A Glimpse of a Very Personal Hell

Posted on Fri Jun 12th, 2015 @ 6:50am by

590 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 88 - Memories Lost, Trouble Found
Location: Starbase 400, Deck 412, Cabin 115
Timeline: MD4 0416hrs.

Jack got back to his cabin, trembling. He sprinted to the sink where he was violently sick. He then stumbled back through the door, tripping over the table by the sofa before collapsing onto it. He looked at his hands. They were rattling. He even had trouble grabbing onto a picture that he grabbed from the side.

He stared into the picture. It was the four brothers, taken just before Jack left for the academy. There he was in the middle, with his arms round Matthew and Davey, with Ian on the far left. He even remembered when it was taken; just after they had got back from their cousin’s wedding back home. One of Matthew’s eyes was half-shut, Ian had a lopsided smile and a bottle of Cardassian Sunrise and Davey had 2 Budweiser classics. All underage at the time, but we didn’t care, Jack thought, a watery smile appearing on his face. Then the illusion broke and he started crying again; god if they could see him now, what would they think of him?

He had had a flashback that day, and what a time to have one. He was inside the Warp core of the USS Backman with Travers, carrying out routine maintenance, holding a dilithium canister when his mind just blacked.

He was back on Hunster II, screaming in his ears, holding a block of masonry. A group of colonists were trapped behind a section of collapsed wall ahead of him. He heard Watson behind him shouting to a group of marines behind for assistance, while Walshie was on the SATCOM radioing the Ark to see if they could transport them out. Jack, choking and blinded by dust, smashed the rock against the blockade, again and again. He had managed to batter his way through the blockage and see the trapped colonists, when the whole world collapsed around him.

When he came to, he had been dragged clear by Watson and Travers, covered from head to toe with dust and blood, with a gash in his forehead and right wrist. He then looked down his body at what remained of the building they were just in. At the base near the door was one solitary arm protruding out, its fingers twisted and bent the wrong way. On one of the smashed fingers was a wedding ring. The arm looked like it was still attached to something, or rather, someone. There were woman and children in there, he had seen them, the terror in their faces, their eyes pleading for help, as the sky fell in on them.

He looked at Watson, who shook his head, helped Jack to his feet and asked for instructions. It was at that moment, he came round.

He was outside the reactor chamber on Backman, lying on the floor, surrounded by people, Travers among them. “Easy boss, easy” he soothed. “What happened” croaked Jack. “You started shouting and lobbing the canister at the command binnacle, sir” said Travers. “One more hit and the whole place would’ve looked like Wolf 359”.

Despair flooded his body. He got up, numbed with shock, with white noise buzzing in his ears, shook away the people around him and, without saying another word, staggered away.

And now he was here, in his cabin. Hell’s bells, what the hell happened? He could’ve killed all those people and not remembered a thing. Even Jack knew that this had gone beyond combat fatigue now. He needed help and he needed it now. But where from?

RSS Feed