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Chapter 1 Night Patrol: Dancing with Cornflakes in Afghanistan

I was somewhere in the desert at the edge of civilization when the psychosis began to take hold. My heart beats securely and steadily, buried deep somewhere in this gear I wear. It’s buried by bulletproof plates and flack vests and tactical vests and ammunition and global positioning system handheld devices and maps and red star cluster flares and grenades and canteens and cigarettes and gum and Jolly Ranchers, but my heart is in there somewhere. I can feel it thumping securely somewhere deep inside. I feel encased, entombed in a catalog of military waste. My hands, sheathed in thin trigger-ready gloves, feel like distant attachments, moving inexplicably without my knowledge as they crinkle and fist and smooth themselves in nervous fidgety tics. Something’s cutting into my hip. Some buried harness or piece of equipment isn’t fitting well. Something is always sitting wrong. You reorganize, readjust,