Treo-LeGigeo

He sees her again when it’s 1985 and he’s years out of his twenties, her face shining out from across the site and the world tilting around him the instant their eyes meet. He drops the brick he’s laying as the sky darkens in his mind to a spray of napalm and the exhaust from the passing cars touches his face as the heat of a tropical jungle. He thinks, fourteen years, and aloud he breathes, “Wife.” _ _ _ He saw her for the first time when he was fresh faced and twenty-one, three months in ‘Nam and drinking at the bar with the rest of the boys. He’d whistled when she brought the glasses and gotten

The girl lay spread-eagled beneath the twinkling starts and the thin sliver of moon that shone in the blackness. Her frock was torn, her feet bare and dirty. She paid no heed to the cold the air that bit into her bare arms and shins. The dark figure that advanced was silent, soundless feet leaving no marks on the dew-covered blades below. It slipped through the darkness then dropped in a single fluid motion to her side. "Happy new year." "New year again, is it?" The figure followed the girl's gaze to the swirling canopy. "Moon's almost gone, Abby." "Even less than last night, Tamy." Abby pushed herself up on a scrawny elbow. "Ain't nothi

The fucking psyches tell him to look within and all that bloody jazz, but it's all bullshit. He's killed guys, and that's the end of it. Guys, and girls, soldiers and civilians, until the sound of gunfire drilled into his head and out the otherwise and took everything in the way with it It's like those stupid shells his mum showed him once when he was young. 'Course, he didn't think they were stupid then, but what did he know. Just a kid who had no idea what it felt like to hold a cold piece of steel in your hand that explodes in hotness and judges whoever's in front with a wham bam and kiss goodbye, say hi to God for me and give him the fin

The sky is the same. Funny, how that thought comes to her head. Of course the sky's always the same. She's doing a PHD in astrophysics, if anyone knows it's her. But that's not what she means, not this time. She'd had her last meal with him here, before she got on the plane to university on the other side of the world. She doesn't remember what they ate last time, but she remembers that she ordered a caramel milkshake for afterwards. It was never her favourite flavour, but it was his, and something in the last moments had made her choose that one over her usual order. "Gonna miss you, sis," he'd said as they sat. "You'll call all the time,

parted lips whispered cries wife's away

There's a man who isn't real, never was, and a woman who might be. There's a land of plains and skies, but also of times and hereafters. A land away from the darkness, out of the shadows of doubts and uncertainties, and with a spirit of its own. The other man stays as he stands, a stranger, an intruder like the rest of the crowds who waltz in and out, seeing without really knowing. But unlike them he's beginning to nudge open that door between, taking the first few steps within. And he looks down now where the edges of the fortune teller's gift are cutting into his palm, unfurling his clenched fist and letting his eyes fall on the etched for

Tracking Europe's shadow was never going to be easy, but outside the loyal lurks there were always the few who were willing to talk, strangers and random passers-by who could recognise a description and point down a few streets. Paxter chased through Romania, through Greece, doubling back to Hungary before leading into Germany. He arrived in Dresden just as Ice left for Aachen, following there only to find him having crossed the border into Belgium. Brussels saw the agent following a false trail up to Amsterdam before being redirected to Geneva, always just a single pace behind. Days were frustrating, nights restless, spent lost in thought r