The Bonneterre Marshlands had been known throughout history as one of the most treacherous crossings ever faced by the early settlers of the Praetorian nations. Named almost in mocking fashion by merchants who established the first caravan routes to extend from the south coast all the way across the wetlands, the bog had always been considered a death sentence for travelers and even highwaymen in the days of old.

Conserved by the cold bodies of water that spread across the mainland, the bleached bones of men and women who fled the harsh winters of the northern tundra could still be seen sticking out of the mud where the water was clear enough. Carrion eaters, horse carcasses and rotten tree trunks had all been common sights throughout its narrow trails of tall bushes and short slopes. In similar fashion, the disconcerting, almost confusing symbols of devotion and communion cultivated in ages long past by the illusive folk that inhabited the region before the settlers could also be found. And perhaps even more so than the omens of death and decay that nature held up to the face of men around those grounds, the less said about them, the better.

More importantly, the marshlands were a common sight among the trenches. Not the actual ones, as they didn’t require any method of entrenchment in the context of warfare, but in fact those that set the stage for Ivan’s dreams. Unbound by the restrictions of logistics or tactical coherence, dreams have their own way of communicating their version of the facts. One such way, as it is, would be through what those who inhabit the concrete world would call geography.

And it was in this familiar sight of his dream that he found himself in that gray afternoon, sunk within the warmth of the alcohol and across the threshold of consciousness, where on the other side he was welcomed by the cold embrace of that lingering memory. Not a crude, undistinguishable mass of vague memories piled up one another, but in fact the almost surgical incision of a very specific time and place, although hidden within such layers of ambiguity, waiting to be found like a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea.

The mazelike aspect of the trench land was sinuous and impractical, almost non-Euclidian at certain points. A carpet of dark sulks of earthly tones being divided by thin strips of elevated grounds in shades of bone white. Every here and there, seemingly random shapes would protrude from the spots of higher ground: a naked tree, a pile of sandbags, sometimes the charred remains of a vehicle or some long-overrun edification from before the war.

But toward the horizon, the land bent itself like a crooked metal plate, its surface hammered by the heavy blows of blunt iron and projectiles, undulating in small hills and valleys that layered upon one another toward the opaque shade of ochre that tinted the sky. And above it all, the dim light of the sun, shining through the sandstorm-colored clouds like a new day that dawns across the thick fabric of closed drapes.

Ivan could hear the pulsating noise of his breath enveloping his face like the cast of a death mask. The M-77 was the standard-issue gas mask of the Old Army’s special forces, but ever since the early years of the republican campaign it had been popularized throughout most infantry units. Once a symbol of the technological prowess that helped build a long-standing tradition of Eastern hegemony in warfare, the M-77 had then become a symbol of resistance for its fledgling nations throughout the civil war, seen almost as a second skin by their many fearless patriots in their long journey as warfighters. For over a decade, that mask was the face of every young man who had made the fight against imperialism his life, and oftentimes his death as well.

In his hands, he brandished another symbol with a similar history of its own. Nicknamed “the gun that built the East and then broke it”, the Kressner-Schultz automatic rifle was the sole companion of a whole generation of combatants, as well as the orphaned children they left in their wake. Sturdy, reliable, and most importantly, cheap to mass produce, the Special K was anyone’s best chance of survival as well as their enemy’s. No other automatic firearm had seen nearly half the mileage since the civil war, and in its heyday it may as well have been the only one ever invented. In every moment of his life he knew he would never forget, Ivan had his hand on that wooden grip.

And in the dream, a third symbol lay before him. Not a symbol of war, at least not in the traditional sense, but a symbol of faith: the cross, the mark of the Holy Weaver, the spearhead that drives the thread of fate across the fabric of reality, into that of fiction, and back again into reality until both are woven into one and the same. The cross lay before him atop of a church, dim and frail, waiting for him at the top of a battered slope that led out of the trench like the steps of an ancient cathedral.

As if floating underwater after crashing into the sea from a high altitude, Ivan felt not his body, but his perception of his own self hovering behind the image of his fully-geared silhouette. He could see himself make his way across the trench and toward the slope, where the small church towered at the end behind a cloudy afternoon sun.

