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
Darren faced his greatest creation and failure. The torso and head of the mechanical man leaned in the corner of the basement. Even limbless and freckled by rust, the old prototype was an awesome sight. It dominated the room, as… Continue Reading