Jennifer stood there on the platform edge. All around her commuters stirred. I had to pick my moment. If I was the slightest bit off, my plan wouldn’t work. Perhaps it would be today, perhaps tomorrow, but the conditions had to be right. Below, the rails started to thrum, rattling slightly in their stays. We were close. I summoned my will, driving my energy, all my power, all my desire into a hard knot, ready to release.

  Further down the track, the square silver front emerged, pushing out of the tunnel, the broad glass windows, yellow and opaque, oily in the station lights. She and others turned to track the approach. Now. This was my moment. I released my hold on that balled up energy and thrust it into a single effort of will. There! She saw me. This time she couldn’t ignore me.

  She drew in a sharp breath. “What the—”

  She took a step back, her heel twisting in the confined space, forcing her to stumble backwards. Her ankle turned.

  And then she was falling back, back and down.

  Her descent played out in slow motion, and I watched as the faces around her turned to open-mouthed stares A hand reached out to grab her too late, and still she was falling. The train swept down and impacted, consuming her tumbling shape.

  And then she was gone.

  Within me, the joy burst upwards, filling me with the love I had for her.

  Finally, finally, she was there and I was there with her. At last, we could be together. We would be together, forever.

  “Jennifer,” I said. “Jennifer.” Drawing her out of her initial confusion. I understood that disorientation. After all, I had been there too.

  There was a little frown and she spun slowly to look at me. Her gaze travelled up and down and then fixed on my face.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

  Not quite the reaction I had expected.

  “Now, come on Jennifer, don’t be like that. It’s me, Adrian. I know you’re confused. It’s a bit hard to come to terms with at first, but you’re here now. Just take a few moments. Take your time. You need to get used to it. It will get easier soon.”

  She drifted back, away. “I don’t know you,” she said. Her voice was expressionless. The statement was flat. “I don’t know you.”

  “Jennifer. Please. Come back to me. I worked so hard to make this happen, so we could be together.”

  “I repeat,” she said, her features becoming severe. “Who the fuck are you? I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before in my…my…life.” She turned around and around. “My life,” she whispered.

  Realisation of what I had said came to her then and she turned back.

  “You prick, whoever you are. You did this? You did this to me? What gave you the right? What made you think this was something that—”

  She ran out of words.

  “Jennifer, please,” I said, imploring now. “We were meant to be together. You must see that.”

  She lifted an incorporeal hand then, warding. “I don’t know you. I have never known you. Stay the fuck away from me.” A moment’s pause. “It was you. It really was you. I remember now. I remember…what…happened.”

  Her face transformed—a grimace, teeth bared—and then a growing growl that issued deep from within her.

  “You prick! You sick fuck. Stay the hell away from me.”

  Little by little, she backed away, bunching her fists. For a moment the light grew, cutting through the watery waves of greenness, and then she was gone.

  What she said was true, I suppose. We never really met. We never had a conversation. That didn’t mean I didn’t love her with all my being. I thought she understood, that we had a connection. She sent me so many little signs. Those fleeting glances, those little half-smiles. All of them told me I was right. How could I have been so wrong? I couldn’t have simply been mistaken for so long, could I? I knew she loved me.

  Jennifer was gone. I didn’t know how to find her, not in this place. Whatever dreams I had had dissipated with her.

  I was alone again.

  I couldn’t be alone. Not here.

  I turned my attention back to the world beyond the veil, back to where we had all come from.

  I knew now that Jennifer had been a mistake. She misled me. She was crafty. But she taught me. My desire for her, no matter how misplaced it had been, schooled me in what I needed to do. Now I knew better.

  Somewhere out there was my one true love. Her name might be Bronwyn, or Samantha, or Jane. I would find her and I would love her, and she would love me back, once she realised I was there.

  And then, then I would make sure that we could be together, that we could be together for ever.

  Jay Caselberg is an Australian author who now lives in Germany. His unique brand of dark fiction has appeared in many languages in venues worldwide and spans many genres. Caselberg’s long history of work has received a number of honorable mentions on many Year’s Best lists.

