And the war sky is way too low, simply hanging overhead, kinda pressing, doesn’t let you look up for longer than a split sec not to call on your head a round of bursting artillery shells or a drone and you jump up in shock with that clot in your belly turned the size of a tennis ball already. No life in war as before sitting in the cafe by the corner and chatting with Ninka of nothing. You can look wherever you want, up or down, no one rushes by, screaming…

And that constant feel as if all of us are in an express train, some iron beast of lots of cars, shooting along the track faster and faster, and all we, in the cars, know that the track ahead is demolished and any other moment we’ll crash derailed over down the embankment. That’s where that haste comes from, you can’t enjoy neither meals nor fucking…

They liberated a big city. Bombardments and shooting over, he took me over there for a kinda excursion. A pretty big city for so scanty population. The non-combatants were moved away after their liberation, especially kids. No traffic to speak of, armed vehicles mostly and small buses marked “Press” to shoot material for their news and political TV shows. A big meeting convened at a local concert hall. My hubby was on the orators list to make a speech on the behalf of W Group as one of their field commanders. That’s why we went there in the first place. But we came way ahead the happening was to start and went to wheel about the city in his Land Rover. The sidewalks almost empty, about a couple of passers-by in a block looking like pensioner zombies.

We turned into a mighty big factory, no gates, bombardment holes, yet the buildings erect. In between them the breeze plays with light garbage. We stepped out the SUV into the vast silence from a horror movie. Entered one of the buildings, bigger than a football field, dead silent. He gave a yell, it echoed about the hollow and died. That moment I spotted someone stretched behind the rail in the track and called out, ‘At nine!’ He slung his Makar up, pointed it at the figure and moved closer.

‘Nah!’ sez he. ‘For this one it’s game over.’ And put the gun back.

I came nearer, yeah, dead as a nail and the body was dropped there for two months minimally, since the start of the battle for the city. A Godawful cadaver stench. I wanted to pick up the blood group sticker from his fatigue an go. Blue letters in the legend, not like ours.

He stood by watching me then slapped his forehead and cried, ‘Fucking, yes!’, before darting out of that huge workshop.

I walked after him but he’s running back already in working gloves, clutching the hatchet he kept in his SUV for barbecues in the nature’s lap. In a heartbeat was he by the body and hack its head off. Grabbed it by one ear and trotted out again. The ear tore off with tatters of the rotten skin, the head fell on the cemented floor rolling onward. He caught it with his both hands and carried on before him squeezed with the hatchet at arms length.

‘Are you fucking mad?’ screamed I .

‘Shut the fuck up! I know what I’m doing!’

He picked a piece of cellophane stuck in the garbage by the wall and wrapped the thing.

‘No sweat,’ sez he. ‘Time’s enough. I’ve learned the know-how in Africa’.

In short, at that show-meeting he took the floor together with a peeled-to-bone skull. The dead white skull kept in a black-gloved hand, and he talks to it, face-to-face.

‘So what?’ sez he. ‘How about telling me one of your jokes, Yoric? Tell me if those Poles were of any help, fool? That’s what awaits all of you, fascist bastards!’

Then he blah-blahed for a couple of minutes more, where inserted a verse of his own production. Some romantic motherfucker he was. I’ve told that already, or what?

At night, when at the hotel after a big drinking bout, I asked him:

‘What was that hooey about? Yoric? Poles?’

‘Who know they know. It’s from Shakespeare and Gogol’.

‘But that shitty verse? Like a snotty kid at a kindergarten matinee’.

It was the first and only time in our relationship that he punched me. Too plastered he was. My bad too, couldn’t zip up in time. A stupid cunt will always find an nasty adventure for her ass…

Then we went back to our location in war theater. Forgave each other. A girl needs a roof for protection even if its romanticism is fucking leaky. He downloaded from the internet that TV show of his stunt with Yoric. A bearded romantic rehearses lame lines to a raw skull who grins back at him…

It was winter already as Cliff came to our house, bleak as grim clouds.

‘They smoked Shore,’ he said

There started some strange piercing ring in my ears.

‘What the fu.. No!’

He shrugged, ‘Taken to hospital’.

I whizzed over there. Shore stretched on the cot white as the sheet over him, black beard, shut eyes, thin tubes and that beeping thing above his head. All as in serials. It beeped for some 20 hours.

They never found who it was to make Shore on his knees and execute with a shot in the back of his head. It could be prisoners who had a big fang against W Group personnel sending them, the prisoners, to attack and shooting those who retreat. Or, maybe, Caucasians for Shore happened to keep a couple of their big shot at his gun point hollering what motherfuckers they were. The regulars also could do it or even his co-employees from W Group after an anonymous fascist announced on the internet $4 million