Luthor shifted and turned towards me, regarding my absent blinking eyes. Finally I decided to shut them, the sun was too bright to keep them open and besides I could hear him.

The thought briefly flickered that I resented Luthor intruding on my perfect isolation, but in truth I quietly welcomed his presence.

As if he were sensing my thoughts, I heard Luthor as he sucked in the breeze between his teeth.

'Do you miss us John?'

I smiled eyes shut.

'Of course fool, how could I not? Do you think me a man or a monster?'

"Neither John, neither' he replied, yet I sensed an uneasy attachment in his words, something was amiss. Time would out.

'I am more man than you, surely, for you are nothing but ghost, a will'o the wips a smoke and nothing more?'

Luthor laughed uneasily,

'Come on John, let's not go there again.'

'Agreed, but you invite the comparison with your hints and your meanings, why not out with it all and be done?'

We'd argued the point to no particular conclusion many times in the past, and Luthor always seemed unsure, cagey even when talking about his non-existence.

Then there came a pause, a silence within the silence, a pre-sage of something that Luthor did not want and yet had to say, something that explained his unexpected appearance here on thine spring morn. I could sense his awkwardness, his eyes wide shut. He did not want to do this, to ask this,

'Shelagh. Shelagh has asked me to say that she misses you...'

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

'Do you remember....me chasing you through the wheatfields, the sun on our cheeks and our faces flushed with lust, breathless and desperate to cling to each other ? Do you remember...when we painted the skies with our dreams of the morrows, and the promises of our lives unwrapping around each other in our wondrous naked glory? The Turner skies and the ploughmen and the haywains and the rivers chiming through our hearts like there were no Gods or monsters, no problems or sad saviours, no ruined hearts or cares, just madness in our moments as we kissed the day forever, lingering sweetly over buttercups and daisies or the mornings, of shedded night and rapture that we found so sweet together in the dwellings of our smiles? Just us, delicious us, as we writhed in our sweet madness, like terrible twins of purposless fashion...Shelagh, why did you go? Why did you leave?....

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@


I wept.

I felt the tears stream down my eyes, my perfect day drownign in the memory lost forever that had newly moulded and that had been flung again in my sense.

Alpha and Omega smelt the salt of my teaers , and ambled anxiously over, licking me, nuzzing me with their soft wet noses , knowing my keening, feeling my abject pain.

'Go!' I whispered to Luthor through my grief.

'I'm sorry John, I...'

'Go now! Away with you!'

When the tears had dried and cracked, I burst my shit eyes and Luthor had gone, Alpha and Omega resting their heads against my heaving chest. My stomach growled briefly. Tears will not a grown man feed.

'Let's hunt'

The dogs leapt up excitedley, I had to live, had to survive, I had no time for ghosts or pasts long forgotten that lay buried beneath my time.