A British Color Sergeant, Seamus Todd, decides he will go ask the Queen if what he experienced in the Gulf War really occurred. He has served in many places before that, including in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, and by 1991 he is a well-seasoned soldier in charge of his own platoon. The Gulf War is just another posting, and although the soldiers are intimidated by stories of chemical weapons and Saddam’s massive army, they are bored and without conflict for most of their time in the desert.

Finally, Seamus’s unit is called to move out, but no matter how far they go, they cannot find any conflict. Instead, they find strange, shrunken corpses with shadows in the sand beneath them. They move on until they are finally hit with enemy fire, and while moving in on an enemy sniper, Seamus gets cut off from the rest of his men in a sandstorm. When the storm ends, he is alone in the enemy camp full of the shrunken bodies, unable to find his platoon despite radioing them his location. He steps on a mine and waits for help for hours until he finally sees a red butterfly that transforms into an Arab man with one eye. The man talks to him for a few hours before saving him and promises that he will always be with Seamus afterwards. Seamus wakes up in a military hospital with his men around him, and no sign of the Arab man anywhere.

After his incident, the man begins to haunt Seamus everywhere. He slips into other people’s bodies and winks at Seamus to mimic his one eye. The man’s image bothers him so much that his performance slips, he gets discharged from the military, and he even fights someone and gets sent to prison. Once Seamus is released, he continues to see the man everywhere and cannot decide whether he is alive, still standing on the mine, or dead. He decides to go to the Queen to ask what she knows so that he can figure out the truth.