a new ‘adventure’ or ‘chapter’ or whatever Nicky calls the episodes of the catastrophe cat, never fails to ensue.