A few years back, Harvey Owen was a tall handsome man. He's still tall, with strong hands and a soft, deep voice, but after returning from France with a head full of shellshocked cracks and what's left of his face he's largely kept to himself.

He doesn't talk about the War, still less the collapsed French farmhouse where he spent almost three days with untreated burns from an incendiary marker covering most of the upper quarter of his body, trapped under the rubble and a man who'd died of his injuries in the first hour. Darkness, charred or bloody meat and certain shades of rock can cause a helpless rage on bad days, a reaction to a sourceless terror causing his heart to pound and blood to sour inside him with nothing to grip or fight.

Harvey generally takes himself off to his hunting shack a little way off in the woods if he feels things getting that bad. He kills whatever crosses his trail to be in control of the blood, mostly with a rifle, sometimes with a steel trap and a knife. Sometimes he comes down with a month's worth of meat from a fat deer, sometimes only bird and raccoon pelts or nothing at all save suspicion pointed his way when a neighbour's dog goes missing. The few times neighbours have asked why the killing spree when all he's got is a handful of barely edible rodents and small birds, he just turns his ruined face away as has become his habit and says he loves his wife.