Saturday 26 March 2016

#YourHorror - Week 8


The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 8

She awoke from her nap and squinted at the sun, now beaming proudly from the centre of the sky. Yet again she had fallen to sleep on the sofa, pulled into slumber by the sheer exhaustion of what had been happening to her. Dark circles were more present around her eyes than they had been only two days before, when her biggest problems had been the lack of an internet connection and her desire to be the kind of person that made morning smoothies. Neither were up-and-running yet.

After a few minutes, the memory of the phone call that had beaten the energy from her came rushing back, like water exploding from a cracked dam. Her eyes darted about the room, from the window to the hallway to the window again. Could they be watching her? Had they watched her sleeping? She could still hear the way the thing on the phone had smiled when it taunted her.


If she stayed here, she might not be safe. She had to leave. Now.

She leapt from the sofa and almost ran to the bedroom, where a whirlwind of chaos and packing took place. Not that the place had been tidy yet anyway; hell, she was yet to unpack a single box in its entirety, but now it looked like the next sequel of Sharknado had made its way through here. Considering the budget that the films seemed to be made with, she wouldn’t have been surprised. If anything, it was out of their price range.

Only the essentials were worth shoving into a rucksack right now. A few tops, a pair of jeans, underwear, toothbrush, deodorant, her laptop, chargers. She could come back in a couple of weeks, when she felt safe again, or maybe just send for her things if she decided that she didn’t want to come back at all.

Her eyes swept her bedroom, which she’d barely slept in since moving, and tried to find anything she might have missed. She spied a box by the side of the bed and rummaged through to find one more item. It was bright pink, ran on batteries, and was ribbed for her pleasure. Even a girl on the run deserved to have some fun…

With that key item in her rucksack, hidden under clothes, she pulled on her jacket, tugged on her boots – still slick with centipede ‘blood’ - and went to pick up her discarded phone from the sofa. She flinched as she picked it up, half-expecting that raspy, teasing voice to ooze from the speaker, but it was still dead. The phone was slipped into the darkness of her pocket. It could be charged when she got home. Real home. She’d just have to stay with a friend, or maybe even move back in with – shudder – her parents. Just for a bit.

As an after-thought, she picked up her purse from the counter. She wasn’t getting far without this, but it was strange how far money was from your mind when you were running scared.

Time to get out of here.


She reached for the door handle, when a sensation in her leg shocked her into freezing where she was. At first she thought it might be the toy inside her bag.

(Well, it’s not really the time for it, but if you insist…)

Then she realised it wasn’t anything quite as fun. The phone in her pocket – the phone that had run out of battery and had no right to be doing anything other than shutting the hell up – was vibrating. Someone wanted to speak to her.

Maybe she’d turned it on when she put it in her pocket? Sometimes phones seemed to find a minute of strength on 1% battery, even after dying. Yeah, that’s what it was. Only one way to find out for sure. She placed her rucksack down next to the door, ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and pulled the phone from her pocket.


It was an unknown number. She didn’t answer these at the best of times, let alone when her hand started to shake at the very thought of who might be waiting on the end of the line. Worst of all… it could be PPI claims. No, she hadn’t been an accident, and no, they were not aware of said fictional accident.

(Unless they covered nightmare burns*? Lucrative.) - *read Week 4!

The rational part of her mind, no matter how shaken it was, tried to take over. It could be a friend from home, calling from a new number; or maybe someone from the estate agents, calling to check in on their newest renter; for all she knew, there was a dentist appointment that she was missing back home.

Honestly, it could be anyone, about anything. Unfortunately, based on what had happened in the last 24 hours, it could also be a sickly-sweet stranger that enjoyed watching her, a centipede that had dialled the numbers with its hundreds of legs, or even her mirror-self, calling with another friendly warning.
(“Hai buddy, whatever you do, avoid nightmares, insects and strangers, ‘kay?”)

No. She didn’t want to know. She shouldn’t even have to know. Not speaking to anyone was the main perk of a dead phone.


Something in her head snapped. She’d had enough, and decided the phone could be deader still. The phone was dropped to the floor, and she brought up her boot for the second time in as many days. Her heel was brought down onto the screen with as much strength as she could muster, and there was a satisfying CRACK.

The screen had split, but the phone was still going. She did the same, stamping on the phone in a frenzy no different to the one she’d entered when making sure that the centipede outside her front door was truly dead. Her boot rose up and down like a piston, stamping on the phone until it was hard to tell what the pieces had once been. Teenagers everywhere began to cry. How would she possibly ignore people when they tried to talk to her in person, or keep up with the Kardashians? Blasphemy.

