only the dead have seen the end of war {nacho/esmeralda}

Two great leviathans of industry sit rusting on the boundary of the district. Their dull aluminium veins twist and weave impossibly over one another, whilst the ruptured gangways above peel down to join the eminent tangle. The industrial chimneys that rise into the sky once discharged odious bloated clouds of mustard smoke out westward - You have seen the dead fish in the river.

These great vents stand tall and proud, the spires of this oxidized chapel. They watch over their corroded kingdom, awaiting orders that will never again come.

You are standing presently between the two decommissioned plants, a Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol held firmly at your side. It is standard issue, military grade, 9mm. Black, robust, featureless. You are not one for profligacy. It only needs pointing and the trigger squeezing, nothing more than that.

You kneel down to assess the fresh footprints imprinted before you. They are wide, sinking deep into the clay. This is a heavy man, or you think more likely a man carrying something heavy. You have suspicions, but not enough evidence to say for sure. Adjacent to this, a thin line running straight like a dagger through the mud, before curving violently off to the left where the main road spreads.

A stalker in the night, clad in leather pants that grip tightly to your thighs, and a neat white shirt that bends to the shape of your torso - the top three buttons left unfastened so you can breathe in this sticky air.

Returning to the fork in the road you have the metallic taste of disappointment between your teeth - you know that there is something you have missed here, and you know that you are not perceptive or logical enough to put the broken pieces of this scene together.

All you have is all the things it is not, and in that void is the shape of something that you can only make an assumption on. You conceal the Beretta M9 at your hip and pull your shirt down over firmly as you rejoin the great unwashed masses moving around the lumber district.

Sawdust dances in the air above main street, fizzing like sparks as the round saws of craftsmen and chippies alike tirelessly work until the sun has set and the lights are too dim to safely operate such heavy machinery.

Something stirs inside you. What is that, Ignacio, a memory you have repressed? No, I was wrong, it is a memory that you often think about, perhaps it even imprints itself on the back of your eyelids at night. You know exactly how tiring working these machines is, as you yourself have lifted the main body of a Solo 60V Naked Circular Saw. You can remember pivoting the blade over your marker and gently bringing it down onto the man's chest, his blood painting the walls of the workshop in a terrible scarlet.

You couldn't get it out of your shirt for weeks.

But you have many shirts, don't you?