The light was penetrating, cutting into his soul, his spirit. He felt nothing though he sensed the light through his dead retinas.
When he was twelve he saw a girl in a yellow dress cross the street in front of a jeepney. In minutes she was gone. On the black road were chunks of red meat, shreds of yellow, dark curly hair on what might be a head, the girl was gone.
For years he dreamt a whole life with that Girl in the Yellow Dress. They grew up, met and married. They had children but what children those were since he didn’t know what children were. He knew dragons better.
When he was hit on the ambush outside Fallujah there was such a penetrating light cutting into his soul, his spirit. When he woke up he was at a base hospital, his head bandaged so he didn’t know for days what he had lost if he had lost anything.
They had two children, girls in little white dresses, courteous to a fault. In fact, they never spoke except when they were sleeping when they wove stories so beautiful hearing them he wept with joy. Mildred and May. Their faces were like the sun. Or maybe, dragons.
He was evacuated to a hospital in Germany where at last they told him. He would not fight another war. War was over for him. The light in that former Nazi hospital was penetrating, cutting into his soul, his spirit.
The girl gradually faded. One day there, then she was gone. He didn’t even notice her leaving.