        “Call me now,” she smirked. It was strange how much better she felt after crushing the means to contact her.

(I should have done this years ago.)

Feeling lighter without the physical and emotional weight in her pocket, she turned back to the door, picked up her rucksack and reached for the handle once more. She couldn’t wait to leave this place.


Her shoulders slumped, and the rucksack fell to the floor. Tears began to well in her eyes.

She could hear a phone ringing.

The ringing wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular now. It was all around her, and seem to come from every direction, every room, every thought in her head. Incessant. Never-ending. Ringing.

         “Please. Please, just stop.” She cried out. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know what you want. Tell me what you want.” No answer came back to her. The ringing only continued.

She began to tear through drawers, cupboards, anything that might be hiding another phone, and clawed through or tipped the contents directly onto the floor. Boxes were emptied. Pans clattered to the floor. Books, DVDs and souvenirs littered the floor. Photo frames were smashed on impact. All the while, a phone kept ringing, somehow distant and yet closing around her. It wouldn’t stop.

On the plus side, she had technically unpacked.

She went back to the hallway where her rucksack lay on the floor, and let the remaining pieces of her phone pour between her fingers.

Shattered.

Broken.

Her back hit the wall as she slumped down, head on her knees. Her jeans became a darker, damper blue as she openly sobbed into them. A never-ending phone call taunted her, daring her to give into the new world she had been dragged into.

A world of madness.

It wasn’t a call she was ready to answer, but how long could she hold out? She was just one woman, no-one to help her, as something she couldn’t even begin to comprehend closed in on her from all sides. She remained in the hallway, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her legs, occasionally whispering to herself:

             “Why me? Why me?”

There was never an answer. Only the ringing of a phone that she didn’t think even existed in this world. Someone, somewhere, wanted to speak to her. Someone, somewhere, wanted to take away her sanity. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, it seemed to be working…

Saturday 19 March 2016

#YourHorror - Week 7



The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 7

  
As much as she was sure she’d suffer for it later, she didn’t feel like she could go to sleep at that moment. The sun was rising outside, and she would only lie in bed, the light creeping into her eyes, mulling over everything that had happened in the past 24 hours.

She’d have loved the old cliché of everything feeling normal at the light of a new day. Considering that her burned hand stung every time she tried to forget about it, and there was a bruise growing deep purple on her left buttock where she’d landed after being thrown from inside the mirror, it wasn’t likely.

Admitting what had happened felt crazy. Not admitting it, at least to herself, seemed equally crazy, and maybe even a little dangerous. She tried to find strength in the fact that she knew she was a level-headed, rational, sane person that could not only be honest about the unworldly events taking place in her life, but also think about them in an objective way. Of course, there was another part of her, growing stronger by the day, that just wanted strip off all her clothes, adopt hundreds of cats, and walk around town pushing a trolley of felines with a wild look in her eyes; ala, “Crazy cat lady.”

Before succumbing to that life, which she felt was always where she’d end up, she decided to call a close friend from home. Hearing a familiar voice would help. Even just for a few minutes of small talk. There was nothing more normal, and boring, than small talk.

She found her phone nestled between sofa cushions, where it must have fallen from her pocket the night before. 10% battery. Of course. Somewhere between centipedes crawling from coffee, nightmares burning into the real world, and being forcibly dragged into her bathroom mirror by a pale version of herself - for a warning she still didn’t understand - she’d forgotten to charge her phone. Somehow, she thought she’d forgive herself.

It would do the job. She selected her friend from a list of contacts, most of whom she’d stopped speaking to before she’d moved away. She hit ‘call.’


The phone rang for so long that she was sure it was going to go unanswered. It was still pretty early. Far too early, in fact, for her to answer a call if it had been the other way round. She was about to hang up when the line cleared. The phone had been answered.

She started to apologise for the time of the call when a voice spoke. Her mouth snapped shut, and she broke into a cold sweat.

It wasn’t her friend.

There was no real reason to panic. Anyone could have picked up the phone on behalf of her friend, but it felt wrong. The voice could have been male, female, or anything in-between, so raspy was it that she hadn’t even been able to pinpoint the gender, only the intent. With only a greeting, the voice had told her that she wasn’t going to speak to her friend this morning, or maybe ever again.

Without speaking it said:

“They can’t get to the phone right now. Maybe they’re still asleep, maybe not - maybe they’re being tortured.” She gripped the phone a little tighter. No matter the reason, she knew then that there had never been any chance that this call would connect her with a comforting reminder of home and friendship. Even the words themselves seemed far away.


