Hello, he said, arrogantly from his mouth.

She blinked her eyes, like flaps of skin were there - just waiting to clean her eye balls.

A man on the far side of the ballroom seemed distant. He handily put on a hat, secreting hairs.

The eye-lidded woman heard a sound coming from the disco they were attending.

They all danced, as if to music.

There were a lot of words all together in a row.

The music stopped.

Then it kept going.

Everyone’s heart beat, in time to their blood.

Outside, it sounded quieter.

It was dark but not as dark as inside when the strobe light sometimes went out.

A bouncer sat down on the floor with his body and a cat said hellow in cat speak.

The bouncer’s head yawned like a wet hinge.

The cat liked licking the bouncer’s blood and the bouncer minded less and less and less.

The bouncer’s door that he was bouncing hit him and sounded like a woman screaming from behind a door.

The door got strong and pushed the bouncer to the side as the blinking woman and the hello-ing man ran out from behind it.

Later but quite soon nonetheless, the distant man stepped over the wet hinge holding a hot used gun.

The cat left.

The distant man became the bouncer’s distant man but he would not be the blinking woman’s distant man for long at all.

I lose my footing and start sliding down a mountain of loose brass pebbles, before digging my arm in to stop myself.

I sit and rest for a moment. I feel physically fit and wide awake but as though my brain is stuck in the twighlight of a day dream.

I notice something cold in my breast pocket and fish it out; it looks like a brand new pocket watch.

I listen out to hear if it's still working but realise there's a mechanical white noise deafening all else. I clap my hands; nothing. The overwhelming noise is coming from everywhere.

I look around and see nothing but the continual glowing landscape of pebbles disapearing off into a golden horizon. Where am I and how did I get here?

I pick up a pebble and am confused by its familiar cold smooth surface and distinct embossed faces. I hold it up next to the watch; they look exactly the same.

I realise the mountain is ticking.

The watch from the mountain appears to be 1 minute behind mine, as do all the others.

Perhaps it's a sign?

I start to turn my watch back but as soon as it clicks through a second I feel the world thud, like the watch is fighting back.

I check the watch from the mountain again; 59 seconds. I put it in my pocket and grip my watch tightly as I turn it with all my strength. The landscape shudders and the watch vibrates but I can still read the time as I wind it back.

Suddenly I feel myself slide up the mountain - am I headed for the summit? To an escape? I tighten my grip as best as I can but my fingers are struggling against the vibration. I can feel it slipping past my finger tips.

I lose my footing and start sliding down a mountain of loose brass pebbles, before digging my arm in to stop myself.

Looking up from your pillow,

two dice fall from your ears.

You roll two ones.

A snake

without eyes

appears.

Somebody bumbles in,

blinding the serpent

and trying to hide their grin.

They fumble their keys,

smiling; they're guiding you,

'please, come in'.

'Can this be what it looks like it is?'

'Is that the sound that I hear?' you think.

Anything more is a bonus!

You thought that your soul had gone homeless.

Preach to the changed!

Your life comes unchained,

as a brand burns your hand.

It reads: 'onus'.

Vision clearing, matches images to what you'd been hearing.

Devils dressed as angels fill the halls.

They sing mock endearment.

Happiness drains from you;

your smile is gone;

your palms start to sweat

Is this the start of a new end?

An infinite cold regret?

Your arm is feeling heavy.

Something twists your forearm tight.

The serpent's head slides over 'onus'

then it rears and takes a bite.

You feel a sting

that travels down your spine.

The snake, fat and happy,

beginds to unwind.

It hits the floor and laughs

'you now shall pass'.

Your hand goes blank and dries.

Where have all the devil's angels gone from the hall?

You look back and your bedroom door is now a brick wall.

In the centre there is a painting of you,

pale and afraid.

'Welcome' says a sign above

'your debt has been paid'.

You turn to see a glowing cloud.

You're warm,

no longer scared.

A voice within the hall says 'come'

'your new bed is prepared'.

It was a dim drenched November morning when I reached the cafe. There were only a handful of minutes left to order a drink and sit in faux-casual suspension for the rendezvous. I felt a lump in my throat as I fantasized kicking off the encounter 'in control' by appearing calmly grounded; I would be sat, waiting, disconnected from time and space, an eternal god for whom mortals blipped into existence and hurriedly buzzed about trying to impress. Unfortunately, the actual heavens had decided to unload a cloud on my head a hundred metres back and I was now irreversibly timestamped at Human O’clock. Maybe the lump was acid reflux.

