Excerpt Two:

 

 

KIRK JAMES

 

 

 

He’d thought himself on a descent into madness, rabidly knocking on madness’s iron door, begging not to be allowed in. So Kirk James was elated when he was accepted on to the rehabilitation and refurbishment program. He couldn’t think what the refurbishment of a person would look like, but it felt like a potentially fine outcome for him, personally, under the circumstances. 

He’d been trotting off; zig-zagging over-optimistically toward cover, to seek invisibility from existence. This person wasn’t him; this poor specimen of Homo Sapiens was a provoked animal with diminishing escape routes from the closing curtains of death. 

The elation he felt was part of his PTSD, something he hoped to lose on his journey from broken to ‘refurbished’ and ready for action. Elation, seemed to Kirk, to be an idiot’s toothless grin. He’d never needed it as an emotion in his life leading up to the precipice.

They’d started his refurbishment with isolation. Man had become monster; human movement arousing the suspicion of a predatory confrontation. The sudden movement of the shape of a nearby arm causing a stab of cortisol in preparation for an instantaneous response. He hadn’t been aware of the extent of his behaviour until it had been demonstrated to him. The horror at his own adaptation to being a frightened animal from being a heroically statured man’s man, prompted him to quibblessly sign up for further, deeper, more experimental work to salvage the wreck of his once proud fleet flagship self.

At first, the program worked on his memory, using drugs and video environments. Slowly bringing the lessening threat of the human form back into play. The exercises became engrossing games and time disappeared; he played and played and grew and grew—progress reports on his telling brain activity showing him a way out—he swam upwards, stopping in stages, depressurising, the surface an ever more realisable idyll; the arrival at which would be just reward for hard work and cause for great elation.