  Caselberg’s work crosses the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror and the literary, with all of his pieces containing an especially dark edge. He is the author of several novels, including his Jack Stein series and Empties, a brutal tale of psychological dark fiction.

  Caselberg’s visceral tale of psychological horror, “Collage” is featured in the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror - Volume One and his disturbing “Compartmental” appears in Equilibrium Overturned: The Heart of Darkness Awaits, both published by Grey Matter Press.

  Gaston pushed his body as far against the muddy wall of the foxhole as he could. I’d already done the same. Even so, we couldn’t keep ourselves from trying to force our way further into the soft earth. Another inch. Hell, another half inch. Anything to escape the shrapnel and bullets raining down on us from the South-Am Alliance troops a quarter mile away.

  Tree roots poked our bruised, wet flesh, easily tearing through uniforms gone soft and mildewy from weeks of rain and humidity. I’ve never met anyone who fought in Vietnam—that was way before my time—but surviving those jungles couldn’t have been any worse than trying to fight your way through the Amazon basin during the rainy season.

  “Jesus, Pierre. What we gonna do?” Gaston’s eyes were two white-and-black circles peering out from under the chocolate mud coating his face. He’d be seeing the same thing when he looked at me.

  My parents and his came from Haiti to New Orleans on the same makeshift boat back in ‘88, and they still live on the same street to this day. Me and Gaston were raised more like brothers than friends. We even looked a lot alike, although he’d always been more the athlete and I’d always done better in school.

  When the rumors of war started, we both figured it was better to sign up and get our hitch done before the real fighting broke out.

  Things hadn’t gone like we’d planned.

  “I doan’ know, brother," I said. "But we stay here, we gonna die, dat’s for sure.”

  Our platoon had been making its way across the seemingly endless rain forest and swamps, moving through the southeast portion of South-Am occupied Venezuela until we reached the Allied headquarters in Guyana. Along the way, we was to lay down some new kind of sensors. When enemy troops crossed the sensors, sniper drones would target the area with high-intensity laser fire. The technology was getting its first battlefield test, courtesy of thirty-something Army grunts.

  No one had counted on us stumbling into a damn guerrilla training center.

  Now they had us surrounded, outnumbering us twenty to one. And that was before we’d started taking casualties. What was left of our unit had been hunkered down for six hours as the South-Am forces slowly closed the circle around us.

  Incoming nano mortars screamed their fury, and I tried to make myself one with the earth while whistling, semi-living shrapnel buried itself all around us. With each heartbeat, I expected to feel the sudden punch of scavenger bots tearing open my belly and spilling my guts into the brown puddles at my feet.

  Somebody screamed nearby, the throat-tearing, soul-stabbing kind of shout of another soldier meeting their maker.

  Heavy volume sonic-cannon fire followed on the heels of the mortars like little brothers tagging along to see what the big boys were up to. A laser round hit the edge of the foxhole and came right through the wet soil, burning a line across my left shoulder.

  “Goddamn!” I could barely hear myself over the death-peddling din filling the air.

  Then it was over. That first silence after a barrage ain’t really silent at all. Your ears ring like you spent the night at a rock concert with your head between two speakers. Underneath that is the bang-bang-bang of your heart as it battles the adrenaline shooting through your veins.

  I looked at Gaston. His eyes were open and his mouth was going up and down, but I couldn’t hear anything. I thought maybe I’d gone deaf and I panicked.

  “Gaston!”

  He put a finger to his lips. When he spoke again, I could just make out his words. “They think we all dead, maybe they go ‘way.”

  Gaston wasn’t no dummy. We both knew we’d be lucky to ever see Bourbon Street again. I started saying prayers in my head.

  It didn’t take long before things got hot again. More whistling overhead. Only this time it was deeper. Louder. And it seemed to go on forever.

  I knew that sound. “Firecracker!”

