Flash Fiction

The handwritten letter fell from his hand to the floor. The folded sheet that had been its envelope already rested there. Tears welled in his only working eye. His eye, like his disfigured hand, was the result of many years of guerrilla, and some would say terrorist warfare. Whilst he held his own council on the matter he felt, like most, he was a soldier. His fortune may often change but his objective remained.

Outside of the trenched command post that he called his home the emerging light of a hunter’s moon caused to light the wick of the antiqued oil lamp. And so, unnoticed by most he left the celebration quietly.

He was out of earshot of the celebrants within a few unbroken moments and in the warm darkness of a late summers evening he made his way from the trenches through the tall, stiff, bracken and fully succulent blackberry bushes to the prearranged rendezvous mentioned in the discarded letter. As it happened, as far back as memory, the meeting place had always been a spot for lovers’ trysts, but he was meeting not a lover but a giver. In the almost circular clearing that made the meeting place he had a brief moment to contemplate all his decisions, all his decisions.

He remembered all the wars. He remembered all the faces of the dead when they were still but the dying. He remembered his reason for being whilst others were celebrating the end of all wars. It was his end.

The expected killer stepped from the bushes into the clearing. He recognised the face of the killer. It was his own. He recognised the weapon of the killer. It was standard issue. There was a brief greeting, a mumble at best, and then an exchange of nods, and then, lastly an exchange of roles.