She crouched feeling the familiar pop in her back as she stooped low enough to reach the dead roses covering the headstone. Her large knuckled, knotted hands, trembled just slightly as she brushed aside the dry red roses to reveal the inscription. The letters were covered with lichen and dried mud but remained readable: “Joyce Lynn Hutchinson, Beloved Wife, Born June 18, 1932, Died November 11 195...

“Do not go home tonight!” The message was clear enough but who sent this? Why?

Becca jerked to a stop on the muddy shoulder of the road. Fumbling to light her cigarette in the dwindling daylight, she sat there trying to decipher the ominous message.

Home was close, only five miles away. Paul would be angry if dinner wasn’t on the table. Yet, she sat there unable to move. Her long fingers trembl...

Apples, green tart apples, not the oranges I expected to see. Before, when I was last here, every street and corner seemed to be lined with orange trees, orange groves and always the sweet fragrant flowers blooming. Circular roundabouts always prove to be a challenge when I first return. Despite having been gone for over a year, I still feel that rush of warmth telling me that I made a good choice...

I sit watching the dark stormy clouds forming above me and catch my hand absently rubbing my neck. In a panic, I realize that it is not there. Did I forget to put it on, did it somehow fall off? The violence of the storm brewing is distracting. My face is wet. I don’t cry, I never cry....

They’ve come. Battle winds up only in death, I hide. We have done this before, yet somehow it feels different. Is there another way? Is there any intelligence, on either side? Let them all see to their own destruction and then, and only then, is there hope of a new world....