I ordered a tall coffee; black with +10mg of caffeine. I was feeling pretty damn professional. I imagined the embarassment of choking on the bitter taste and having a panic attack from feeling my heart race. Cunningly, I added a Snickers syrup percentage high enough to hide the taste but low enough to not smell like a children’s birthday cake.

Steaming cup in wrinkled chilly hand, I found my way back to a table equidistant from the rear wall and the only other patron in the cafe; I noticed they were reading a slim book filled only with AR markers; I dreamed up all manner of depravity they could be publicly indulging in. To ensure my dominance in the meeting I decided it best to be facing the entrance so that I could sit stoically through their social ordeal as they made their way to meet me beneath my unflinching gaze. This unfortunately meant that I was now sat facing the book reader like a distant goddamn mirror; I resigned to the presumption that they were otherwise engaged in inspecting a miniature gymnastic orgy of sex and/or violence between bites of their panini.

I popped the lid on my mug and found the coffee had come out with a Mars logo’d foamy head and branded straw. I scowled at the machine as I sucked up the nougaty cloud and stored the straw in my inside pocket. ‘Not very fucking professional’ I mouthed as I returned my gazed to the door; a faceful of tuna and cheese smiled politely and expelled a tiny humored gust out of their nose before turning a page and returning to their literary perversion.

I subconsciously tapped my finger and thumb together, looked at the clock on my ocular overlay, and tapped again to dismiss it, forgetting what it had said. I checked again, 10:58. There’s not a lot you can do in 2 minutes, especially if you’re aiming to look cool. ‘I suppose I could start doing something’, I thought, ‘and then I’ll be busy with my own shit when they arrive’. Only mildly panicking, I tapped and scrolled around on my thumb until I had a pad of paper in front of me; there was a warped mountain of paper in the middle where my coffee was so I moved in out of the way and reset. I took out my pen and started to take some notes. Tensions eased til I realised I was using the straw and heard a quiet snort in the distance. I swapped the straw for my pen and continued.

Arrived 10:55 ready for contact

Possible pervert at 12 o’clock

  -AR hiding likely a dirty comic as opposed info of interest

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised.” Holy fucking shit, the pervert was stood over my table!

My eyes darted between the notes and the pervert as he pulled out a chair, “How are you? How did you?” - I looked at his table then back to where he was now, “How did you?”.

“Not bad for 60, right?” he sat down and made the unmistakable sound of a man who enjoyed doing so.

A notification beeped.

“Eleven, on the dot”, the 60-year old smiled.

For a brief moment my face sagged and my mouth hung open before I quickly gathered myself into an unconvincing inquisitive expression. “Ah, so you’re my contact. How did you read my notes?”

“Oh it’s just part of some standard equipment. It’s mostly for reading this gobbledygook”, he waved his book in one hand as he popped the last piece of his sandwich in his mouth with the other, “itsth all uncrupthed dynamacry tho”, he swallowed, thank fuck, “so we’ve got hardware and software synced with services that tell us the page and paragraph and then, well, we just get on with it”, he closed the book, “But the fun side effect is: the over-engineered tools included can intercept all sorts of shit.” I noticed the cover of the book wasn’t far from the debauchery I had imagined. The spy shrugged. “Speaking of which, your left eye’s overlay is a couple months out of date. I’m surprised you haven’t been noticing a difference between them; headaches, double vision?”

“No”, I shook my head but then visibly considered things as I closed and opened alternating eyes. “Ha ha ha!”, the spy slammed the table. “Here”, he flipped through his book, then looked up at my left eyeball through his bushy grey eyebrows as he tapped his meaty sausage fingers on a tiny abstract marker, “anything?”. I noticed his finger didn’t always land on the actual marker so started to wonder if he wasn’t just making all this stuff up, either at my expense or because he was insane.

My left eye beeped, then my right, then both together. My sight suddenly felt a little sharper. I couldn’t distinguish between now and a moment ago but something had definitely cleared up. “Huh”, I looked at my hand then the bushy eyebrows then back at my hand, “That’s weird; everything’s setup to automatically update.”

