Long Blue Shadows of the Jackals

And eyes like ice don't move...

Sheila stands with a chainsaw in her hand.

I walk up to her. “How do you know where to cut?”

She stares at the block of ice before her.

“It’s easy,” she says. “I take away everything that doesn’t remind me of a man.”



She fires up the chainsaw and quickly cuts the heart out of the block of ice.

I want to tell her she’s made a mistake, but I hold back.

Let her discover it herself.

She turns off the chainsaw. Turns with a smile. Pronounces it done.

I raise an eyebrow, questioningly.

“I’ve never met a man who actually had a heart,” she says.

And she walks away, leaving the heartless block of ice in her wake.