Part 2: The Fortress of Solitude

I brought Echo home and applied the only language I knew: discipline.

My apartment in Seattle was a reflection of my mind at the time—austere, functional, and aggressively organized. Everything had a place. My boots were lined up by the door, laces tucked. The kitchen counters were wiped down to a sterilization-grade shine. There was no clutter, no color, no noise. It was a vacuum, and into this vacuum, I introduced a dog that was essentially a trembling bundle of raw nerves.

I told myself I was doing him a favor. I looked at Echo, pacing nervously on the hardwood floor, his claws clicking a frantic rhythm, and I saw a problem to be solved. He was anxious? I would give him structure. He was fearful? I would give him courage, whether he wanted it or not.

Our mornings began at 0400. Not 4:05, not 4:15. 0400. I would wake up before the alarm, slide out of bed, and be dressed in my running gear within three minutes. I expected the same readiness from the dog.

“Echo. Heel.”

My voice was a flat bar of iron. No affection. No “good boy.” Just commands.

We ran through the dark, wet streets of the neighborhood while the rest of the city slept. The Pacific Northwest rain is relentless; it’s not a weather event, it’s an atmosphere. It soaks into you. We ran for miles, my breath pluming in the cold air, Echo trotting beside me. He was physically perfect—a machine of muscle and sinew—but his head was always low. He checked my face constantly, his ears pinned back, waiting for a correction.

If he sniffed a tree? A sharp tug on the leash. “Leave it.”

If he lagged behind? “Move.”

I didn’t hit him. I wasn’t the man in the trailer—or so I told myself. I was a professional. I was using “operant conditioning.” But the energy I projected was pure, pressurized intensity. I wanted a warrior. I wanted a dog that walked through the world with his chest out, indifferent to danger. Instead, I had a dog that flinched when I dropped my keys.

It annoyed me. When he cowered, I felt a spike of irrational anger in my chest. Stop acting like a victim, I would think. The world doesn’t care if you’re scared. Toughen up.

I didn’t realize I was talking to myself.

---

Then, I met Sarah.

It was a Tuesday, three months after I got Echo. I was at a coffee shop near Pike Place, sitting outside despite the drizzle, because I didn’t trust Echo inside with people. He was sitting at attention by my chair, shivering slightly.

Sarah tripped over him.

Literally. She came out of the shop, balancing a tray with two lattes and a precarious stack of muffins, her scarf trailing on the ground, and she didn’t see the black-and-tan statue sitting by the table. She stumbled, a latte sloshed over the rim, and Echo scrambled back, letting out a sharp, terrified yelp.

I was on my feet instantly, hand on Echo’s collar, ready to correct him for breaking his stay. “Sit!” I barked. Echo froze, pressing himself into the pavement.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry!”

I looked up. She was a mess. That was my first thought. Her hair was a chaotic halo of frizzy curls fighting the humidity. She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat that looked ridiculous against the gray Seattle backdrop. She had paint—actual blue paint—smudged on her cheek.

She ignored me completely and dropped to her knees on the wet sidewalk, right in front of the trembling dog.

“Hey, buddy,” she cooed, her voice dropping an octave. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just a klutz. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“He’s fine,” I said, my voice stiff. “He’s working.”

She looked up at me then. Her eyes were green, startlingly bright, and filled with a warmth that felt like a physical impact. She didn’t look at me like a stranger; she looked at me like she was waiting for a punchline.

“Working?” she laughed. “He looks like he needs a hug, not a job performance review.”

She reached out a hand. I started to warn her—he doesn’t like strangers, he’s reactive, he’s broken—but Echo did something I hadn’t seen him do in three months.

He stretched his neck out. He sniffed her fingers. And then, he let out a long, shuddering breath and rested his chin on her knee.

Sarah scratched him behind the ears, heedless of the wet dog smell getting on her clothes. “See?” she smiled at me. “He’s a lover, not a fighter.”

That smile dismantled me.

---

She was everything I wasn’t—soft, chaotic, vibrant.