The spy did an accurate albeit sarcastic impersonation of my inquisitive expression, “Maybe you were hacked?”. He couldn’t help but smile then a laugh burst out as he slammed the table again causing my coffee to bounce. He let out a high pitched giddy sigh, “I don’t know why but I like you. You’re no trouble.”

“Well”, I looked at his book of tricks, considered the immensity of the secrets he wasn’t telling me, and knew I was probably in a better position than I deserved to be. I swung my head down to the side and up at the spy as I comically drew out “fairrrr enough!”

The spy nodded several times microscopically as he looked at my cup, “Snickers aye?”, he looked at me with wide eyes and a serious expression. Maintaining eye contact, he leaned towards me and whispered “Good man.”

Being attacked is a lot like writing a guitar solo. Neither ever seem to happen in the present tense. In the moment of such an event occurring, your subconscious is struck with an unavoidable lightning bolt of innate purpose; it takes control of you so fully that the most your conscious mind can manage is to watch the events unfurl like a drunk tourist taking photos of everything with the wrong settings. Once it’s over, your recollection is over-exposed, full of ghostly illusions, and more than likely shadowed in the darkness of your own hand puppets.

Jon was standing in the living room with one bare foot on the cold beechwood floor, the other see-sawing on his wah pedal, his eyes closed so tight he could see colours, strumming and plucking with one hand, the fingers of his other sliding and stabbing and bending across the entire neck of his gold-green Fender Mexican Strat.

He felt someone kick him in the middle of his back so hard that he found himself waking up lying down with his face propped up against the skirting board beside the fireplace with the taste of metal in his mouth and a throbbing right temple.

He tried to roll over but was stopped mid-twist by the neck of his guitar swinging into the ground and thrashing out a distant open drop-D chord. He rested his forehead briefly as he devised a way to move. In doing so he sighed and a black-ish red snot splatted against the wallpaper, “ughh, brilliant” he gargled before being forced to swallow half a mouthful of irony mucus. He reached back his right hand under the strap and took it in front of his head then pushed himself off the wall, sliding himself along the polished floor away from the bloodied wall and guitar.

A snapshot of his back being kicked sprang to mind and he spun around, looking towards his front door. He didn’t want to see anyone but felt a throbbing urgency in his chest as his body chemistry and brain fought between cowardice and revenge.

They settled on 50/50. His eyes widened enough that he felt the cool still air against them, as if to display the intentions of a mad man, while his paranoia helped him rapidly scan his house for evidence.

He started with the kitchen to his left as it was closest and had no door, thereby necessitating his attention whether he wanted to go in or not. He couldn’t see or hear anything coming from inside so confidently jumped to his feet and trampled loudly to the fridge and slapped it hard enough that its fans briefly stalled before winding up again. “Right!” he whispered to nobody.

Jon felt the sensation that a large figure was creeping up on him and spun around. He held up his hands in horrified defence and quickly realised the living room was still empty. He turned and took in the whole kitchen environment again just to be certain something hadn’t somehow spun around with him. Nothing. Back to the living room. Nothing.

Before the front door began a set of stairs. Jon rapidly flexed all of his fingers at random, as if he was about to perform surgery, but more like he was trying not to piss himself. He sucked up his sphincters and pelvic floor and quickly but quietly tip-toed to the foot of the stairs.

He looked up to the landing and saw nothing but the doors to other rooms. He suddenly remembered the door behind him, slid around and looked through the bumpy glass for any sign of movement in the short path up to the house. Nothing. He spun back around and started trying his damnedest to think of ways he could convince himself, on his own, to walk upstairs.

He noticed he was crouched by his shoes so grabbed them and his coat which was hung up, carefully opened the front door, waddled outside on his knees, gently closed it, took the bundle of keys out of his inside coat pocket, felt his way to the correct key while keeping watch of the distorted stairs, stepped outside, and quietly locked he door.

Jon looked up at the bathroom window and realised, more now than ever, he really needed a piss.