  “Shit!” Gaston dove into the mud at the bottom of the hole. I did the same.

  Only thing to do when the firecrackers come is cover your ass and pray. I’ve seen one turn a double-armored tank into nothing but scrap metal and memories.

  Sound waves tore through my ears, leaving a terrible buzzing in their wake. The earth moved underneath us like it was throwing a fit.

  Something heavy hit my back and everything disappeared.

  * * *

  The first thing I noticed was the pain. Then a voice calling my name. I tried to get up, but my body didn't obey. Terrified I’d been paralyzed, I flexed my arms and kicked with my legs, but they wouldn’t move. I screamed. Bitter, gritty mud filled my mouth. I froze.

  I’d been buried.

  Jesus only knew how much water-soaked earth covered me. I got my arms under me and pushed, not much, but enough to get my head up so I could draw a breath without sucking mud.

  “Pierre! Pierre!”

  That voice again. Gaston’s. He was alive. He was free.

  “Help!” Fear overtook me. I saw myself dying in the ground, slowly going crazy until my air ran out. I shouted the word over and over, my voice a little more hysterical each time.

  “Hang on, I’m comin’!”

  I pushed and kicked and hollered some more. I rolled in the mud until I faced upwards, then turned to the side as handfuls of dripping muck poured into my mouth.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, something burst through the earth and grabbed me.

  I screamed. I knew it must be Gaston’s hand, but I screamed anyway. For a moment, that hand looked like something evil, all gray and pale and dead, like the walking corpses the bocors in Haiti call from the ground to do their evil work.

  Then it was Gaston’s hand again and I grabbed at it. He pulled. I clawed and kicked. I came shooting from that wet grave quick and easy, not like the earth was giving birth to me, more like it was shitting me out.

  “Damn, I’m sho’ glad to see you.” Gaston pulled me close. I couldn’t even answer him. I just squeezed with all the strength I had left in me. No two brothers in the whole world could have been closer than we were right then.

  “How long?” I asked.

  He shook his head, sending brown water droplets all over. It’d started raining again, hard. We must have looked like two chocolate snowmen melting.

  “Doan’ know, Pierre. I woke up, dug myself out and den started lookin’ for you. But I t’ink we be safe, least for a while.”

  “How you know that?” I didn’t feel safe. We had no guns and we were deep inside enemy territory.

  “Look.” He pointed to the ground a few feet away. Slowly eroding away in the rain were dozens of boot prints.

  “I t’ink dey already come and gone, while we be buried.”

  I took a deep breath. Their trail led in the opposite direction we had to go. Good news for us.

  But we weren’t safe, no way. There’d be plenty of other South-Am soldiers between us and Guyana.

  I remembered something. “I heard screamin’ just before the firecrackers.”

  Gaston nodded. “Pretty sure it was Waters. Or maybe Freed.” He hung his head. The warm rain ran off his bald dome like he’d just waxed it.

  “We should check for survivors,” I said.

  He grabbed my arm. “Ain’t no survivors.” I started to pull away, but he held me tighter. “Look ‘round, Pierre.”

  I did. What I saw stopped me cold.

  Gaping holes made the area look like we were on the moon instead of in South America. Body parts grew from the mud like obscene alien plants. Acres of trees either knocked down or blown to bits. For the first time, I noticed something in the air, something other than jungle rot and burnt explosives.

  Death. Blood and guts and shit and roasted flesh. There’s no other smell like it.

  “Pierre. We gots to leave this place, get back to the base.” He put his arm around my shoulder and I winced. “You hurt?”

  I shrugged him off. “It’s nothin’. I got nicked. C’mon.” I checked my belt compass. We needed to go southeast. A hundred klicks or so, and we’d hit the roads. From there, we’d just follow the signs.

  One hundred klicks of jungle swamp. No weapons, no radio, no food. Alliance forces all around us.

  How could it get any worse?

  * * *

  “Be careful what you ask for, Pierre,” my Mamma always said.