Sarah was an elementary school art teacher. Her apartment was the antithesis of mine. It was an explosion of color, cluttered with canvases, half-finished sculptures, dying plants she refused to give up on, and books stacked in precarious towers. It smelled like vanilla and turpentine.

I fell hard. It wasn’t a gradual slide; it was a cliff dive.

For the first time since leaving the Marines, the gray fog in my head lifted. Being around her felt like standing next to a fireplace after walking in the snow for years. She laughed at things that weren’t funny. She cried at commercials. She danced in the kitchen while making burnt toast. She was so alive it hurt to look at her.

But with the love came the fear.

I looked at Sarah, so open and vulnerable to the world, and I saw a target. I saw how easily she could be hurt. I saw how chaotic her life was—unpaid parking tickets, forgotten appointments, trusting people she shouldn’t trust.

And just like that, the “Mission” shifted.

I decided I would be the perfect man. Not just a boyfriend, but a shield. A fortress. I treated our relationship like a high-stakes operation.

I didn’t tell her this, of course. I just did it. I moved into her life with the efficiency of an occupying force.

“I fixed your sink,” I’d say, walking in the door. “And I rotated the tires on your car. You were running on low tread. dangerous in this rain.”

“Oh,” she would say, blinking. “I… thanks, Jack. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s handled.”

I anticipated her needs. If she mentioned she was cold, I bought a heater. If she mentioned she was stressed about money, I created a spreadsheet for her budget and restructured her debt. I cooked dinner every night—healthy, protein-heavy meals—and cleaned the kitchen before she could even offer to help.

I never showed weakness.

When I had nightmares about the desert—waking up in a cold sweat, heart hammering against my ribs—I would silently slide out of bed so I wouldn’t wake her. I’d sit in the living room in the dark, staring at the wall, until my pulse slowed. When she woke up, I’d be dressed, coffee made, smiling.

“Did you sleep okay?” she’d ask, touching my arm.

“Slept like a baby,” I’d lie. “Here’s your coffee. Two sugars, oat milk.”

I thought if I was perfect, she could never leave. I thought if I made myself indispensable, if I removed every chaotic variable from her life, I could secure the perimeter. I could keep her safe. And if I kept her safe, she would stay.

I was building a fortress around us. I didn’t realize that a fortress, by definition, is designed to keep people out. Eventually, it keeps the people inside from breathing.

---

The cracks started to show around month four.

It was subtle at first. A hesitation in her voice. A look of exhaustion when I presented her with another “solution” to a problem she hadn’t asked me to solve.

One evening, she came home from school in tears. One of her students, a little girl she adored, was moving away to a foster home in another state. Sarah was devastated. She curled up on the couch, sobbing.

I went into operational mode.

“Okay,” I said, sitting next to her, not hugging her, but leaning forward with intensity. “What’s the situation? Do you have the foster agency’s number? We can look up the regulations. Maybe we can send a care package. I can look up the logistics of—”

“Jack,” she choked out.

“I can probably find out where she’s going. I still have contacts who can run a—”

“Jack, stop!”

She sat up, eyes red, staring at me with a look of desperate confusion. “I don’t need you to fix it. I can’t fix it. She’s gone. I just… I just need you to hold me. Why can’t you just hold me?”

I froze. Just hold her? That felt useless. That didn’t solve the objective. That was passive.

“I’m trying to help you,” I said, my voice defensive. “I’m trying to make it better.”

“You can’t make it better!” she cried. “You can just be here with me in the sad. Can you do that? Can you just be sad with me?”

I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. Sadness was a tactical error. Sadness was what the man in the trailer had. Sadness was weakness.

So I stood up. “I’m going to make tea.”

I walked into the kitchen, my hands shaking. I could hear her crying in the other room, a soft, muffled sound that tore at my guts. But I didn’t go back. I made the tea. Perfect temperature. Perfect steep time. I brought it to her on a tray.

She looked at the tea, then at me, and her shoulders slumped. She looked defeated.

“Thank you,” she whispered. But she didn’t drink it.

---

Echo watched all of this.