Slight Return

Standing outside with his eyes locked on the upstairs bathroom window, Jon’s feet felt their way to knocking his trainers upright and shoving themselves into their loose-fitting escape from the cold concrete driveway. He knelt down. Eyes still entranced, his fingers spidered across his large woollen coat until they felt the shiny lining then ran along the collar until they reached the interior left pocket where they slid out his phone. He pressed the home button. ‘Oh god I need to unlock it’ - he panicked at the thought of the villain's shadow escaping his glimpse and somehow magically sneaking up behind him. He quickly looked down and saw number pad was already up. ‘For Emergency Use Only’ it read. “Oh yeah, I can do that.” He pressed 999 and held the phone up to his ear as he reconnected his defensive stare and slid on his coat, swapping the phone between his hands as he threaded them into either sleeve.

A thought struck Jon, ‘What if I imagined it?’. He turned his focus to his back but a courteous elderly man’s voice abruptly entered his ear, “What emergency service to you require?”. “Umm”, his back throbbed, “Oh thank god.”

“Excuse me, sir? If you let me know which-”

“-uh, police, please. Thank you.”

“Transferring you now.”

The events transpiring suddenly became very real. Not in a beneficial way like his senses were taking in the situation or his mind was consciously compiling the evidence required to conclude as to what had happened. Real like the opposite. Real like he’d just called the police and a cloud of doubt had gone from looming over him to now surrounding him.

“You’re speaking to Officer Rimmer. What’s the situation - how can I help?”

“I think there’s a man in my house? I dunno, someone kicked me in my house. I’m outside. I don’t know if they’re inside.” Saying it out loud seemed to help Jon feel more confident. If he said it to a police officer, he was at least certain enough to do that so they couldn’t catch him out for pretending. He was definitely scared. And his back hurt.

“Someone attacked you? OK. Are they still there - could you describe them?”

“Um, no I woke up after. I felt them kick me and I woke up. I hit my head.”

“Do you want an ambulance - are you ok?” The officer, although helpful, was speaking in such a level monotone that it heightened Jon’s paranoia and self-doubt. Did the officer think he was taking the piss?

“No, I think I’m ok. My head and my back hurt. My hand hurts a bit from landing on my guitar. I don’t think I’m cut or whatever. I think I just blacked out for a split second.”

“The person who attacked you - they ran away to somewhere in your house?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear them.”

“Sorry I don’t understand. They got in, kicked you, and disappeared?”

“No, no. I don’t know. It felt like I was out for a split second. Like, I woke up but I think I felt my hand land like I’d just felt.”

“Can you describe the shoe?”

“The what? I didn’t see it.”

“No, sir. I mean, did you feel what hit you? Was it a large boot; could you guess their height from where they managed to kick you?”

“It was sort of in the middle of my back, between my shoulder blades.”

“Were you sat down?”

“No, I was standing up, using a pedal. An effects pedal for the guitar.”

“Could it have been a punch sir?”

“Uh, I don’t think so. It sent me right against a wall a few feet away. I’m not super heavy but I don’t think I could be punched like that.”

A thought struck Jon and the cloud of despair solidified into a force that slapped him into an awareness of the possibility that he’d rather not have noticed.

“Sir, you were playing an electric guitar did you say?”

Fuck. Even the policeman had figured it out.

You can’t hang up on a police officer.

Play along? Play it stupid? Fuck.

Maybe honesty? Jesus.

“Uh yeah, in my living room with an amp. That’s how I landed on the guitar.”

“Do you know if the sockets you were using were surge protected?”

“Ah fuck. I think so.” 'Honestly stupid' it is.

“Right. Because it sounds like you might have electrocuted yourself.”

“Ah. That does make sense.”

“I can send you an ambulance sir if you’d like to be checked over?”

“No. I think I’m ok. Just a bruised ego.”

“No worries sir. If you change your mind or think there’s evidence you might have actually been-”

“-no I think I’m OK but thank you. I’m sorry, I think I was just shocked.”

“It’s understandable sir. You sound like you've been, well, shocked. You sound like you’re OK now but feel free to call again if you feel unsafe.”

“Thank you”.

“You’re welcome sir.”

The phone hung up.

Jon sighed an exhausted back-aching sigh as he looked down at his trainers. He’d shoved them on too fast and squashed the backs down beneath his heels. He stood back out of them and picked them up. He unlocked his door, went inside and looked at his guitar and amp. “Fucking surge protectors then. I’m not doing that again. I could be fucking dead.”