By the time the vague shape of himself approached the slope, the sight of the trench land spreading each and every way toward the horizon had faded like the chemicals on a burning photograph. All that could be seen behind him was a pitch black darkness shrouded by fog, while all that stood before him was the church.

Making his way up one tired step at the time, he could feel each familiar sensation experienced by the hooded, masked soldier he saw before him. The noise of his breathing apparatus, the blisters on the back of his ankles, the thin layer of cold sweat pressed between his palm and the fabric of his gloves. The mere sight of that man was enough to convince him, but the familiarity of those feelings was what truly drove home his absolute certainty that he was staring at himself.

His sight hovered by the man’s left shoulder as his hand reached for the battered mahogany of the heavy church doors. Going for the doorknob at first, he noticed the entire lock had been torn out, leaving a mess of splinters around a hole twice the size of a fist. As he stood close enough to the door to notice it, he could also see it was slightly open. He placed his gloved left hand over the wood and gave it a gentle push, quickly placing back his palm underneath the handguard of the KSAR as the old door hinges let out a loud, somber screech and he stepped inside.

Even more so than the outside, the church’s interior had been in sheer state of disrepair beyond any recognition. Many of the benches were broken down or missing, while the stained glass windows had almost every shard been long shattered off like broken window panes after a hurricane. The walls were covered in inch-wide thick vines, while the floor had barely a single spot not hidden by puddles of rainwater which were dark and several feet wide. The roof was barely still there, with more holes revealing the cloudy dark sky than wooden beams left to hold whatever could be kept in place before the structure caved in.

More noticeable than any of that, however, was the fact that the altar wasn’t there at all. It wasn’t just missing, as if it had been taken elsewhere, but in fact completely obliterated like a massive blast radius had collided against the back of the church. Almost the entire opposite half of the structure appeared as if it had been destroyed by an unseen force, leaving it torn open like a piece of fabric with a hole ripped in the middle.

On the other side of the hole, all that could be seen was the bog; its misty horizon, the smokey silhouettes of naked branches, and then finally a cloudy sky with the shades of red of a forest fire at night. Somewhere above it, the dim light of the sun crawled through the dense layer of dark colors, almost blocked in its entirety.

“This is Bosconovitch”, he could hear his own voice say. “Do you read me, command, over?”

“Loud and clear, sergeant, over”, he’d hear the unmistakable drawl of his fireteam’s staff sergeant say over the radio.

“We’re at the RV point. Something’s not right, over.”

“Any visual on Bravo, over?”

“Negative, command. The place is empty. Something was here before us, over.”

As an observer within his own dreamscape, the strangeness of himself saying “something” as opposed to “someone” wasn’t lost on Ivan. Basic training had taught him years before that communicating in imprecise, vague terms while conducting missions within ECP-heavy zones was ill-advised for tactical and organizational reasons. But then again, although the warzone of his dreams may still have had restrictions of a psychological nature, it was still impervious to those of a logical one.

“Any trace of enemy activity?” asked the voice on the radio.

“Negative, sir”, he was quick to answer. “But I see plenty activity from another enemy altogether.”

“You know who your enemies are.”

“I don’t think any of us ever did, sir.”

The radio chatter started to sound more like a back-and-forth between voices inside his head than an actual conversation. The staff sergeant’s voice starting to sound more and more like his own was a sign of that, just as much as the fact both of them had stopped saying “over” at the end of each transmission. A perception that strangely enough made sense, as it came mixed with Ivan’s certainty that this conversation had been taking place inside his own head all along.

“Whatever you say, sergeant”, said Ivan to himself over the radio. “Proceed with caution.”

He would not be able to arrive at this conclusion within the dream itself, but that whole interaction had never taken place in real life. He was never at that church, which probably never existed, just as that dialogue had not undergone in that way, or how the search for Bravo team had been conducted in an entirely different manner. One thing that remained true inside or outside his dreams, however, was that Ivan’s ability to differentiate a false memory from a genuine one had been slowly deteriorating throughout the years, and at that point might as well have been at its utter and absolute rock bottom.