The dog was a barometer for the pressure in the apartment. As I became more rigid, more obsessed with “perfecting” our life, Echo became more neurotic. He started pacing again. He started licking his paws until they were raw.

When I raised my voice—even if it wasn’t at him—he would scramble under the table.

“He’s getting worse,” Sarah said one night, watching Echo tremble during a thunderstorm. “Jack, you’re too hard on him. He feels your stress.”

“I’m not stressed,” I snapped. “I’m handled. He’s just… he’s defective. The guy who sold him said so.”

“He’s not defective,” Sarah said quietly. “He’s sensitive. Like you.”

I laughed, a harsh, barking sound. “I am not sensitive, Sarah. I am a Marine. I function.”

“Do you?” she asked. She looked at me, really looked at me, with those piercing green eyes. “You function like a clock, Jack. But nobody lives in a clock.”

I brushed her off. I doubled down. I cleaned the apartment harder. I planned more dates. I bought her expensive gifts I couldn’t really afford. I was performing “The Perfect Boyfriend” with the intensity of a breathless sprint.

I thought I was winning. I thought I was keeping the ghost of the trailer man at bay. See? I told myself. I still have the girl. I have the life. I am not him.

---

But you can’t hold water in a clenched fist.

Last Tuesday, the levy broke.

It wasn’t a big explosion. It wasn’t a screaming match where plates were thrown. It was worse. It was quiet.

I came home from work to find suitcases in the hallway. Two large, floral suitcases that I had bought her for a weekend trip we took to the coast. They were packed.

My heart stopped. The world tilted on its axis. The air left the room.

Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table. Her hands were folded in front of her. She wasn’t crying. That scared me more than anything. She looked calm. She looked resolved.

“What is this?” I asked. My voice sounded strange, distant, like it was coming from someone else. “Are we… are we going somewhere?”

“I’m going somewhere, Jack,” she said.

I dropped my keys. They hit the floor with a loud clatter. Echo, who was sleeping in his bed, bolted upright and scrambled into the corner, pressing himself against the wall.

“What do you mean?” I walked toward her. “Talk to me. What’s the problem? Whatever it is, we can fix it. Is it money? Is it the apartment? I can—”

“It’s not a problem you can fix,” she interrupted gently. “Because the problem is how you fix things.”

She stood up. She looked so small in the kitchen I had kept so perfectly clean.

“I can’t breathe, Jack,” she said.

The words hit me like a physical blow to the chest.

“You’re not a partner; you’re a bodyguard,” she continued, her voice trembling slightly now. “I wake up every day and I feel like I’m living in an inspection. You watch me to see if I’m happy, and if I’m not, you panic and try to engineer my happiness. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to be worshipped. I just want to be known.”.

“I love you,” I said. It came out as a plea. “Everything I do… I do it for you. I protect you.”

“From what?” she asked. “From life? From myself?”

She walked over to me. She reached out and touched my face. Her hand was warm, but it felt like a goodbye.

“You built a fortress around us, Jack. But you locked me in. And you locked yourself in too. You’re so afraid of being hurt that you haven’t let me in for months. You’re right here, standing in front of me, but I miss you. I miss the guy I met at the coffee shop who let a dog rest his chin on my knee.”

“I am that guy,” I insisted, grabbing her hand. “I can be that guy.”

“No,” she said, pulling away. “You’re not. Not right now. You’re a soldier at war, Jack. But there’s no war here. There’s just us. And I can’t be a casualty of your battle against the world anymore.”

She picked up her purse.

“Please,” I said. My voice broke. “Don’t do this. That guy… the guy who sold me the dog… he told me this would happen. He said one rejection burns the world down. Don’t prove him right.”

She stopped at the door. She looked back at me, and her expression was filled with a pity that cut deeper than hate.

“Jack,” she said softly. “The world isn’t burning down. You’re just holding the match.”

And then, she opened the door.

“Say goodbye to Echo for me,” she whispered.

When the door clicked shut, the silence was deafening.

I stood there in the hallway of my perfect, clean, organized apartment. The silence wasn’t empty; it was heavy. It pressed against my eardrums. It screamed.