“Almost”, came a voice from the landing.

Jon was struck with terror and his body felt like it had caught on fire with the impending sense that his bladder was about to explode. He ran for the door, fishing out the bundle of keys he had just used to lock it. Jon shook in desperation as he rattled through the silver and copper metal shapes that all suddenly looked and felt indistinguishable, fighting the urge to turn to see the figure he could hear walking down the stairs behind him. Jon slid a winning key into the lock and grabbed the door handle but two large hands in woollen gloves grab his head and slammed it against the framed bubbled windows of his front door, causing the glass to crack which pinched the skin on his forehead. Jon’s vision tunnelled and went dim as he slid to the floor. He landed on his knees, curled up, and covered his head but no further strikes landed on him.

He looked through a crack between his hands and saw a tall rotund man in a brown bomber jacket and ripped denim jeans picking up his guitar. “Would you like to hear a solo, Jon?”

Jon felt behind himself for the keys but they were gone. He turned back to the man and saw his red embossed metal Fender logo keyring hanging out from one of the wool-edged bomber jacket pockets.

Jon considered the open areas of the house that surrounded himself and the man. The kitchen was probably reachable but the windows above the sink were tiny. His bedroom window upstairs was big but it didn’t have a lock. The bathroom! Plus, Jesus, this piss! There’s the window overlooking the front dormer window of the living room and it’s got a lock.

Jon took a deep breath then realised there wasn’t a method to this and sprung to his feet, ran upstairs two steps per stride at a speed he didn’t know was possible, swung around the bannister at the top of the stairs and catapulted himself into the bathroom. He was running so fast that he couldn’t stop himself hitting his shins on the bath but spun around fast enough to slam and lock the door before the man could grab the handle.

Jon’s thoughts went again to the piss before the man started shouldering the door. The noise was incredibly loud and low; it didn’t sound like it would break easily but it wouldn’t be long before that kind of force would take the hinges off or rip the lock out of the frame.

“Fuuuuuuuck!”, Jon screamed at the door in fear and anger, “Fuck Off!”, Jon kicked the door, “Fuck oooooff!”, his voice broke and tears streamed down his face has he kicked the bath behind him. He could hear the amplifier downstairs screaming back up at him.

Panic and the need to escape took over. Jon turned to the window. It was already open. He climbed into the bath, leant his torso over the window ledge, and looked down at the roof of the dormer window. "There’s no other way. Height or not." Jon heard the door crack as he grabbed the window frame and propelled himself through the window.

His foot caught on the window catch causing his body to roll before the latch tore through his skin and released his weight.

Jon landed on the felt of the roof with less pain that he expected but the momentum of the fall caused him to continue to roll off the roof legs first.

He landed on his feet and fell forward onto his hands causing him to sprain his wrists. The pain forced him to immediately fall off his hands onto his side on the wet grass.

He looked at his wet green-stained hands, hoping to see no signs of a break. There were black lines on some of his fingers. He imagined holding a guitar. The black lines lined up with where the strings would be.

He had electrocuted himself.

Who was in his house?

Jon was beginning to think God didn’t want him to have a piss.

Footsteps approached Jon from across the road along with the comforting voice of someone not trying to kill him, “Oh my god! Are you ok?”. A middle-aged woman in a parker stood at his feet, keeping to the pavement, “Do you want me to call an ambulance? My God, I saw you fall", she looked up at the window audibly congratulating herself. She looked back down at Jon, "Are you OK? God, are you pissing yourself?”.

Jon closed his eyes and smiled, "Fuck God". He could hear a guitar solo being played. It was pretty good; the kind he’d always wished he could play.

The bins had been evolving on Mars.

Nobody knew how or why and the exact history behind their existence on the unprotected Martian surface was inconsistent and vague.

Binologists maintained that there were only two viable theories; the Extratrashestrian Theory (soon proved impossible) postulated that the bins were aliens from an as-yet-undiscovered planet and they were now in a stage of revealing themselves; the Intradumpty Theory of Trasholution contraindicated that the bins were in fact a product of humans-past and were reaching a stage at which we may be beginning to recognise them as a new species.