Melting into one another as if to become a third manner of perception, his view from behind himself and his limited eyesight from behind the mask’s goggles drifted along the interior of the church and throughout the path that led toward the bog. He could see the wood of the floorboards dissolve into some sort of ash-colored moss around the edge of the hole, blending into the mud of the terrain like strokes of thick wet paint of different colors built-up over one another on a rough canvas. It felt natural in a way man-built structures should not look like next to nature, something that gave the perception that this could be an actual memory a very particular streak of anxiety to it.

That thought would then suddenly be interrupted by the gentle yet coarse touch of a gloved hand on his left shoulder, in tandem with the image of a silhouette approaching his own from behind. He turned around to face a hooded figure concealed by a gas mask identical to his own.

“I think it’s time to leave, sir”, said a muffled familiar voice inside his head.

“Affirmative”, he agreed with a nod. “Take point, Preacher.”

He was a good soldier, Ivan thought to himself, perhaps even as an observer within his own dream as well as the one being observed within it. Although that memory was false, the conclusion that Preacher was a valuable man to have on his team had been a common one throughout the entire span of time in which they worked together.

As if moving on the bottom of the sea inside an old diving suit, Preacher stepped ahead with his KSAR slightly positioned toward eye level. With his perception of his surroundings floating still, Ivan observed as two more silhouettes would drift into sight, one from each side. Lancer and Wolfman, he knew. Also hooded and brandishing automatic weapons, they followed Preacher as their sergeant stayed behind and surveyed that structure’s interior one last time.

In the context of the dream, something about the architecture of that church felt stranger than it normally would. At first it looked like it had been shattered in half by an explosion, probably a falling mortar by the looks of it. Upon further inspection, it now looked more like it had been torn asunder by a massive hand, the way a piece of clothing looks after being grabbed and ripped off someone’s body.

But it was at that moment, after looking around for long enough, that Ivan was able to tell what was making him so uneasy: that place looked like it had been built just the way it appeared before him. He started noticing wooden boards that had been nailed in weird angles, one over the other, following illogical patterns toward the missing half of the building until it spread open like the entrance of a grotto.

Stranger still was the fact some of them looked like they had been nailed after being broken in half or torn to pieces, almost in primitive fashion, like whoever built that place was using any piece of wood they could find. Some of them didn’t even have the shape of wooden planks at all: he could see chopped up branches, lumber wood of different sizes, broken furniture that included some of that which was missing from the church. At one point or another he could see the arm or a leg of wooden sculptures, probably saints and angels brought from God knows where. It all built up over itself until it gave the hole behind the church the aspect of a crude wicker basket. A bird’s nest. A funeral pyre.

That strange fixation would once again be cut short by the approach of another one of his men. Just as in Preacher’s case, the voice that sounded within his head betrayed the masked soldier’s identity.

“The longer you look at it, the more complicated it appears to be”, said Gecko. “It’s like anything else, sarge.”

It was a meaningless statement, but it still made Ivan reflect upon its significance within that dream in particular. More importantly, it served to reassure him that it was only a dream, as Gecko never had anything even remotely that thought-provoking to say in real life.

“But do you really think it’s what it seems?” Ivan replied after thinking for a few seconds.

“It could be”, said the young man. “But it could also be something else entirely. That’s the beauty of it. And the tragedy, too.”

Ivan turned around and saw his men progressing into the bog at the other end of the church, water crawling up to their knees as they pressed on. He surveyed the distance, seeing nothing but the blurry silhouettes of naked branches against a horizon that clashed between gray still water and a deep crimson sky.

“I don’t think I see any beauty, if I’m being honest”, he confessed.

“Sometimes what matters in life is not seeing the beauty in it. Sometimes what matters is seeing the scarecrow.”

“Wait, what?” he thought to himself. That sentence gave him pause. Had he heard it right? He quickly turned around to face Gecko standing right beside him, his concealed face giving him an eerie air of blank inexpressiveness, his body perfectly still as he faced Ivan from behind his goggles.

