I gaze down at the new body they’ve slotted me into. It’s a hulking one this time, all slick black and gunmetal gray with a hint of red. The limbs meticulously designed, the metal folded over each other like overlapping… Continue Reading
This is it. I turn my back to them, twist my wrists against the rope and give Churchill’s vee. I am to be their last spiteful act before they flee from the guns of my advancing countrymen. A hand’s width… Continue Reading
Through the hazy watercolor of a child’s memory, those months stand out with clarity even into my ninth decade. They start with the bombs dropping in the village streets. Even a child couldn’t mistake the bone-shaking howl, the blinding flashes… Continue Reading
“Say again, Control. Should I cut the red or the blue wire?” I wait, cutters poised in mid-air above both. Status reports scroll through my eyeline, but I ignore them. Every previous time I’ve dealt with an Improvised Explosive Device… Continue Reading
— in memory of Antoinette Bolden — The Master didn’t play with Rocket as much as the dog preferred, but he knew he was loved. He was a good boy, after all. The Master said so. Every day, when The… Continue Reading
I watched from the wall as they began arriving. First in ones and twos, then larger groups of desolate soldiers trudging towards the city. There was no doubting what this meant: the capital had fallen. The walls which had held… Continue Reading
There’s a hole in my boot. I can feel the mud squelching in around my heel. It’s horrible and cold, making me limp a bit. I can feel it seeping through my sock. How much further to the enemy trenches?… Continue Reading
In that last hard winter of the war, the farmhouse looked almost like a cabin for the enjoyments of the season. Those gorgeous drifts of snow would have burned your toes to stumps, if you had no boots. No one… Continue Reading
If I had awoken in no man’s land after my own apparent death, I would cry out too. Maybe not for help, exactly. Maybe just to break the silence. We all agonized as we heard a new voice rise above… Continue Reading
“Hey, I think we broke something,” he said, shaking me awake. Ann’s dad always looks like the snapshot she’d had of him, taken on the Burma Road: bare-chested, center-parted hair, broad smile, burly. The clock said 2:45. Ann’s side of… Continue Reading