There were two subsets to each theory and they both split at the point of considering the bin’s intentions and therefore how best humanity should prepare. One side of each argued they should observe from afar and, at most, probe them for any signs of communicative power; the antithesis was heralded as key to the alternative subset: nuke the bins before they bin-nuked us.

A third theory - considered now by all sides in retrospect - was proposed by 9-year-old Alison Grasswood-Mountainview to her professor of Binology, Joffrey Bluetooth, and that was the following: the bins were just bins but inside the bins were space rats.

The only downside to Alison’s theory was that, as far as Binologists were aware, there was no such thing as a space rat.

Politicians were quick to throw their hats in the ring or swing their pseudo-science-decorated feet in their mouths but popular culture couldn’t get a good grip on a far-flung intelligence that they were still used to putting burnt eggs inside.

Within the time it takes for an unexpected and enrapturing television program to become an insolently absent court jester, bins were yesterday’s moon cats. Scientists on liberally informative infotainment slots tried their best to sex up the concept of a sentient refuse collective but they only made for desperate examples of the limitations of knowledge when it came to the come-hither powers regarding the concept of a living dirt box.

3 years later, by which time Alison was now more interested in pop stars than Martian refuse receptacles, a very small group of people from all sides of Binology got sick of waiting, broke through the weakly secured doors leading out to the bins - possibly after drinking a lot of shots during several bets about bins - and investigated the bins by hand.

It was often said of the decline-inclined that they lacked the gumption to take on science that was active or evolving but on this day they had proven their field could be a petri dish for the growth of true heroes of the field; they weren’t taking facts on the dormant and had had it with stagnancy, although Stag Nancy had offered to procure samples.

Apart from one of them dying due to not wearing a space suit after losing at strip poker, they found what a lot of the science community – and a now-12-year-old girl – suspected: space rats.

Having now known space rats had existed for ten years, the scientific community were not surprised. This was exactly the sort of thing space rats were known to do, anyway, they decided to award the team of Binologists medals for tenacity, after all they were space badgers.

That's Mel; she comes in every Friday lunchtime and gets the poached egg and toast. She orders, sits at the table closest to the window, waits with her hands on her lap reading the menu, thanks Sue when the eggs come, tells Sue what the weather is, then gets 1 single napkin from the cutlery island.

Weird.

And she is going to use that napkin.

What for?

She's going to spill some eggs. There, see, almost immediately.

What? Every time?

Every time. She spills a bit, wipes it up, learns her lesson, then hunches over and carefully eats the rest of her eggs and toast.

Why doesn't she get more napkins?

Because she's learnt her lesson.

But she does it every time.

That's why she gets the napkin.

With a deafening bang a small red glistening bump appeared at the centre of the killer's forehead. Their body slumped to the floor as a handgun slipped from the shaking fingers of what was almost their final victim.

Tears of relief fell down her cheek.

A television screen behind her flicked on, the loud static causing her to spin around in fear. "Say hello" came the familiar voice of the killer; childish yet gravelly and aged.

The static disappeared and camcorder footage faded in. It was of the wall behind her, in front of which the killer slowly walked to the middle of the frame.

She turned but there was nothing else in the dark and empty room except for the killer's body on the cold wet concrete floor.

"...h-hello", a weak voice conceded from the television.

This was far from the voice of a gleefully disturbed old man. This was her wife. Where was she?

She stepped closer to the screen, hoping to see and hear anything that could help locate Ellie.

The killer walked up to the camera and removed his hood and balaclava. What the fuck? It was Ellie.

Her eyes were red and her mouth was covered in thick black tape.

A black glove handed her a box from behind the camera. "Now, we've both agreed to a little game of pretend haven't we El?" Ellie held the box to her mouth and nodded before the glove secured it to her head with more thick tape.

"Don't forget your costume." the killer's voice chorused from behind the camera and out of the box.

Ellie put the balaclava back on and mumbled through the tape. "I think she's saying she's sorry but I don't know why", echoed the killer's voice, "you're going to be the one in trouble."

The television turned off and a bright white daylight bulb lit the room.

She turned back around, shaking and sobbing.

She tried to kneel down slowly but her knees buckled and she landed hard before the body.

She picked up the gun, in the hopes of an un-dead killer, and fear of one still on the loose.

Leaning over the body, she was forced to see up-close the shiny black hole she had created.

