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him out of the house and down the street, but he’d run from her, ignoring her pleas to return. He’d decided to need nothing and no one, and the men he’d let pick him up and fuck him that entire weekend at the club merely solidified it. One of them was an ex-Marine, and as Nick poured his guts out to the guy in the wee hours, he’d made a suggestion that changed Nick’s life forever. The Corps needed smart guys, computer savvy wizards like Nick, especially since the war in Iraq was becoming one of counter intelligence, basically spying via computers.
    So, the next morning, with a freshly pounding hangover he’d opened the door to the Marine recruiter’s office, marched up to the cheerful guy in the sharp uniform at the desk, and filled out the questionnaire noting the “don’t ask” portion relishing the supreme irony of his position. While he recalled a twinge of regret at that moment, realizing he was doing a completely knee-jerk, up-yours thing, he shrugged it off.
    The hours spent at basic training gave him the sort of focus he’d never had. He fucking loved it, every miserable, sore, tired, bullshit moment of it. Maybe because he knew it for what it was—they were tearing him down to build him back up into the image of a man he wanted to be. He absorbed it all, made it his own and in the process became better, in his opinion.  He did not regret it even though he was one of the many hiding in the closet
    Lying in the pitch-black bedroom, trying to calm his breathing and pounding heart from reliving yet again the horror of his last days as a Marine, he gulped when the true horror of his new life draped across his brain. His mind would not still, kept sending him fight or flight signals although he knew that was no longer necessary. Because now he was home, in his sister’s house, with a seeing-eye dog that he didn’t want, and nothing to live for. The room seemed to pitch, like a massive ship on the ocean, making him reach out to hang on, as his stomach roiled and threatened to empty. The god damned nightmare would not let him go no matter how hard he forced himself to be awake and to own up to his current reality. He heard a growl, felt the dog’s wet nose shoving at him, but he pushed it away.
    “Nick!”
    He groaned and rolled over, ignoring the sound of his name.
     “Nicholas, stop!” He lashed out, flailing his arms, fighting back before the asshole terrorist could lay his stupid coward’s bomb and ruin Nick’s entire life. “Please!” He gasped and sat, felt flesh under his palms then sank back, letting go of whomever he had a death grip on. The dog was bumping his leg, whining. “Honey, it’s just me,” he heard his sister’s voice, calm, without a hint of fear.
    “What is that fucking noise?” He groaned and put a hand on his aching forehead. The thump-thump-thumping would not cease.  His head spun pretty much nonstop with sounds. The doctors had warned that his other senses would heighten to compensate for the lack of sight, which had proven to be the understatement of the century. He honestly believed he could sense the undercurrent of rain on a sunny day across his skin, could hear people’s presence three rooms away, and would swear he could smell breakfast cooking three blocks down the street, although that was likely stretching it a little.
     Regardless, it was maddening. The daily headaches from the barrage of extra input were debilitating at best, pure hell at worst. Even his lowest moment in basic training, which he could pinpoint at the end of the first week in the hot stew of Parris Island, South Carolina, when every muscle, sinew and nerve he possessed screamed in pain, he would take over this infernal pounding in his head.
    His bored, VA therapist would invariably ask: “How is the pain?”
    “Bad,” he’d say, rubbing his ears to keep the cacophony of sounds from the hospital that warred with the nauseating odors threatening to bowl him over.
    “And how do you