I looked at the door. I waited for the regret. I waited for her to turn around, to realize she had made a mistake, to come back so I could fix it.

She didn’t come back.

The spiral hit me fast. The rejection tasted like ash.

I walked into the living room. I looked at the spreadsheet on my laptop—the budget for our summer vacation. I looked at the heater I had bought her. I looked at the life I had so carefully constructed, brick by brick, to be impregnable.

It hadn’t protected me. It had destroyed me.

I had done everything right. I had sacrificed. I had been “perfect.” And this was the reward?

A dark, hot wave rose up from my stomach. It was familiar. It was the same heat I saw in the eyes of A., the man in the trailer. It was the heat of victimhood. The heat of rage.

She doesn’t deserve me, a voice whispered in my head. She’s weak. She wanted chaos? Fine. I’ll give her chaos.

I went to the cabinet above the fridge. I pulled out a bottle of whiskey I had been saving for our anniversary. I cracked the seal. I didn’t bother with a glass. I took a long, burning pull straight from the bottle.

The liquid fire hit my stomach, but it didn’t numb the pain. It fueled it.

I looked down at Echo. He was still in the corner, watching me with wide, terrified eyes. He knew. He smelled the pheromones of aggression coming off me. He smelled the change in the air.

“What are you looking at?” I muttered at him.

He didn’t move. He just trembled.

The descent had begun. I wasn’t the Marine anymore. I wasn’t the boyfriend. I was just a man in a room with a bottle, watching the ghost in the mirror start to smile.

Part 3: The Ghost in the Mirror

When the door clicked shut, the silence didn’t just fill the room; it attacked it.

It was a physical weight, heavy and suffocating, pressing against my eardrums. For the first few minutes, I just stood there in the hallway, staring at the brass deadbolt. I was waiting for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs to stop, to turn around, to come back up. I was waiting for the knock. I was waiting for the apology.

She can’t leave, I thought. The logic was simple, cold, and entirely flawed. I built the perimeter. I secured the assets. I did the maintenance. The structure is sound.

But the footsteps faded. The engine of her car started outside—a distinct, rattling cough I had been meaning to fix next weekend—and then the sound of tires rolling over wet pavement drifted away into the Seattle night.

I was alone.

I turned around and looked at my apartment. It was exactly as it had been ten minutes ago—clean, organized, sterile—but now it looked like a movie set after the actors had gone home. It looked fake. The coaster on the table where her mug had been was empty. The throw blanket on the couch still held the impression of her body, a ghost shape in the fabric.

I felt a sudden, violent urge to fix something. If I could just fix something, the order would return. I walked into the kitchen. I checked the faucet. It wasn’t leaking. I checked the stove. It was off. I opened the fridge. The meal prep containers were stacked in perfect alignment.

There was nothing to fix. There was only the gaping, bleeding wound of her absence.

And that was when the rage started. It didn’t come as a burst of fire; it came as a cold, rising tide of toxic sludge. It started in my gut and worked its way up to my throat.

After everything I did, the voice in my head whispered. It sounded like my voice, but deeper, raspier. After every sacrifice. After every time I swallowed my own nightmares to handle hers. She leaves? Because I loved her too much? Because I was too protective?

I walked to the cabinet above the fridge. I didn’t drink often. Alcohol was a variable I couldn’t control; it made the edges of the world fuzzy, and I needed edges to be sharp. But tonight, the sharpness was cutting me to ribbons.

I pulled down the bottle of whiskey. It was a good bottle, a single malt I had bought to celebrate our one-year anniversary, which was coming up in two weeks. I stared at the amber liquid.

“Happy anniversary, Jack,” I muttered to the empty room.

I cracked the seal. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet kitchen. I didn’t bother with a glass. I tilted the bottle back and let the fire pour down my throat. It burned. It seared the lining of my esophagus, a hot, chemical aggressive heat that matched the feeling in my chest. I welcomed it. I wanted to feel something other than this hollow, stunned disbelief.

I took another pull. And another.