Peeling back the hood, she saw long brown curls either side of the balaclava that she hated herself for not somehow noticing. She dropped the gun to the floor and gently removed the balaclava, smearing a dark line of blood across her wife's forehead.

Panic started to set in.

She can't be dead. I can't have... I don't want to think about it. There has to be something I can-

-the hole looked different than before. A different colour. Is that the end of the bullet? "Ellie!!" Nothing.

She touched the hole with her fingertip, her hands pale and shaking. It felt cold.

Carefully she pushed her fingernail at the edge hoping to ease the bullet back out but blood gently flooded up and refilled the hole.

"Fuck fuck fuck!" she looked around for something to pull it out with. A thought crossed her mind. "Oh god no."

Maybe she could reach it with her teeth?

"There's no time. Oh god, Ellie please be OK."

She steadied herself with her hands flat on the concrete at either side of Ellie's head.

She could taste Ellie's blood as her lips pressed against her forehead.

She closed her eyes and pressed her teeth into the hole. She felt something hard against them.

It slipped away.

She panicked.

She hadn't heard the lead hit the floor when she started to suck.

The writer wrote, searching for the freedom of her once youthful mind, "A door of power and intrigue rose behind her".

She didn't look but knew it hadn't.

The door behind her was already there. It had been for two hundred years, since the house was built, since the street was named by the Duke who owned the land after his daughter - one of several daughters' streets in her postcode.

The duke and his daughters had long since passed; the houses sold on along with the original deeds for the lands on which they stood. The door had remained, unchanged except for several decades of paint on one side and polish on the other.

The writer's youth nor it's mind had emerged.

However, it would have benefited her still to turn and look at the door.

Something of power and intrigue awaited.

An elderly woman tucks you into the large plain bed. You lay on your side, as instructed by the television she rolled in. You notice the involuntary shaking of her hands and are instructed to 'soak in your luxurious surroundings'.

The room is a large white cube warmly lit by dim orange bulbs dotted about the walls behind a variety of shades.

The carpet is cream except for the path back to the door, worn by years of traversal by the lady and her trolley. You watch her as she leaves and see the outside turn to black.

An unseen speaker above you crackles. "Please rest your head on the pillow", an old woman's voice trembles. You loosen your body against the thick soft bedding. "Is it OK?" she asks, as if cowering before royalty, "Do you want it fluffed, sir?".

You respond to the ceiling with gentle urgency "No, it's absolutely fine thank-"

"-Please look at the screen" she quietly pleads.

"Sorry.", you turn back around. The blank screen stares at you an arm's length from your bedside. It flickers on and warms up through paler shades of black then pops into monochrome noise.

A tape machine at the base of the trolley clicks loudly as it begins rewinding, startling you slightly.

"...there we are..." a distant voice whispers through the speaker as a triangular play icon displays briefly on the screen.

'15/05/2017 01:56' appears on the bottom-right of the home video footage. A man in his forties wearing thick glasses and a brown sweater is seen reclining in a grey-blue armchair in front of a small television. He takes a sip of water and sighs as the credits light the room animating the structure of his blank face.

'27/02/2018 13:23'

The man is sitting on a the edge of a fountain in a park. It's a bright sunny day. There are children playing, teenagers shouting, couples going for walks, and everyone is enjoying the weather.

The man is looking down at a small carrier bag between his feet. He slowly looks either side of himself then takes out a water bottle. It is filled with frothy amber liquid. He drinks the whole bottle. A middle age woman frowns as she walks past with her friends.

'06/07/2012 23:19'

The man is sat on the carpet next to the grey-blue armchair. His eyes are drooping and red. He is scratching the head of a large dog that is resting its head on his lap.

He raises a can to his lips but his mouth pushes the can out of his hands onto the dog. The can spills down the dog's side. The dog doesn't move.

The man lifts up the can without looking and takes a sip. He wipes the side of the dog with his sleeve as he looks down at an empty space on the carpet.

The man lies down on his side and looks at the camera.

A tear rolls down your cheek.

The tape snaps off and the lights start fading up in the room.

"Thanks dear"; the old lady is stood to attention by the door, holding it open for you; "when you're ready"; she smiles; she looks much younger than before; "PayPal at the desk next to the food machine."