Because there’s a dark thing implanted in the frontal lobe of my brain, ever-present, a cruel sequence of images, profoundly monstrous. It’s this: a figure materializes, fades in from black, in a concrete playground attached to a low-income housing project, moving into a metal elevator, moving into a hallway, moving through a door into a silent apartment, into a bedroom, a form beneath a worn sheet. And then the shots, two of them, impossibly loud, and I wake, the reverberation of the shots, and the lunge for the receding shapes. And cut.

Always the same dream.

Iveta triggers something buried in my chest. Do I know her? I can’t be sure. Perhaps she’s standing in for someone, or something iconic.

Now, it’s important to understand that I believe I have had certain aspects of my memory erased while laid up in D.C. What’s more, I believe I had false memories implanted. I have no way to prove this, it just feels true. It’s a gut thing. As a result, I look at my recollections or dreams with suspicion.

Regarding this dream. My therapist at Walter Reed, Dr. Rosita Lopez, framed it in this way: as I am unable to accept the loss of my wife and daughter while I was deployed, and as a manifestation of my then trendy Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I repeatedly visualize an imagined reenactment of the crime committed against my family.

In the view of Dr. Lopez, with her frumpy nylons, her clipboard, and her surreptitious glances at her wristwatch, my acceptance of the realities I face will bring these visions to a close, and banish the imagined assailant from my apprehension, forever.

What I failed to mention to Dr. Lopez is the fact that, should I force my gaze downward in the midst of this recurring brain-film, the imagined assailant is wearing my hands. And shoes.