For thirty-six years I’ve been having the same dream day after day, waking up to the sound of artillery, bombs and the piercing screams of the innocent civilians. The war had changed me, as a person. Every day I find myself hoping that God would stop testing me. That he would stop telling me to make use of the rest of my life.

My hands were stained in the blood of the innocent. Children, mothers, priests; they had all died for what most of us would call freedom, but for those who fought for that freedom know that the war was nothing but a reason for murder. They say, if you kill a man on the streets, you’re a murderer. Kill a man on the battlefield, you’re a hero. But, when I’d look in the mirror every morning, I didn’t see a white, sixty-six year old man dressed in nothing but blue and red stripped boxers, gray haired and cleanly shaved. I didn’t see a hero of the war. I saw a monster; I’d see the devil incarnated. I would ask myself every morning when I see the picture of my late wife on the wall adjacent to the kitchen, “What did I fight the war for? What justifies killing children? Children who are no older than twelve. Children who have their whole lives ahead of them.”

Nothing.

That was the answer that I had come up with after years of searching, and the children of the new generation saw this. They knew nothing good ever came from fighting senseless battles. I’d see them, at the convenient store on Veterans Day. Snickering, talking as the rest stood in honor of all those who went over. All those who gave their lives for the freedom the United States is so proud of. Even though I ask myself whether or not that freedom was worth all the lives lost, I continue to tell myself that I did what I had to for the sake of my loved ones, and our comrades on the other team did the same.

But every morning, I am forced remind myself of that, as the previous night’s dream turns that thought into a hazy fog present only in very corners of my mind. The dream always consists of the street of Vietnam, painted crimson in blood. The faceless bodies of the dead scattered in every direction.

The dream wasn’t much different from the very streets on which stage one of my transformation into a monster occurred. Not much different from the streets on which I was awarded a medal for my services.

I’d always be in a group of three or four people, everyone around my age, kicking down doors and bursting rifle first into houses. In almost every house, the strong scent of incense was always afloat. It was the Vietnamese belief; they thought that by burning incense, they were asking their ancestors to protect them from dangers and harm. I envied them. To be able to hold true to their faith even when the city was in a state of siege, I just don’t understand how they do it. To me, faith was something that I kept questioning as days went by in that war. It wasn’t whether or not there was that all knowing supernatural figure, of course there was. We always blamed all the misery and suffering of the world on that power. But my questioning was rather, will my faith, my beliefs, still hold true after this war is over? Will I be able to return to my normal life in the next few years?

The answer wasn’t hard; I had figured it out two years after the war. When my wife died, it reminded me of the war, reminded me of all the houses we raided over those years. It was a terrifying thought. The answer I had found was that: there is no redemption for killing, no reason for killing. And it was impossible to turn back after killing.

There was always one house in particular I remembered. We were on the fourth raid, I would remember it exactly. We kicked the door in and marched in proudly as if our deeds were orders of the good lord himself. Upon entrance our squad commander was yelling, “Check the rooms!”

As I came to an empty room, I checked around the corners in a rush, about to exit just as the crying of a baby filled the silent air. I walked over to the closet. It was one of the old brown ones, surrounded by fading green walls. I slid it open, staring down at a teenage girl no older than twelve, holding a baby tightly to her chest, as if to say, if you want to get the baby, you’ll have to kill me first.

I never thought about it much back then, to me it was just one more casualty. I never thought the look of terror I saw on her face would haunt me till this day. The expression on her face wasn’t from the foresight of her own death, but the death of the child, who she held so tightly yet with such motherly tenderness.

That love for the child is probably what changed me the most. The screams of a child reverberating day in and day out, in your mind is a scar which will never heal, only be put aside.

In the dream, this house is where the dream would come to a close. I’d open the door, looking down through the floor boards into darkness. The darkness was eternal, knowing no bounds. Moments after I would see it, the ground would break apart. Dropping me into an abyss, where I would fall for what felt like hours before waking up to the sound of my alarm clock, soaked in cold sweat and breathing as if I had run ten marathons all at once.

What most people around me didn’t know was me using “medicine” to ease the mental pain from the war. I never cared how much or what kind I used, but, as long as I could let loose and no longer worry about the pain I was alright with anything. I was using the money I got from the government to pay for my needs, the drugs. And the money from my part time job as a taxi driver to pay for the rest of the stuff: food, housing, clothes. The stuff most people would prioritize, but I thought of as second to the medicine.

When I needed a fix real bad, I’d find myself violently scratching my arm. Although I’d want to step away from it all, I’d be in the same position I always had been within a few hours. When I’ve taken, I don’t dream of the streets of Vietnam, for those short, few hours. I dream of my dead wife, me meeting her in heaven and living the rest of our dead lives together, forever.

The drugs made me feel good for those few hours, but afterwards, when I woke up, it was painful. All the bad memories rushing back all at once. It could consume a man, destroy him from the inside. I’d find myself going through long periods of depression whenever I didn’t have any.

The point in time after the war I hated the most was probably when my son, who was nineteen at the time, walked in on his old man sliding a syringe into his arm. A spoon and lighter in front of him. It was as plain as day, what I had been doing. Heroin symptoms weren’t hard to detect, not for a doctor at least. He noticed the signs almost immediately, red arm from the violent scratching whenever I itched for a fix. I remember the look of disgust on his face, but to me it wasn’t the look you gave a junkie, but, a face you’d make when you stared into the dark, bloodshot eyes of a murder, responsible for the deaths of so many.

Hated by even my own son, today, I wait for Death’s hands to bestow upon me final judgment. To decide whether I shall rest for eternity in the fiery depths of hell, or in the care of the supreme ruler, always protected from the spirits who were never given the choice to live or die.