Part One- Dust and Dogs

 Screaming...My son is screaming. By the sound of it, he is one octave away from shredding his vocal cords to pieces. I've never heard him, or any other human for that matter, make a sound like that. And here I thought I could sneak some much needed guitar playing on the patio. I place the butt end of my Export to my lips for one last pull, and finger a descending C scale before placing the cheap Yamaha on a dirty lawn chair. Ready. As much as any young dad can be anyway.
 I bound up the stairs, with only a minute pause to reflect with four letter expletives upon my newly earned Iron Man toy-inflicted injury. The screaming is becoming vehemently worse as I near his bedroom door. Deep breath, than I push the door open...

 My eyes flash open.
It takes more than a minute for the receptors in my brain to allow me to come to terms with where I am.
I'm laying on my air mattress, half deflated, still in my boots. Wrapped in my favorite camo Ranger blanket, the lucky one from Battle School, I'm kept warm mostly by the fine layer of dust that covers me from head to toe, and has found its way into every crevice and orifice of my body.
 I reach for the CamelBak tube that snakes down the pole from the top bunk, to slag the thirst, but mostly to dislodge and wash down the ball of sand that had accumulated in my throat in the two hours since I had been relieved from Gate duty. Yet, still the screaming was there.
Reluctantly, always reluctantly, I roll out of bed, not so gracefully, and trying not to wake Aaron, who seemed impervious to the screaming that I could only imagine was coming from one of Satan's subjects who had somehow managed to find his way to the impromptu CDU that had been set up across the court yard.
 I strapped the issued Browning to my leg, and more importantly shaded my eyes with a set of Oakleys before opening the door to the blazing sun. I knew it would be retenae assaulting and skin burning, even if my shitty watch read only 0745. Eyes covered. Onward.
 The square angled horseshoe courtyard, that usually was the gathering area for the men, and few women of Patrol Base Belanday, was almost completely empty, save for two Afghan National Police, sitting dejectedly on my stoop. The pungent smell of their Pine cigarettes hung in a thick cloud right in front of my door, held close by the thick dusty air. As disgusting as they smelled, they tasted even worse. I bummed one anyway. Someone had fucked with the Canadian imports, so fuck it, when in Rome....
 And still the screaming filled the silent air, eminating as I had suspected from the Med Station.
Did I miss something??? I thought torture was forbidden by the Canadian Forces!! Whatever the docs were doing to the source of those sounds must constitute torture, as I'm sure the patient would also agree with me. God, Pines are gross. Cheap fuckin' Paki darts...Screaming.