When the nightmares used to be your everyday life, and the smell of your friends burning alive is nothing but a faint memory of their existence. How do you move on with life and not try and become what they are, a distant memory?

“Ace! What do we do?” Jax cries out as the enemy surrounds us.

The smell of gunpowder and charred flesh burns my nose. The smoke is so thick I can taste everything on my tongue and I want to throw up. I was frozen, I never freeze, what was happening? The enemy was closing in and I couldn’t breath or act.

“Ace! Ace!” My best friend called out desperately, but I realize there is no getting out of this alive…

I wake up with a start, sweat running down my face. It was always the same, even after 46 years. It is my penance for all the evils I have done back in that hell hole. Maybe, one day, I will have repaid my debt and be set free.

Today was Christmas and it is time to put all the fears behind me and head to see my beloved grandchildren. Every year they beg me to tell the story, and this year it's Remi's turn to hear. Now that she has a little one of her own, I can't deny her anymore. I just pray that after all she has been through, she won't think I'm a beast as well.

It was time to go back, and face my evils head on. To face the shadows I kept hidden from my family. I just pray this isn’t the one time my fears won’t let me return.