  The first three days we did okay. I still had my belt knife, so we were able to cut down fruit when we got hungry. There was plenty of rainwater to drink.

  At night we’d huddle under the biggest trees we could find, use branches and leaves to keep the worst of the rain off us. We didn’t sleep much. During the days we’d pick our way through the undergrowth, keeping an eye out for trip beams. It was hard going, but we were doing all right.

  Until my shoulder started acting up.

  The morning of day four I got up to gather some bananas for breakfast. The rain had eased up, and we were hoping to cover some extra ground. I reached up, and next thing I knew I was sitting on my ass.

  “Pierre? Tout bagay anfom?” Gaston came running over, still asking if I was all right.

  “Doan’ know,” I told him. “Musta stood up too fast.”

  He took the knife and cut the fruit down. “Eat somethin’.”

  I reached out and that’s when I felt it. Something achy and tight in my shoulder. I couldn’t stop myself from swearing.

  “Lemme take a look.” As soon as Gaston touched the wound, I cried out again.

  “I think it gettin’ infected.” There was a note of concern in his voice that told me he didn’t think so, he knew so.

  “Ain’t nothin’ we can do,” I said. “’Cept keep movin’.”

  And that’s what we did. Walk all day, rest at night. I was okay when we were walking, but soon as we’d stop, that’s when my knees went weak and I felt lightheaded. By the fifth day, Gaston was building the shelter and cutting the fruit all by himself. In the mornings, he’d have to slap me a bit to wake me.

  Things got a lot worse on day seven.

  I was leaning against a tree, taking a whiz. Gaston was nearby, gathering some passion fruits. Something caught my eye.

  A red dot, moving across the tree trunk towards me.

  “Down!” I dropped to the ground. Gaston did the same. Sniper fire blew apart the quiet afternoon. As soon as it stopped, we were up and running, my weasel still hanging from my pants.

  “Prese!” Gaston yelled. Hurry.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. More gun fire. Sonic rounds turned leaves to confetti all around us. We hunched over as best we could. The trees protected us some but slowed us down, too.

  I don’t know how long we ran. At one point, Gaston went down, and I feared he’d been hit. But when I helped him up, he gave me a pained smile and shook his head.

  “Tripped, dat’s all. Keep goin’.”

  We did. An hour. Maybe two. Until it grew too dark to see, and then some. I thought my heart would explode. My legs, they were two pieces of dead wood. My lungs hurt worse than the time I spent Christmas in Boston and caught myself a nasty flu.

  Every time I thought I couldn’t go any further, Gaston was right there, holding me up, pushing me on. His face was gray and there was a stink rising from him. I swear he must have shit himself, but he didn’t let me stop. No, sir. Not until we were safe.

  When he held up his hand, I fell to the ground right there. The whole goddamn South-Am army could have been right behind me, I wouldn’t have moved.

  “Stay here, I’ll look around,” he said. I couldn’t even answer him. It was all I could do to keep from passing out.

  Gaston took off his shirt and disappeared into the night. Not long after he left, distant screams roused me from my stupor. I pulled myself up against a tree, but I still couldn’t stand.

  More screams. Someone getting hurt real bad. More than one someone. Gun shots.

  Silence.

  I waited against that tree for death to appear.

  Footsteps. I closed my eyes, thought about Marlee, my girl back home. I wanted her to be the last thing I saw.

  “Easy, boy. It just me.” Gaston appeared from the darkness as if it was a doorway. In the traces of moonlight weaving their way through the leaves, he looked gray and ghostly.

  In one hand he held a sonic rifle. In the other a demo pistol.

  “I dogged three of them,” he told me as he put his shirt back on. “Good t’ing I so black. I stab one wit de knife, take his gun. I shoot his two friends. Now at least we got weapons.”

  He handed me the pistol. It was a Sanchez Model Ocho. Twenty-four in the clip, every round tipped with armor-piercing explosive. A heavy gun, but I could probably shoot it one-handed.