The woman in the wind

The church clock slowly strikes six. Its rich tone echoes though the small aged town on this warm lazy sunny summer morning. Above the steeple, in the clear blue sky, a murder of crows mock the day with their cold customary laughter. They fight amongst themselves in slow spiralling circles, before being driven south, towards the rich green mounds of the south down’s and the sea. The church is old. Its rich red tiled roof, supported by walls made of flint and tall grey stone; was built before the Norman invasion; and was once witness to the death of a great Saxon king. Now, as the bells stop and a moment of serene calm covers’ the town; the church would be witness to another event. An event which begins with a body that lies upon its doorstep, whose head is covered by a beaten fedora hat.
Slow crunching steps can be heard. There is something precise, cold and military in their sound. And they seem, somehow out of place on this warm, lazy sunny morning. The sound comes from a pair of well polished, shiny, stiff leather boots’. They echo upon the aged flagstones, along the brittle flint lined path that leads towards the church entrance; and they echo with the sound of victory and of death.
The soldier in the black uniform stands over the man’s prone body. He kicks it slowly with one of his polished boots. With a groan, the man raises the fedora, and squints at the shadow that stands over him.
‘Are you awake old man?’ the young, brush hard German voice growls out. ‘Have you been out all night?’
‘Wha-‘ The old man mumbles, ‘-the time.’
‘Its’ a little after six...’ The young man in the black uniform replies; pulling back on his black visor hat. The shines brightly upon the emblem of the deaths head as he is wiping his brow slightly. ‘...you have your papers?’
The young officer is shorter, thinner and younger than the older man. He has a strong angular clean shaven jaw and ice cold narrow blue slits for eyes.
‘Papers..?’ The older man looks disconcerted, disconnected and most of all lost. He stands and pats his red shirt, fawn coloured jacket and his matching colour, baggy trousers. The old man looks serious. His wide set green eyes narrow, revealing a host of crow’s feet. His thinning, fading blonde hair parted to the left, is a little greasy. Yet his square jaw is hidden mostly by a well shaped beard. It gives his red lined face, a crumpled, worn but educated appearance. His body, also being slightly bloated makes the younger thinner officer scoff at this sad fat Englishman.
‘Come on...’ insists the officer; his voice now on the edge of becoming hostile. ‘...I haven’t got all day.’
‘No papers...’ the old man begins. He looks at the young German officer sheepishly and suspiciously; as if he hasn’t seen anything like him before. Then he suddenly looks down‘...I’m looking for my wife...’ He falters pauses and pulls out a large photograph from his jacket pocket and hands it to the Young German officer, before he bends down, picks up and puts his ruffled fedora back upon his head. ‘...have you seen her?’
‘If you have no papers, then you will be declared and illegal and therefore have to go to the local internment station.’ The young officer answers coldly.
‘But my wife...’ the old man looks disorientated. ‘Where is this place, it looks familiar...yet ...what year is this?’
‘Place...Year?’ The young officer scoffs.
The young German officer thinks that he must be an escaped lunatic from “Winston House”, the huge asylum upon the edge of town. He shakes his head, as he looks at the picture.
‘To answer your question old man...’ He begins, coldly ‘...you are in the town of Bridgeton on the south coast of England; which is run by The Free German alliance, in the year of our Furher, nineteen hundred and sixty nine...’ slowly the young man’s voice begins to falter; because something catches his eye in the picture, something that he knows shouldn’t be there. ‘...what is that?’ He asks pointedly.
The old man begins to gather his strength, as he stretches out, to face him.
‘I don’t think you’d believe me, if I told you.’ The old man replies’, as he suddenly lashes out; hitting the young man full in the face, sending the officer spiralling to the floor.
The old man drags the officer into the shade of the church entrance; then kneels on top of him. Shaking, with both fear and the excursion, the old man pulls a small glass like cube from his jacket pocket. It has four wires attached to it; at the end of the wires are four clear plastic suction cups. Two cups have serrated edged, needles at their centre. Two have long pieces of a copper like wire. With deft speed, which only comes with experience, he places the suction cups upon the young officer’s head. He quietly squeezes the suction cups into place. Then he does the same to himself. Then, the old man squeezes the cube in both his hands. He looks down with a sad stare of compassion, as he sees the needles, twisting, turning, burying into the skull as the young officer.
Not long now, the old man thinks, as the young officer’s body becomes rigid, and then foams at the mouth, as an urethral red and blue glow begins to enwrap them both, in a blurred sphere. But as he is about to depart, he wails in pain. For he sees his photograph; the one thing he has left, of the one and only person he has ever loved, has just been blown out of reach.
She was the reason for all of this; it defined his decision to make the temporal wave displacement machine, so he could travel between universes, and find the love he lost. That picture was the only proof he had of the life they shared together; and now, as the picture is being blown out away, he feels that she lost forever. For a second he thinks that if he disconnects from the machine, then he might stand a real chance of retrieving the picture and holding onto the memory. But he also knows that if he disconnects now; the temporal distortion field he has created by tapping into this now dead man’s brain, will rupture, and fragment him across the universes.
Then somehow, by a miracle, she appears. The mere ghost of an image just outside of the sphere; slowly slipping in and out of his field of vision; made more of wind of possibilities, than reality she stands there; in the shade of the church entrance. He sees her as she picks up the picture and stares towards him as he calls out in joy, before he slips from this possible universe to somewhere new.
* * *
Her name is Dorothy Sawyers; she is in her late thirties and is scared that she will live as a spinster for the rest of her life. She has her long flowing auburn hair pulled up into a tight bun. Though she’s unaware it extenuates her strong square jaw. She privately wishes she could have her hair flowing, about her shoulders, like she has heard some have in the Confederation Sates of America. But she has to keep it up. The law states she must. She keeps her head down as she steps her way along the gravel church path. She usually uses it because it’s a short cut back to her modest bungalow along church road. Usually, at this time in the morning see meets the young officer from the barracks by here. And sometimes he is nice to her. She thinks about that young officer, as a heavy humming is heard. She looks up to see a huge Zeppelin, coast slowly across the clear blue sky. She thinks about waving at it, but then changes her mind.
The path beneath her feet changes, from gravel to stone, as a wind gently blows a large photograph along the path, towards her feet. It rests by the corner of a pale grey, wind ridden gravestone; so she bends and picks it up, more out of curiosity than anything else. What she sees totally stuns and excites her. For in the photograph she sees herself, with long flowing hair, in the arms of a handsome man. She sees that she is pregnant, and smiling richly, towards the man his strong square jaw and deep green eyes. But what strikes her is the image behind where they are standing. For behind them both, stands something that hasn’t existed for nearly thirty years... it is the houses of Parliament.
It’s then she hears a muffled voice. She turns and sees in the shaded entrance of the church a slowly diminishing sphere of deep red and blue slowly disappear from view. But she smiles as holds the picture close to her heart. For now, she has faith; and believes that somewhere, there is a place, where she can let her hair down and feel truly free.