In the corner, under the small breakfast table, Echo shifted. I heard the click of his nails on the linoleum. I looked down. He was pressed as far back into the corner as he could go, his body curled into a tight, trembling ball. His ears were pinned flat against his skull. His eyes were wide, showing the whites, tracking my every movement.

“What?” I snapped at him.

He flinched. A full-body shudder.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I growled, pointing the bottle at him. “I didn’t leave. She left. She is the traitor. I’m the one who’s still here.”

Echo didn’t understand the words, but he understood the tone. He understood the pheromones of aggression that were starting to leak out of my pores. He lowered his head, resting it on his paws, but his eyes never left me. He looked pathetic. He looked terrified.

He looked like a victim.

And looking at him, seeing that weakness, that cowering fear, I felt a spike of revulsion. Stand up, I wanted to scream at him. Show some backbone. Stop shaking.

But I didn’t scream. Not yet. I just turned my back on him, took the bottle, and walked into the living room. I sat on the couch, in the dark, and watched the rain streak against the window, distorting the streetlights into blurry, weeping smears of light.

I drank until the world stopped hurting and started spinning.

---

Wednesday: The Siege

The next morning, I didn’t run at 0400.

I woke up at 11:00 AM, face down on the couch, my mouth tasting like copper and ash. The sun was trying to break through the clouds, sending a piercing, headache-inducing gray light into the room.

My first thought was, Sarah.

My second thought was the crushing reality.

I sat up, the room tilting dangerously. The bottle was on the floor, half empty.

“Echo,” I croaked.

There was no sound. No clicking claws. No panting.

Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the hangover. Did I leave the door open? Did he run?

I scrambled up, stumbling over the coffee table, cursing. “Echo!”

I found him in the bathroom. He was squeezed between the toilet and the bathtub, wedged into the tightest space possible. He was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. When I appeared in the doorway, he pressed himself harder against the porcelain, as if trying to merge with the wall.

He had peed on the floor. A yellow puddle spread across the pristine white tiles.

The old Jack—the Marine, the Disciplinarian—would have been furious. I would have grabbed the leash, dragged him outside, corrected the behavior. But the Hungover Jack, the Abandoned Jack, just stared at it.

“Pathetic,” I whispered.

I didn’t clean it up. I stepped over the puddle, turned on the shower, and stood under the scalding water for twenty minutes until my skin turned red. I washed the whiskey sweat off my body, but I couldn’t wash the feeling of failure off my soul.

I called in sick to work. I worked in logistics for a shipping company—a job that required precision, timelines, order. I couldn’t handle order today.

I spent the day pacing. That was the beginning of the decay.

I didn’t walk the dog. I opened the back door to the small patio and let him out to do his business on the concrete. I couldn’t bear to go outside. I couldn’t bear to see people holding hands, walking their dogs, living their normal, happy, ignorant lives.

I started drinking again at 2:00 PM.

By Wednesday night, the apartment began to change. The “Fortress” was crumbling. A pizza box sat open on the counter, grease staining the granite. Clothes were discarded on the floor. The blinds were drawn tight, sealing us in a tomb of shadows.

I sat in the armchair, the bottle in my hand, and I replayed the breakup in my head. But the more I replayed it, the more the narrative shifted.

Yesterday, I had been heartbroken. Today, I was angry.

She said I was a suffocating man, I thought, the liquor fueling the fire. Suffocating? I paid her debt. I fixed her car. I made sure she was safe. And this is the thanks I get?

I looked at Echo. He had finally come out of the bathroom and was lying on his bed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was watching me. Always watching.

“She didn’t want a partner,” I said to the dog, my voice slurring slightly. “She wanted a child. She wanted someone to be messy with. She couldn’t handle a man.”

Echo let out a low, soft whine.

“Quiet,” I snapped.

He went silent instantly.

I was beginning to resent him. He was a witness. He was seeing me like this—unshaven, drunk, pacing in my underwear. He was seeing the weakness I had tried so hard to hide. And worse, he reminded me of him. The man in the trailer. A.

I used to be a prince, you know? A.’s voice echoed in my memory. I had the career, the girl, the life.