Finally, she replied, and struggled to hold the tremor in her voice as she asked, “What do you want?” Her phone beeped. 5% battery remaining. Fine. She didn’t think this was a call she wanted to stay on for long. Not at all. 


When the voice replied, it had a sickly-sweet quality to it. It was as if its words threatened to ooze through the phone and into her ear. Whoever it was, whatever it was, she could tell they were smiling.

“Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all. We don’t want anything from you. You’re already giving us so much…”, it paused, and she was sure she heard it smacking its lips together, “entertainment.”

(Can they see me?)

She tiptoed to the window, not wanting the stranger on the phone to know she was spooked, and peered through the blinds. Everything outside was still. After the chaos of the stormy night before, it was as if the town was trying to regain its strength. It wasn’t the only one.

        “Silly girl. You won’t find us out there.”

The blinds shut with a rattle as she reeled backwards, too quickly, and fell onto the sofa. She landed heavily, but didn’t even notice the aching from her bruise.

(Shit. Can they see me?! Surely not. They heard the blinds. They must have.)

A crackle ripped through the phone and she thought the line was breaking up. Then she realised that the stranger was laughing. It began as a chuckle, but grew and grew until they were bellowing laughter down the phone, so loud that she had to hold it away from her ear.


Each time they laughed, a new wave of goosebumps rolled across her skin and she started to think that she could actually see it happening, like a distressing Mexican wave. She couldn’t take it anymore.

(Fuck you.)

She hung up.

Fuck you…” she spat at the phone.

Then she threw it to the other end of the sofa, not even wanting the phone near her.

It landed face up. Bzz bzz. Someone had sent her a text.

The ever-growing ball of dread residing in her stomach returned. There was nothing she could do but lean over and read it. Luckily, she didn’t have to touch the phone, because the message was short and the preview revealed everything. The message read:

“We’ll be watching.”

The screen faded to black, battery finally depleted of life. So drained was she from the night before, and so shocked at the disconcerting events of this new day, that she did something very similar herself. She left the phone where it was, lay back onto the sofa, and shut her eyes. Sleep was calling for her.

Since it was a call that she’d missed last night, she decided to answer, and let herself drift away from her worries. They’d find her again when she woke up, she knew, but that wasn’t of her concern now. She slept, undisturbed, as madness wove its foul web in the shadows of her mind. 

Enjoying my interactive horror? Get in touch with me on Twitter, leave a comment, or just share this story in every single place you can think of! Or all three. All three is good.

Thank you to everyone that has been voting and sharing in the weekly polls - without you, there would be no story to tell. If you haven't been, there's always next week!

Saturday 12 March 2016

#YourHorror - Week 6


The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 6

A flash of lightning lit the sky on fire, illuminating the walls of her new home. The strange situation she found herself in was revealed under a brief spotlight, proving that there really was a hand reaching from the bathroom mirror in front of her, her own hand held tight in its cool, porcelain grip. It startled her into action.

She grabbed her left arm, the one being held against its will, with her right hand – no longer feeling the burn that gave her hand a bubbly, shiny quality – and pulled. It made no difference. Even when she pulled with all of her might, grunting with exertion, to the point where she thought she might actually break free without her hand, the mirror hand showed no signs of letting her free.

Another spotlight of blue and white lit the room and revealed a woman looking much sweatier and more exasperated than it had before.


The next time the light was flashed across the room, it was empty. Just as she had been ready to take a break, with the possibility of having to live her life from this very spot in her mind, the hand in the mirror had pulled. Hard.

Her arm was nearly pulled from its socket as she was yanked towards the mirror. No, not towards the mirror, into the mirror. In one swift, painful motion, the pasty mirror hand snatched her from her ordinary bathroom, where she had already been retching and licking her wounds from her less-than-ordinary day. The damp towel lay on the floor where it had landed, looking as if it had been thrown to the floor by an angst-y teenager.

Once again, the property was still, at complete odds with the storm that raged outside.

*

As she flew head-first through the mirror, she felt the hand release its grip on her own.

(Bit late now…)

Clearly, it had done its job.

She landed with a thump on something that felt simultaneously smooth and wet, like glass made of mist so concentrated that it became solid. It was hard to tell what exactly it was, because the world around her was almost entirely black. That was, except for a thin beam of light that trailed in from somewhere behind her. When she looked over her shoulder, still on all fours where she’d landed, she saw what looked like a faraway window. She squinted.

(Is… is that my bathroom?)


