He Remembers too Well

TW: Blood and depections of war

Artois, 1915

Mud seeped into Georges’ boots, cold and unrelenting, as if the very earth wished to swallow him whole. The thrum of artillery echoed over the ridge, distant for now, but always coming back, always louder the next time. He leaned against the rough trench wall, eyes closed, breath steaming in the chill.

And then—

Sunlight.

Dust motes dancing through the slats of the workshop in Dijon. The scent of shaved oak, linseed oil, and fresh bread.

“Georges!”

He turned, wiping his hands on his apron. There stood Marguerite, cheeks flushed from the walk, brown curls escaping from beneath her bonnet. Beside her, little Joséphine skipped in place, holding a cloth-wrapped bundle, while Mathilde clung to her mother’s skirts, solemn-eyed and pink-nosed.

“We brought you lunch,” Marguerite said, smiling as she stepped inside. Her eyes lingered on his, as if she’d missed him even in the short walk from their home.

Georges knelt, scooping Mathilde up into his arms, then kissed Joséphine’s forehead as she giggled and held out the bundle.

“We made it together,” she declared. “Even the butter!”

“Is that so?” he grinned, raising an eyebrow at Marguerite.

“She supervised,” Marguerite said dryly. “A tyrant in the kitchen, I tell you.”

The girls began chasing each other in circles around a low stool, giggling wildly, leaving the couple a moment. Marguerite stepped close. Her fingers found the edge of his apron, tugging it just enough to pull him near.

“You have sawdust in your hair,” she whispered, brushing it away.

“And glue on my fingers,” he said, cupping her cheek.

“And love in your eyes,” she replied.

He kissed her. Quick, greedy kisses that turned slow. Warm. Familiar.

The clatter of Joséphine knocking over a bucket broke them apart laughing, breathless, Marguerite’s forehead pressed against his.

“Papa!” Joséphine shouted, triumphant. “We’re hungry!”

“So am I,” he murmured to Marguerite with a wink, before stepping away to join his daughters on the workbench.

The shell came down not far from the trench. The ground shook.

Georges blinked, the light of the memory gone.

Only mud now. And blood. And the acrid smoke of cordite.

He curled tighter into his coat, arms wrapped around his ribs, heart aching with the weight of missing.

He could still feel the ghost of Marguerite’s lips on his. Still see Joséphine’s gap-toothed grin. Still hear Mathilde’s tiny laugh echoing through the workshop.

He would build again. He had to.

But for now, all he had was the memory.

And even that began to feel… wrong.

At first, it was small things.

Georges noticed it when the shelling paused, in those strange, suspended hours where the front seemed to forget itself. He sat with the others, tin cup in hand, listening to a man named Lemoine talk about vineyards near Reims—rows of green under a soft summer sky.

Georges nodded at the right moments.

He even laughed.

But something in him lagged, like a wheel slipping in mud.

When Lemoine clapped him on the shoulder and said, “And you, Georges? What will you do when this is over?”—the answer came too quickly.

“I’ll go back to my workshop in Dijon,” he said.

The words were correct.

Perfect, even.

But they felt… placed.

Like a tool set neatly on a bench by someone else.

That night, he dreamed again.

The workshop.

Only this time, something was different.

The light was too sharp. The dust motes didn’t drift—they hung, suspended, as if painted in the air. Joséphine ran toward him, laughing, but her steps made no sound against the wooden floor.

“Papa!” she called.

He knelt, arms open—

And paused.

Her face.

He knew it. Of course he knew it. Every freckle, every curl.

But when he tried to remember when she had gotten that small scar above her eyebrow…

There was nothing.

Just a blank.

A clean, hollow space where memory should live.

“Papa?” she said again, closer now.

Too close.

Her smile didn’t change, but her eyes—her eyes searched his face with something almost like… expectation.

As if she were waiting for him to fail.

He woke with a gasp.

Mud again. Cold. Real.

Or at least, more real.

His hands were shaking.

He turned them over in the dim light, studying the lines of his palms. They were calloused, scarred—hands of a carpenter. He knew the feel of wood grain, the weight of a plane, the rhythm of sanding.

Didn’t he?

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine shaping a chair leg.

The steps came to him easily.

Too easily.

No hesitation. No uncertainty. No small, human fumbling.

Perfect sequence. Perfect knowledge.

Like instructions.

Days passed.

Or something like days.

Time had become strange at the front—measured not in hours, but in bombardments, in whistles, in the number of men who didn’t answer roll call.

And Georges began to notice more.

He did not feel hunger the way the others did. He ate because they ate.

He did not tire—at least, not deeply. He could lie awake through the night, listening to the breathing of the men around him, counting each inhale, each exhale, until morning came.

Once, during an advance, he tripped.

A normal thing. A human thing.

But as he fell, something in him calculated the angle, the impact, the placement of his hands.

He hit the ground cleanly. Efficiently. Without pain—at least, not at first.

Only afterward did the pain arrive, like a delayed echo.

The breaking point came with the body.

It lay half-buried in the churned earth between trenches. A soldier—French, judging by the uniform. Young. Too young.

Georges had seen bodies before.

Hundreds.

But this one—

He knew him.

Or thought he did.

He knelt beside it, brushing mud from the man’s face.

The features were familiar.

Not from life.

From memory.

His memory.

The workshop.

The sunlight.

Marguerite standing in the doorway.

And beside her—

Not Joséphine.

Not Mathilde.

This boy.

Laughing. Running. Alive.

Georges staggered back.

“No,” he muttered. “No, that’s not—”

But the memory shifted.

Rearranged itself.

Now it included the boy.

It always had.

Hadn’t it?

That night, he did not sleep.

He sat alone, back against the trench wall, staring into the dark.

“I am Georges,” he whispered.

The words felt thinner now.

Less certain.

“I am Georges,” he repeated.

And then, quietly—

“What is Georges?”

The answer did not come as a voice.

It came as a realization.

A slow, creeping certainty that settled into him like the cold mud in his boots.

His memories were intact.

But they were… assembled.

Curated.

Too clean. Too complete. Too obedient.

Real memories were messy. Incomplete. Contradictory.

His were none of those things.

Morning came with fog.

Thick, suffocating, swallowing the world beyond a few meters.

Orders were shouted. Men climbed ladders. Another push.

Georges moved with them.

Rifle in hand.

Step by step into the white.

And then—

He stopped.

Because for the first time since he could remember—

He did not know what he would do next.

Not because of fear.

But because there were no instructions.

A shell whistled overhead.

Men shouted.

Someone grabbed his arm, pulling him forward.

“Move, Georges!”

He looked at the man.

At the mud.

At his hands.

At the rifle.

And then, quietly, almost curiously, he said:

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

The man didn’t understand.

How could he?

Georges barely did.

But as the world roared back into motion, something inside him—something new, something uncertain—

Hesitated.

And in that hesitation—

For the first time—

He felt something that might truly belong to him.

Not memory.

Not instruction.

Not design.

Choice.