“Shut up,” I said to the ghost in my head. “I’m not you.”

---

Thursday: The Rot

By Thursday, the whiskey was gone. I walked to the liquor store three blocks away. It was the only time I left the house. I bought two more bottles.

When I got back, the apartment smelled. It smelled of stale alcohol, old pizza, and unwashed dog. The smell of failure.

I didn’t turn on the lights. I sat in the blue glow of the television, watching mindless action movies—men shooting other men, explosions, clear-cut victories where the good guys won because they were stronger.

I wasn’t the good guy anymore. I could feel it. There was a darkness growing inside me, a sprawling, inky stain that was taking over my chest.

I stopped checking my phone. I had sent Sarah three texts on Tuesday night. Please call me. We can fix this. I love you.

She hadn’t replied.

On Thursday, I deleted her number. It felt like cutting off a limb, but I did it with a savage sort of satisfaction. Fine, I thought. You don’t want me? You don’t exist.

But the rage needed a target. You can’t be angry at a ghost. You need something physical.

I started picking fights with inanimate objects. I kicked the coffee table when I stubbed my toe. I slammed the cupboard doors so hard one of them cracked. I threw the remote control at the wall when the batteries died.

Every loud noise sent Echo into a panic spiral. He would scramble, claws scrabbling on the hardwood, trying to find traction, trying to escape.

“Stop running!” I yelled at him on Thursday evening. “There’s nothing to run from! It’s just a noise! Act like a man!”

He wasn’t a man. He was a dog. A dog that had been beaten and starved of affection by his previous owner. A dog that I had promised to protect.

But I wasn’t protecting him. I was becoming the weather system he feared. I was the thunderstorm in the living room.

I looked at him, cowering under the desk, and I didn’t see an innocent creature. I saw a reflection of my own bruised ego. I saw something “weak.” And because I felt weak—because Sarah had stripped away my armor and left me naked and bleeding—I hated that weakness. I wanted to stomp it out.

---

Friday: The Break

Friday was the nadir. The bottom of the barrel.

It had been three days of drinking. I hadn’t eaten a real meal since Tuesday. My body was running on ethanol and adrenaline. My eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with red, burning in their sockets. My hands had a subtle tremor that the whiskey couldn’t quite steady.

The apartment was a wreck. The sink was overflowing with dishes. The trash can was full. The air was thick and stagnant.

It was raining again. Of course it was. A heavy, hammering rain that sounded like gravel being thrown against the windows.

I was pacing the living room. Back and forth. Back and forth. My perimeter. My cage.

The thoughts were swirling in a chaotic vortex. The victimhood. The rage. They don’t deserve me. I should make them hurt like I hurt.

Why was I the one suffering? I was the Marine. I was the one who had served. I was the one who had discipline. Sarah was out there, probably laughing with her friends, probably painting, probably breathing freely while I suffocated in this tomb.

And the dog. The damn dog.

Echo was sleeping in the corner, or pretending to. He was curled up so tight he looked like a black stone. But I could see his ear twitching. He was listening to my heartbeat. He was waiting for the explosion.

I walked to the kitchen to pour another drink. My coordination was shot. I reached for the glass on the table—a heavy crystal tumbler, one of the few nice things I had left.

My hand spasm, or maybe I just misjudged the distance. The back of my hand struck the glass.

It didn’t just fall. It launched.

It hit the hardwood floor with a sound that seemed to shatter the universe. CRASH.

The sound was incredibly loud in the silent apartment. Shards of crystal exploded outward, scattering like diamonds across the floor.

The noise triggered Echo.

He scrambled up from his sleep, his claws skittering frantically on the wood as he tried to get traction. He was blinded by panic. In his attempt to get away, he slipped, his hip slamming into the side of the wall with a dull thud.

He let out a sound.

It wasn’t a bark. It wasn’t a growl. It was a high-pitched, pathetic whine. A sound of pure, undiluted fear.

Eeeeeeeee.

That sound.

That sound snapped something in me.

It was the sound of weakness. It was the sound of surrender. It was the sound of everything I was trying to kill inside myself. It sounded like me begging Sarah to stay. It sounded like the man in the trailer complaining about his ex-wife.