It was impossible to be sure from this distance, and there was something that concerned her more. The air in front of her, if that’s what it could be called, was disturbed. She could feel eyes burning into the top of her head. Like a deer trying to find its feet for the first time, she clambered upwards and met its gaze. Only it wasn’t an ‘it’. It was a ‘she’.

(Wait… that’s me.)

Staring back at her with no emotion whatsoever, was a mirror copy of herself. The same hair, the same eyes, the same lips, the same clothes, thrown together for an afternoon of unplanned research and Netflix napping. Everything.

(Readers: I bet you’re wishing you’d gone with the character detail option! This is killing me.)


Unsure of how to react to this carbon copy, which watched her through eyes that were as cold as its freakishly strong hand, she lashed out.

(It’s not real. It doesn’t matter. Whiskey and pills could make anyone see things.)

She neglected the fact that she’d fallen to sleep before ever taking any pills, and even a lightweight like herself could manage more than two sips of whiskey without hallucinating. Thinking that any of this was real would be too much.

Her hand whipped through the darkness, curled into a fist, but just before she could come into contact with the copy, she pulled the punch. Hell, it was herself she was punching in the face. Surely anyone would struggle with that. What started as a right hook turned into more of a claw, and she raked her nails across the copy’s cheek. It was like scratching a pane of glass, and had almost no effect at all. She’d almost punched.

(Know what makes a burn worse? Broken knuckles.)


She was dragged from her relief by a warm tickling sensation on her cheek. When she touched her hand to her face, her finger came away with a smudge of blood.

(Okay. That’s a new one.)

Too scared to test the developing theory in her head, she decided that she wouldn’t lash out at the copy again. It seemed unfazed by the fact that she’d even tried to attack it, and had definitely come off better from the encounter. She believed she could see a slight groove in its pasty cheek, but it could have been her imagination. Either way, it continued to stare in her direction, unwavering, detached.


It was in this same way that it spoke to her.

         “You are being drawn deeper into something you do not understand.” In a way, it was her own voice that left the lips of the copy, but so devoid of personality and life that it could have been anyone.

“No, not at all. This is pretty much what I expected in a new town.” This thing wouldn’t know sarcasm even if it slapped it in the face, and probably for the best, because it seemed sarcasm would come off worse. No-one wanted that.

“You have been chosen. Even now, you are slipping further down into a world that you do not understand. A world that you are not prepared for. A world of madness.

“I can see how you would think that…” She looked left, then right, then back at the copy. “I’m inside my bathroom mirror.”

“You still do not understand the situation you are in. They will break you. Jokes will not save you.”

“How else would I deal with my feelings? Talk about them like a mature adult? Stop that.” She swallowed. “Who are they?”

“They are everywhere, and they have set their sights on you.”

“Helpful,” she muttered. “Why am I here?”

“For my warning. Part of you, me, understands the web of madness and deceit you are being entangled inside, while part of you is clinging to the threads of what should and should not be. It was the only way to make you see.”

“Okay… message received,” she said, thinking how much easier it would have been for her to send a tweet or a WhatsApp message. This she kept to herself, knowing that the copy wouldn’t understand or care, and also not feeling liking joking anymore. “What do I do?”

“There are many paths. I cannot tell you which you take, only that there any many potential endings to your story.”

“As long as none of those endings come too quickly. Thanks, I guess.”

“You have been warned.” With those final words, the copy disappeared and the light from behind grew larger and brighter. She was pulled backwards towards the real world with as much force as she had been pulled from it, and was thrown to the bathroom floor. If it hadn’t been for the towel, there’d have been yet another injury to add to the collection.            

As it happened, with the storm finally breaking outside, and the light of early morning beginning to stream through the window, all she had was even more to think about.

(How long was I in there?)


New day. New problems. This one had to be better, right?

Well, I guess that's up to YOU! Thanks so much for voting, sharing and reading - it means a lot, and I hope you'll get involved in the next week of this interactive horror story. 

If you're enjoying it so far, please make sure to let me know in the comments, or by sharing the story with encouragement of "amazing," "brilliant," and "this guy is the next Stephen King!" That's just a few options, if you're struggling to think of anything... See you on Twitter!

Saturday 5 March 2016

#YourHorror - Week 5

The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 5

It wasn’t possible for her hand to be burned. When she had fallen to sleep, as the storm outside reduced the light comedy on TV to nothing but static, her hand had been completely fine. Now, after the nightmare in the café, where the insects had told her she had been “chosen,” whatever that meant – and the burning, rushing fire, so much fire – her hand was burned. It was as if in that last moment, when the flames engulfed the café with her inside it, the intense heat had burned through from her mind and into reality, nothing more than kindling.