“Sergeant, do you read me, over?” said a voice over the radio. It was Preacher.

“Loud and clear, Preacher, come in, over”, he was fast to reply, looking sideways from the sight of the masked young man.

“I got visual on… Someone? Or something? I’m not sure, over.”

Ivan quickly turned his sights back toward the horizon, where across a thin veil of fog he could see his three men carefully approaching what appeared to be a human silhouette standing perfectly still.

“Is that a civilian, over?”

“It looks like some kind of dummy someone left here. I don’t know. Some kind of scarecrow, maybe? Over.”

Ivan slowly turned his head around as he looked back at Gecko. Without saying a word, he just raised the Kressner to his chest and nodded once.

“Ready when you are, sir”, he said finally.

As he faced the horizon once again, he noticed his men raising their barrels toward the target. For what seemed like no more than a second or two, the fog thinned out just about enough for Ivan to get a better look into the distance. That was when he noticed something crucial: Preacher and the two other soldiers had water almost halfway up to their thighs. The person, whoever they were, was standing on water level like it was solid ground.

He knew for a fact that could’ve had many explanations. Maybe the poor visibility was playing tricks on him. Maybe that person was standing on a bank, just a few inches from the edge, slightly beneath water level. The answer could’ve been a number of different logical ones, but Ivan knew what it really was, and there was nothing logical in its nature.

“Preacher, do not engage, do you read me? I repeat, do not engage the target. Hold your fire and wait for my signal, over.”

“Roger that, sir”, said the voice on the radio, and Ivan could see his men standing still after a hand sign from the silhouette in the middle. “Standing by, over.”

“Over and out”, he replied, immediately checking his rifle and then turning to the young man. “Malloy, I want you to listen to me very carefully, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir”, Gecko nodded.

“You’re gonna stand right behind me, you’re gonna do as you’re told, and most importantly, you are not gonna do anything unless I tell you to. Especially shooting. Do you follow?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“I don’t care if you think you’re being shot at, I don’t care if you think you’re gonna die. I don’t care if you’re convinced you just saw the devil himself standing right in front of you. You do not fire a single round before I explicitly tell the entire squad to do it, am I getting through to you?”

“One hundred percent, sir.”

“Good”, Ivan said as he held his rifle with both hands and turned his back to Gecko. “We do this by the book and we got this one bagged. On me.”

In position and with a sharp hand signal, Ivan advanced toward the end of the torn church, his steps fast and precise. Loud splashes of shallow water flew by at each one, slightly offset by the clumsy but just about sufficiently functional pace in which Gecko followed his lead, just a few feet behind his right flank.

Tension built within his perception of himself, of his dreamscape, of a true memory within a false one. Suddenly what felt like an ephemeral, almost vague delusion throughout a fake version of reality had the hot-blooded intensity of relieving one’s trauma, the searing certainty of revisiting pain and hopelessness. The rattling of the brain machinery kicking into full gear as it throttles up the engine of dormant fear and desperation stampeding across the rocky roads of reason and into the steep canyons of instinct in which they end.

Ivan wasn’t a disembodied sense of self, anymore. He was his own self, the only one he had ever had the choice of being in this cursed life and all realms beyond it. Sergeant Bosconovitch, 19th Special Recon Battalion. On his way to neutralize what could possibly be the most dangerous enemy he had ever faced. Save, perhaps, for one: Sergeant Bosconovitch. 19th Special Recon Battalion. On his way to win his war against himself. On his way to terminate, with extreme prejudice, whatever was left of the man he once was.

“Romanek, do you read me?”, he barked into the radio as he made his way across the bog, the silhouettes seeming to get further as opposed to closer. “Status report, over.”

“Loud and clear, sergeant”, Preacher’s voice replied with confidence. “Standing by as ordered, over.”

“What’s the status on the target, over?”

“He’s just standing there, sir. Target is a male, light complexion, about six foot or so… I don’t know, he’s got his back facing us. Visibility is getting worse out here. What are the orders, over?”

