I've been fascinated by dreams lately. I don't know why. Mine have always been fleeting and terrifying, rocking me back into consciousness with only a vague yet traumatic idea of what I've just experienced. In my younger years they were incredibly rare- I was lucky to get one every few years, let alone nightly. I had no reason to look forward to them either- even in adolescence I never had a "sexy" dream or even a fun one. Most of my creative fantasies were daytime affairs; another way to pass the time in chemistry.

And yet. I've been having more and more dreams. No longer do I only have them once a year. They now come monthly and unpredictably. The subject matter is always unusual- last month I climbed a mountain that turned into a field which was in turn coated by a sudden avalanche, leaving me trapped in a white void of sorts.

Sometimes it's less fantastic though- I spent the other night in Korea, sometime around 1950. I was assigned to what looked like an American group of soldiers, judging from their weapons and faces. We were patrolling along the edge of a forest, apparently marching in single file. The detail was remarkable. I was not at all aware that I was dreaming, but I could feel the things around me as if they were real. I swept my hand through the fronds of some sort of overgrown fern and felt them sweep through my fingers. The men around me were conversing and I caught snatches of their what they were saying- baseball, ridicule for their fellows (some good-natured, some less so), and women. One of the squad members (was it a squad? It might have been a troop. I don't know the difference, but there were about twelve of us) wandered a few yards away into a nearby clearing filled with tall grass and the sergeant (or whomever was in charge of the outfit) shouted out to him:

"John, do you want to give us away to charlie?"

John laughed, then exploded in a cloud of dirt and blood, immediately giving me a familiar tightening sensation in my stomach. I imagine everyone else had it too- or would have, if it wasn't just a dream.

Behind him, I could make out someone with a sort of hand held artillery device hidden in the grass. He was kneeling next to the thing which looked like little more than a thick black cylinder, roughly the length of the cardboard tube you pull gift wrap off of around Christmas time though somewhat thicker. The shells were roughly the size of small footballs- the kind of play ones you give to small children when their hands aren't yet large enough to grasp the real thing. There must have been more than one hidden out there, because the shells just RAINED after that first shot. I saw my comrades start firing and followed suit, but I saw one of them go down, knocked to the ground by one of the blasts and I went to go help. This was my fatal mistake.

A shell came hurtling by and landed to my right as I ran to his aid. I immediately went deaf in that ear. As I was maybe five feet from my friend, another one landed, again to my right, but much closer. I felt my leg on that side give and I tumbled to the ground, face-planting on the dirt. Looking back, I saw my booted foot and some of my shin land behind me and roll into the smoking crater left by the blast. What was left of the limb that was still attached to me just barely extended past the knee, ending in a bloody mess of jagged bone fragments and splinters. I was now completely deaf, but I could still see the man I had been moving to rescue screaming. He was second priority now as I crawled to get out of the line of fire. More shells exploded around me. I remember being thankful they didn't contain shrapnel. I decided to move forward, hoping I could get in below the range of the mortars and made my way to a small tree with a small bush around it's base. It was hardly good cover, but it was all I had. By that point I had no idea where my gun was, and things were starting to fade. I pulled myself close and hoped Charlie wouldn't bother coming out to capture me here as I watched my troop continue to fight.

Then I woke up, confused as to how I'd gotten my leg back and wondering what the hell had just happened. I'm no war buff, nor am I a dream expert, but I can't think of any reasonable explanation for the thing. I've never had a particular interest in Korea or 'Nam, but maybe now I do. I'd like to know what happened to me.