(That’s insane.)

Even so, her hand was burned, and she couldn’t deny that, no matter how little sense it made.


Though unsure whether her legs held the strength to carry her, she sprung to her feet. The room span, and saliva filled her mouth.

(Oh god.)

She stumbled over a few open boxes on her way down the hallway, internally cursed herself for the fact they were even still there, and crashed into the bathroom. Once there she positioned herself in front of the toilet.

A few moments passed. Then a few more. It felt like hours before her mind and stomach calmed down enough for her to move away from the porcelain prison – which was never going to make anyone feel good at this distance – and over to the sink. She gripped either side and steadied herself on legs that had all but fallen asleep.

(Ahh, motherfu-

Her hand. Briefly forgotten. Still burned.

She held it out, looking at the raw skin and the blisters that were beginning to bubble from her palm. It made her feel queasy again. Not so much the pain, or the shininess of her own skin, so tender and new – no, she’d burned her hand on almost every single plate that had been delivered to her with a cautionary “careful, it’s hot” – it just shouldn’t have been there. At all.

Cold water burst from the tap as she turned the handle with her newly-decided “good hand.” The less fortunate hand was placed under the running water, and stung at first, until the pain from the burn turned into a different kind of pain. An icy numbness. She held it there until she couldn’t take the sensation any longer, and then pulled it back. The pain would return soon enough, but she was content with the lack of feeling in her hand.


Good hand came into play once more as she leant down, cupped the cool water and splashed it onto her face. That was how people calmed themselves down in the movies and she’d be damned if it wasn’t going to work for her, too.

(Shit. Too cold.)

Eyes tightly shut against the water that could only have been pumped directly from the Arctic, she felt for a towel on the heated rack to her left. Eventually, her hand found what she was looking for, and she wiped the water from her eyes. She dabbed quickly at the water that threatened to run down under the collar of the top, and then buried her face in the towel.

For a few grateful seconds, she escaped everything that had happened that day, sticking her head in sand that was made from 100% cotton. It was warm from the heated towel rack, and since she’d bought it specifically for the move, it still smelled new and clean. Ostriches were really onto something with this.


When she finally looked up from the towel, her stomach twisted. The towel dropped to the floor, with the warmth and safety long forgotten.

It was faint, but there was no denying it. Oh, how she wished she could deny it.

There was a handprint on the mirror.

She didn’t think it had been there before, but at which point between trying to keep the contents of her stomach inside her stomach and hiding inside a towel like a damn ostrich would she have noticed it?

(Fuck. Why is there a handprint on the mirror? There shouldn’t be a fucking handprint on the fucking mirror. Fuck.)

Maybe it was hers? It must have been. No-one else had been in here since she’d moved in a couple of days ago. Yeah. That’s what it was. At some point, maybe while brushing her teeth last night, or after leaving the shower, she had placed her hand on the mirror. It happened. It wasn’t a big deal, and definitely not something that she’d have remembered doing.


Like almost every decision she’d made that day, she was driven by the need to know for sure, one way or another. She reached out to the mirror.

If the handprint matched the shape and size of her hand, mystery solved. She’d just find something to make her hand feel better, go to bed, and hope that everything would have returned to normal when she woke up.

If the handprint belonged to someone else – well, that was a bridge she’d cross when she came to it. It’d be the kind of bridge that would be hiding something hairy and troll-like underneath, she imagined, so if she could avoid it, she’d much prefer that option.

(Please let that be an option. No trolls. No trolls.)


Trolls were completely forgotten when, as she was reaching, slowly, out towards the handprint on the mirror, the handprint reached back out from the glass and grabbed her by the hand.

Too shocked to react, she just stood there, mouth agape, as she watched this hand envelop her own. It was almost as white as the porcelain of the sink, but it held absolutely no wrinkles or imperfections, like a mannequin’s hand come to life. Up until now, she’d have put that thought at the top of a “scares the crap out of me” list, but she found that the list needed to be updated after the day she’d had.

No heat came from the hand. It was cold, and its grip on her own hand, luckily not the burned one, was firm and unwavering. There they stayed, as if about to head into an interview or partake in a thumb war, neither party making any movement.


Outside, the storm persisted, and no-one would have been able to guess what has happening inside these four walls. Actually, she didn’t really know either. So, she remained still, and attempted to plan her next move, aware that her life might literally be in someone – or something – else’s hands.