CHAPTER 43
When I got home after the shift, there was something that had been niggling my memory right from my first sight of that news report. I pulled it up on iPlayer on my telly, and paused it at one of the clearer views of the team and scanned along their faces. They were a right mix of types, some clearly more ‘physical’ than others.

“How can that woman be so hot?” Marcus asked the world at large as he drank from his tumbler.

“Who?” His friend, Paul, asked.

“Over there. With the long straight platinum blond hair and eyes so green we can see their color across the haze of the dance floor.”

“You’re really into this girl? Oh, her. Wow. That hourglass figure must have been work.”

“You think?”

“Maybe. Why is no one near her?”

“She’s in a league all her own. Deservedly.” He drank again.

“Or they all know she has chlamydia.”

Chapter One

Calibration

"Motor response is still three milliseconds, too slow."

“You look nice,” said Cyndy. “All crisp and spiffy.”

Another Country -25-
by Erin Halfelven

For both Dido and Trish, the ten-hour flight was just so different from any other flight that they’d ever taken. From the glass of bubbly that was kept topped up to the choices of food and its availability whenever they wanted it, and not when the flight attendants decided that it was meal time.

Part 16 The Minting of Penny

Next day we filmed a couple of linking scenes. One was where Susan inspects the work that the other two had overseen and decides that I need new bras; so, setting up the short shopping trip.

The second was the scene with me and Odette in her office where she inspects my changes so far; declares that I am coming along nicely and ordered me to pleasure her as my reward for the good start.

We took our time, and I made her shout when she came with my head being squeezed between her thighs.

The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but by late afternoon the city was still wet. Water clung to the black iron railings along the sidewalk and gathered in the shallow cracks between the paving stones, while cars moved slowly through the intersection, their tires whispering over the pavement and sending thin fans of dirty water toward the curb. Inside the coffee shop, the smell of fresh coffee hung beneath the warm air from the heating vents, and the hiss of steamed milk came and went behind the counter as people moved through the late afternoon rush.

Chapter 62:

This story is set in Ireland during the War of Independence, 1919-1921.

The Players.

An Cailleach, approximately Old Hag in English, is a term found in both Irish and and Scots Gaelic. It carries connotations of divinity or magic.

Volunteers, the name used by Irish national insurrectionists engaged in the War of Independence. After independence, these formed part of the basis for the new National Army which still has the letters IV (Irish Volunteers) on formal uniform buttons.

RIC, Royal Irish Constabulary, an armed police force responsible for crime and internal security. Recruited locally, it was heavily infiltrated by the Volunteers and many members left the organization during the war.

Black & Tans and Auxiliaries. These were paramilitary police recruited in England to support the RIC, notorious for indiscipline, terrorism and extra-judicial killings.