He realized it was true: visibility was, for a fact, getting noticeably worse. He started wondering if that had any relation to the situation itself, to the context of the dream, or if it was just bad luck altogether. Whatever the reason may be, the fog was getting thicker and darker, starting to resemble the smoke of a forest fire or even volcanic dust. The environment itself was becoming hostile in a manner similar to a pot of water reaching its boiling point.

“Do not engage the target under any circumstances”, he kept barking at the radio. “Do not approach it, do nothing except wait for my orders, over.”

“Sarge, there’s something wrong”, said another voice on the radio. This time it was Wolfman. “We’re getting better visual out here and he looks like he’s… Floating?”

“Don’t let it trick you soldier, wait for my signal before a—”

The silence is torn by a loud burst of shots. Five of them in quick succession, the familiar percussion of the Kessler drum machine.

“FUCK”, Ivan shouted. “Fuck, shit, goddamnit. Malloy, on me, let’s go!”

He marched toward the direction from where the shots were heard. With his elbows slightly raised and both hands gripping his weapon, muddy water splashed around in loud waves as water level covered his shins. The fog would simply not let on; at this point, he had completely plunged inside the lead-colored cloud that swallowed the entire swamp, with no choice but to press on.

He goes for the radio once again before being interrupted by a volley of rounds ringing across the air, aggravating his frustration.

“GODAMNIT, men, STOP SHOOTING”, he shouts at the radio, furious by now. “This is not the enemy, this is not what you think it is, you need to LISTEN to me if you want to—”

“Sergeant! They got Malloy!” one of the voices screams in the distance, seemingly from every direction at once.

“Lancer?” Ivan shouted back. “Where the hell are you? Use the flare!”

There was no answer. More shots were heard, this time from another direction. Screaming. Realizing what he had just heard Lancer say, Ivan was quick to look around and notice something he had completely missed: Gecko was nowhere to be seen. He was so enthralled by the critical nature of the quickly escalating conflict that he managed to lose track of the only man on his team he had not lost track of so far, which was also the one that probably needed his guidance the most.

“Sarge, where are you?!” he heard Gecko’s voice screaming from across the veil, from no direction in particular.

“Malloy, stand still, I’m coming for you!” he shouted all around, realizing the almost rudimentary voice module of the M-77 wasn’t doing him any favors. He quickly went for the radio: “Stop shooting and light up the flares, you fucking morons, we’re gonna get ourselves killed if we don’t group up right now, over!”

There was no answer. He could still hear shooting, this time from a concerningly longer distance. His men were in panic, disorganized, waylaid by a force they did not comprehend in the slightest. The sinking realization that all of it was Ivan’s poor leadership taking its toll was nearly impossible to ignore.

Guilt and shame clouded his judgement as the fear of being responsible for the death of his entire team overtook him. He wasn’t afraid to die. He wasn’t afraid of failing his mission. He wasn’t even afraid of losing the war, being relegated to a lifetime and beyond of systemic oppression underneath the boot of his generational overlords. His only fear was the death of the few men he considered his friends, his brothers. The grief of those who were, by blood, their siblings and parents, and having to face its dire, bleak finality, in the role of its catalyst.

The sound of gunfire and indistinguishable cries of pain expanded upon itself amidst loud echoes that overflowed his surroundings. He was now standing still on the bog, cold water up to his knees, the fog pressing down against him like a man on fire getting a close look at the smoke he’d be going up in. Desolation and helplessness settled in like a winter’s nightfall, and he could feel the claustrophobic realization of defeat locked inside his mask with him like two young brothers sharing a casket in a premature burial.

“You there?” said a monotone voice on the radio.

“Lucas?” he asked, recognizing it right away. “Where are you? What’s your status?”

Radio silence was accompanied by silence of another nature altogether as the sound of gunfire slowly subsided; not by stopping, but by becoming progressively more distant until it vanished from distinction. All that was left was the wait for an answer. The noticeably loud static of the radio came in, but not a word came through it.

“Lucas, what’s going on, talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You saw what happened.”

He could feel his grip on reality giving in within the dream, much the same way as it did outside of it. It wasn’t about that memory anymore, but what would come of it later down that same road. He wasn’t there. He was somewhere else, watching it unfold. Being reminded of it.

