One night a very young man sat in a jungle foxhole, an M-16 cradled in his arms and all his nerves twitching outside his skin. First night in Indian Country.

The darkness was octopus inky and his heart fluttered doom. Roots pained his *** and ants nipped his body. His lust for daylight was a ******* in a kindergarten. Nothing moved, continuously and at once. He inhaled fear, exhaled terror and knew despair.

Beside him, a comrade slept the agitated, concentration camp slumber of the ******, but he was more awake than he would ever be again.

He felt it before he saw it, felt it gliding there where nothing could possibly be.

Before him, a spider web of death awaited its prey. Claymore mines, strung from bush to branch, waited for the gentle caress that would explode their lethal lead fruit in a ****-storm of destruction.

Nothing could pass through it alive, yet something loomed in the murk.  

A sudden hairline fracture broke the clouds and a single moon ray defined the big cat's sleek body, reflected its yellow feline eye. A panther black as nightmare walked untouched through this garden of death and then vanished.

His heart surged hope. The slithering dreads departed. That cat had walked where nothing could and silently survived. So might he.
- mce