It was intolerable.

The rage, which had been a rising tide, suddenly became a tsunami. It crested and broke.

“Shut up!”

I roared the words. My voice was unrecognizable—a guttural, animalistic bellow that tore at my throat.

I stepped toward him. The glass crunched under my boots, grinding into dust.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Echo didn’t run. He couldn’t run. He was cornered. He froze, pressed against the wall, his body rigid. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, bracing himself. He bared his teeth—not in aggression, not to bite—but in a grimace of pure, defensive terror. It was a submissive grin, a desperate signal: I am not a threat. Please don’t kill me.

He was waiting for the hit.

He had seen this movie before. He knew this scene. He knew the script. The man yells, the man smells like the burning water, and then the pain comes.

I towered over him. I was six foot two, two hundred pounds of angry Marine. He was sixty pounds of terrified dog.

I raised my hand.

My fist was clenched. Every muscle in my arm was coiled tight, ready to deliver a blow that would silence that pathetic whining, that would crush that weakness, that would transfer all my pain, all my humiliation, all my anger into the only thing in the room smaller than me.

I wanted to hit something. I wanted to break something the way I had been broken.

My arm went back. The strike was chambered.

And in that split second—that microscopic infinity between the wind-up and the release—I saw it.

There was a mirror in the hallway, a long, vertical mirror I used to check my uniform before leaving for duty. I was standing at an angle where my reflection was caught in the glass.

I saw a man.

But it wasn’t Jack.

The man in the mirror had wild, unkempt hair. He had three days of stubble darkening his jaw. His shirt was stained with whiskey and sweat. But it was the eyes.

The eyes were voids—empty, angry, and dead. They were black holes sucking in all the light in the room.

I wasn’t looking at myself.

I was looking at the man in the trailer.

I was looking at A.

I used to be a prince, you know?

The memory of his voice slammed into me with the force of a physical blow.

He looked like a corpse that had forgotten to lie down.

I looked at the reflection. That was me. I was the corpse.

Because he’s weak. He needs love to function. I don’t have that anymore… One rejection, and it burned the world down.

I had judged him. God, how I had judged him. I had driven away from that trailer six months ago thinking I was superior. Thinking I was made of steel and he was made of glass. Thinking I was a warrior and he was a loser.

But here I was. Standing over a cowering dog, drunk, broken, and about to strike an innocent creature because a woman didn’t want to be my prisoner anymore.

I wasn’t fixing the dog. I was destroying him. Just like A. had done.

I was about to punish Echo for the crime of being afraid. For the crime of needing love. For the crime of being exactly what I was: hurt.

That man, A., didn’t die because a woman left him. The realization was a lightning bolt, illuminating the dark wreckage of my mind. He died the moment he decided that his pain gave him the right to be a monster.

My hand trembled in the air. It was a fist of stone, hovering inches from the destruction of my soul.

Echo flinched, his body tensing for the impact. He let out one more tiny, involuntary squeak.

The sound tore my heart open.

I looked from the mirror to the dog. I saw the fear in his eyes. It was the same fear I had seen in the mirror.

I wasn’t a Marine. I wasn’t a protector. I was a bully. I was a ghost.

My arm started to shake violently. The rage was still there, pulsing, demanding release, but it was colliding with a wall of shame so massive it took my breath away.

Do it, the monster whispered. Hit him. Feel powerful again.

No, the remaining shred of my humanity screamed. If you hit him, you die. The real Jack dies right here, right now, and only the Ghost remains.

Time stood still. The rain hammered against the glass. The refrigerator hummed. The smell of whiskey was everywhere.

I stood on the precipice. One way led to the trailer in the woods, to a life of bitterness and isolation, to becoming a warning instead of a person. The other way…

I didn’t know where the other way led. But I knew I couldn’t throw that punch.

My fist unclenched. It was painful, like prying open a rusted hinge. My fingers extended, trembling, hovering in the damp air.

Echo didn’t move. He didn’t trust it. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But the blow never came.