“Lucas”, he said, unsure if his words were coming on through the radio. “I need to talk to you.”

“I know”, said the voice promptly, a bleak incisiveness to it.

“It’s important.”

“I know.”

Ivan wanted to say something more meaningful, but the words eluded him. He kept trying to think it over enough to scramble for something, but it was like trying to speak in a language he was hearing for the first time.

There was a strange sort of mind scratch gnawing at his brain as he tried to do it, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

“I think someone wants to talk to you, too”, Lucas continued, after a long silence.

He felt caught off guard by that statement. There was a noise ringing in his ears, but he still couldn’t quite make out what it was. Something about that strange feeling of anticipation felt familiar in a way he wasn’t comfortable with.

“Who?” he’d ask finally, unsure of what else to say.

There was something coming toward him. A noise. The one he’d been hearing. It was now cutting through the fog like a sharp blade, approaching his position, laying down on him like it came from the other end of a tunnel.

“What do you mean?”, asked the voice on the radio.

The fog started to clear up as if blown away by a fierce gust of wind. Suddenly, the otherworldly horizon of the swamp was visible once again, from its skeletal trees to its fiery, blood-tinged dark skies.

“You can see him, can’t you?”

There was a man standing in the middle of the bog. His back facing Ivan. His feet standing at what seemed like barely an inch above water.

“He’s right outside your house, after all.”

The man was laughing.

He turned around.

—

Ivan could hear a noise coming from outside as he woke up in the dark. He could feel the coldness of the fresh sweat that beaded on his skin, its smell bitter and reminiscent of cheap alcohol. His breath smelled of decay and foul chemistry, his eyes were blood-shot to the point he could feel them boil inside their sockets, his brain pounding like a strained back muscle. He tried to get up, but the pain in his joints rang like an alarm throughout each and every nerve ending of his skeleton.

Slowly standing on his hands and knees, he squinted as he looked around. It seemed like his living room floor, but there was no way to be sure at first. All lights were off and visibility was almost none, but at the very least he could slightly make out the blue hue of silvery outlines all around him. After a few seconds struggling against his headache, he started being able to distinguish the shape of his old furniture, the hallway toward the kitchen and the front door wide open. Little by little, he could have a better idea of where he was.

He had been lying prone on the musty floorboards of the living room, crushed beer cans all around him like cattle droppings in some untended corral. The familiar sight of the Weaver Creek bottle lay nearby as well, empty and toppled over barely two feet away. No puddles of dry puke or glass shards lying around, at least; which on its own may have been a good sign, but also one that he hadn’t eaten all day or had enough motor coordination to break anything out of anger, which he knew was still there.

The pain in his joints prevented him from letting his palms off the floor and standing on his knees for at least long enough to get his bearings. And of course, there was the pounding. The pounding inside his skull, like it was being struck by a pickaxe from within. Something was making it worse, but the pain itself was making it harder to make out what could possibly be.

A single moment of conscious effort into focusing was enough for him to grasp it, however.

That was when he noticed the noise again.

The laughter that appeared in his dream. That had awakened him from it. It wasn’t just a dream, it was coming from the other side of that wide open front door.

There was someone there, laughing at something, loud outbursts of crass laughter like someone’s obnoxious slob neighbour laughing at late night comedy TV shows on a week day.

“What is this goddamn racket”, Ivan could hear his own voice grunting at him, more annoyed than confused.

He scrambled his way up to his knees and then to his feet, clumsily bumping into his furniture and then against his walls as he tried to stand. The pain on his knees and heels from getting up so quickly sting at him like sharp bites from small varmint, but he shrugged it off out of sheer spite. That whole situation was way more ridiculous than it was suspicious at that point, and he needed some answers. What the hell was that voice? Why was it so familiar, why did it seem like he had been in this exact situation before?

All of that was too strange, too whimsical for his rotten mood, there was definitely something off about the whole thing. Was he being pranked? Was any of that even taking place in real life? For some reason, it was like he never quite left the dream, just awakened inside another one taking place in his living room late at night, in which he listened to voices that weren’t there, being mocked by unseen devils of his own making.

