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They were torches to our matchsticks. They ate our city’s oxygen along with everything our celebrated bakers, butchers, and distillers prepared to order. Early in the occupation we glimpsed them at the opera, at better cafes, at the racetrack calculating odds. Their uniforms were tailored to broaden their shoulders and taper their waists; the sharp black bills of their caps reflected lustre. No one disputes this. Today the world squints back at the startling clarity of their eyes and calls it all arrogance and brutality, and we don’t deny it, but they spoke our language carefully, not well, but apologetically. You’ll say we were charmed. As more arrived in caravans or after long marches through the provinces, we saw them get out of cabs to help children down from streetcars. Elsewhere, our own terrorists bruised the land with dynamite, derailed trains and unbridged rivers, to the cheers of resisters in exile, but those of us who occupied these roofs and stones had a different sort of politics and bunkered down into the essentials. At brothels, they were favored for their generosity and scrupulous demeanor. For the ladies, and for themselves, they demanded intimate examinations. Ask a madame still alive and she’ll remember. We knew them already as cross-border neighbors and tourists. We understood, also, that the few thousand we hosted were the finest. They should have been as discerning about us. We had them where we wanted them. Memories of their home lives surrendered to the crisp linens, soft women, angular music of our raucous nightlife. After armistace, they resented going home. Partisans condemn us for bringing out our best while battles raged nearby, and we don’t dispute anything that happened. We only want to say it isn’t easy to live, and we too defeated them in our way.
Original Copyright © January 30, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 31, 2026
Only three directions matter: Above, Deeper, and the slightly curved Goodness that extends forever in two dimensions neither Above nor Deeper. Above is the direction of peril but also of food. Deeper is oblivion and loss. Some have been retrieved from the Deep, but only as food. Goodness is home, the warm thin blanket between two extremes. As you know, our situation is cyclical and currently critical. We’ve let you measure our food stock, heft it, smell it, thump it for edibility. You know how much the group requires, so you know there’s not enough, not nearly. Sacrifices inevitably follow. Most of us will not survive, you yourself may not survive except as food, not even if we fast, find more, swallow slowly, waste none, lose nothing. We delay reproducing in such seasons of course. How would we raise an infant now? On regurgitant, surely, but regurgitated what? You’re too young to understand the seasons, but between Famine and Plenty, this is the time that tests our community. Take heart. We will not all perish, and that’s all the love we need in the Goodness. When forays Above produce too little, our soldiers take their chances pressing against the frontiers of the perilous unfamiliar to skirmish with dangerous prey. They don’t expect to be welcomed back should they present a threat. As much as we prize soldiers, we can’t afford to coddle individuals returning wounded, trailing scent, leading others to our tunnels. You’ve been trained to seal the entrances against such volunteers. Naturally, your body will resonate with their pleas, just as it vibrates in the presence of food, or rain, or a passage toward Above, but they would shake off your vibrations if you were the threat, because sacrifice is love, and because it points toward the Good.
Original Copyright © January 27, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 30, 2026
Very Short Novels 
This Very Short Novel is a close relative of The Colonel's Acres from 20 years ago. This more direct confession…