THE CRUCIBLE
by
Joaquin De Torres
edited by
Dr. Joseph De Torres
Copyright 2012 Joaquin De Torres.
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0952-8
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This work is dedicated to my father.
My hero and mentor who gave so much of himself,
and sacrificed his own dreams
so that his children could realize their dreams.
Dad, this is for you.
“Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure if they have it till the test comes.”
Carl Sandburg
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
Ambrose Redmoon
Prologue
“JESUS GOD!”
Seth Jackson's battered chest heaved excruciatingly as he considered this one last attempt--one last jump.
“It’s only ten feet away! TEN FEET AWAY, GODDAMN IT! I CAN DO THIS!” But the iron bars, twisted and welded together by the flames of the first explosion, swung wildly with the giant gusts of wind. There was so much blood in his eyes from the wounds on his lacerated face and shrapnel-pocked head that it nearly blinded him completely. He swiped the blood away with the back of his hand. The swinging net of tangled steel one story below blurred in and out of clarity. He had difficulty judging the distance it would take to reach it.
He had already made two mental attempts to jump, but the steep angle and the violent movement of the ship froze his nerves; if he missed, he would plummet some 30 feet into the violent ocean. A good strong jump to the mesh, he calculated, would break his fall, swing him back to the main deck and save him from the fire that was about to engulf him. On the other side of the bulkhead behind him, an inferno was already melting the rivets that held the buckled walls together.
He looked down at his broken right leg, ripped open from the blast and hanging grotesque and swollen like a mangled log. Any movement of it shot gunned rods of pain through his body.
“SHIT!” He grasped his left leg. It’s all he had; it would be his launching pad. But was it enough? The thought of his right leg slamming into metal girders below retracted his nerve yet again. His lips began to tremble as the rain wrapped around his body like a cold blanket. Louder than the howl of the storm was the inner wail of his suffocating fear--the realization that these may be the final moments of his young life. The thought that he would die an agonizing death, alone and without anyone knowing, frightened him more than the jump itself. He crossed himself. He had to try!
He wiped the blood out of his eyes once more and refocused on the dancing metal target below. His chest heaved heavily as oxygen, adrenaline, blood and glucose bolted through his limbs. His eyes bulged; his teeth gnashed in a primordial grin.
“THIS IS IT! THIS IS IT, MOTHER FUCKER!” he yelled into the wind as if rebuking the storm itself. “THREE! TWO! ONE!” With all strength left in him, he launched himself into the air just as the bulkhead behind him exploded outward. A tsunami of molten metal, shrapnel and flames blasted towards the sea.
Seth Jackson screamed for the last time.
Chapter 1
Survivor
It pierced the ship’s iron skin without resistance. Punching through the metal bulkheads and ripping apart the labyrinths of pipes and walls of electronic equipment it hurled in, entering unchallenged the inner sanctum of a fortress designed to stop it. Seconds later...it exploded. The wall of fire and wreckage blew through the ship, incinerating everything in its path. It then entered a corridor where a young woman was standing. She turned around to face the molten flood. She neither panicked nor screamed; she simply closed her eyes as the inferno engulfed her.
“BECCAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Kristina Torres bolted upright in her bed. “BECCA!” she repeated; confused, terrified and short of breath. Nearly hyperventilating, she swept the room with squinting eyes looking for survivors. She saw nothing. She closed her eyes and took deep controlled breaths, expecting to hear the moans of the wounded and dying. There was nothing; nothing at all. There were no bodies; no black-charred limbs; no fire or smoke. She was in her bed, in her room, in her house.
It had happened again.
She pulled the moist sheets off her naked body which glistened in sweat. Holding her face with her hands, she massaged her eyes, then reached for her cell phone to check the time: 5:20 P.M. Her nap had run too long and too deep, allowing the visions of her past–-her hell--to return as they had done many times before. The haunting of her soul never seemed to end. The imagery of that night--the sight, the sounds, and more ghastly, the smell of that night-—would never dissipate.
Shake it off! Move on, Kristina! The usual self-coaching voice was now a thoughtless habit. But that other voice, the voice of reason, would not back down either. Face your fear! Stop running from it! It never did, implanting in her the foreboding thought that one day, whether she was prepared or not, that demon would come again.
She entered her bathroom and stepped into the shower. The soothing, warm water danced on her skin, massaging away her tension. She considered calling her doctor. Dr. Yoshino had identified her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as being so neurologically disruptive that it caused severe but temporary psychological trauma. The symptoms would appear during heavy moments of stress: recurring nightmares, hallucinations and paralysing depression. Unfortunately, they would forever become a dark part of her life, Yoshino had said, unless she engaged and beat down those fears. Despite not ever wanting to face them, she knew that her career might one day put her on a collision course with them. It seemed inevitable.
The flow of water soothed her, but the thick veils of steam only took her memory back. Kristina was only 18 when it all happened, 16 years had passed since then but the memories remained as fresh and as horrifying as if they had happened just a few hours ago.
“Use your experience to help others,” one therapist advised. “It will help you overcome the pain. Face your fears. Defeat it by sharing it with those who can’t cope with their own.”
What possible difference can you make to someone who will never know what you went through? And how does talking about it face my fear? Kristina asked the doctors these questions repeatedly, but other than their standard, clinical responses of “Give it time”; “It’ll get better”; “Take some time off”; she received no concrete answers. No, it can’t be done, she reasoned. This was her cross to bear. Like rape victims, combat medics, or Nazi prison camp survivors--no one could ever fathom the depth of such lifelong scars. No lecture, symposium or group-hug technique could ever bring them so close.
It was 16 years ago and she could still smell the sweet, nauseating stench of charred flesh and caramelized blood. Despite all the medical diversions, the visions would always come back when she was most vulnerable—in her sleep. In the apparent safety of her own bed, she would witness it all over again, from different angles, with different victims, in different places. Sleep was when it was most intense.
But awake and in pure daylight, she also had hallucinations. Sometimes she saw the bodies