Tumbling around like the scarcely sobered-up drunkard he indeed was, Ivan bumped and shuffled his way toward the front door, where he stepped out to the porch amidst loud, creaky sounds. The laughter was coming from somewhere at the end of the driveway, veiled by the pitch black darkness.

“WHO’S OUT THERE”, he shouted.

No one answered. All that could be heard was the sharp, jarring sound of the laughter cutting through a mass of superimposed noises that seemed to come from every direction: crickets, toads, the wind against dead branches, the faint sound of water from the creek. The dog, who had been woken up by the noise of Ivan’s feet slamming against the porch, started barking after hearing the shout.

“SHOW YOURSELF, goddamn it”, Ivan boomed, walking down the porch’s steps and into the driveway, looking around as if trying to guess the stranger’s position.

The sound of the dog’s incessant barking was getting louder and more erratic, which was starting to be more aggravating to his headache than the laughter itself. He looked over his shoulder at the doghouse and scowled at its sight.

“SHUT UP”, he barked back, slamming his open palm twice against his pickup truck’s hood, which only made the dog more agitated.

He could see in the distance the amber shade of a bedroom light turning on, slightly blurred by the nighttime haze. All that noise had woken up Bill as well, even from a good way down the road, which made Ivan feel foolish now that he realized he was the one making the racket.

Which also made him realize something else altogether: the laughter had completely vanished without him noticing. Between all the barking, the shouting, the banging noises and the wide variety of sounds of nature that drifted across the woods, it was almost like the laughter itself had sneaked out of the equation like a thief. All that was left was the uneasy, almost frustrating self-doubt that maybe none of that had actually happened in the first place: just another of many hallucinations starring him, that house late at night, and some disembodied voice that kept tormenting him.

He furrowed his brow, sucking his teeth as he turned his back to the dark, walking up the steps back again before reaching for the front door. As he held the doorknob, he looked over his shoulder once more.

“I don’t know where you think you are, pal, but this is private property”, he shouted at no one in particular. “If I catch you loitering here again you’re gonna regret it, you hear me?”

No answer, as expected. His dog barking at him was all his pounding skull registered at this point.

“Fucking clown”, Ivan grunted. “I’ll give you something to laugh at, alright.”

As he let the door slam behind him, not even the sight of the living room’s digital clock telling him he had blacked out for almost twenty hours was enough to bother him. Drinking himself into a stupor for some reason he couldn’t even remember was concerning enough as it was, to say nothing of how many hours it took for him to land back into reality. Having to deal with whatever the hell was all that nonsense was not something he needed on top of everything else.

A faint memory of his dream still lingered, but even that seemed unimportant; after all, how many times had he dreamed about the trenches, since he had actually stood in them? A hundred times? A thousand? It had been fifteen years since the day of his injury, and going back and forth through the same ill-processed feelings of guilt and shame almost nightly had completely desensitized him of whatever ugliness they once had. The dream of the trenches was at this point just the unconscious equivalent of his daily life: for all its bleakness, completely meaningless.

Having just slept through the good part of an entire day and feeling hungover to just about the threshold of physical and mental debilitation, Ivan knew there was no way he was going back to bed. For someone in whatever stage of alcoholism was that in which he found himself, waking up hungover and insomniac after midnight felt like a particular sort of defeat.

He went to the kitchen and opened another beer. For some ungodly reason there were three half-finished six-packs lying around on different parts of the floor. He grabbed one and brought it to his TV chair, where he sat down and watched bullshit late-night television until he got slightly drunk again and passed out near sunrise.

This time, sleep hit so deep he basically sunk into what could’ve been the early stages of a self-induced coma. It was mostly just a quick shut eye, too short to be called a night’s sleep but long enough to be called one anyway.

He didn’t dream. But somewhere, far away within himself, the trenches remained, dire and endless. And in the marshlands, waiting in the middle of the bog, stood a man with his back turned, his bare feet hovering an inch and a half above water level. And when his grimy toes twitch, and appear close enough to touch where his reflection should be, they don’t.