Frozen

When I sleep, the sheets encase me like ice, and it's thin, and it's cracking under my feet.

Shuddering, I look down. I know that beneath the ice is a deadly drop, probably much further than I can imagine.

The jagged fractures spider out from my toes. I hardly dare widen my eyes in panic, even the smallest jolt could cost me dearly.

CRACK

That one splits into three, and I know it's my daughters. Gone. Spirited away by their father, such as he is.

crackcrackcrack

Tiny little tributaries blossom from them: the police, uncaring that my children have been kidnapped.

crackcrackcrackcrack

If the police don't believe me, their father will keep the girls away from me, cocoon them in lies. If police do believe me, Aster, Fern, and Tansy will likely be removed to a foster home. There are no good solutions. I am frozen. I can't move forward. Can't move back. Under me: the brutal drop, the darkness...

CRAAAACK

-the man handcuffed to the chair in the spare room. Wrists encased in flimsy purple, eyes blank one moment and darting the next. Why did I do it? Why did I try to transfer his consciousness into another man? Is it because I love him? Need him? I can admit that. Here. Privately. Yes. Maybe I do need him for things. He made himself indispensable and then-

CRACK

Was that the ice? Or my heart, thought long since cold in my chest?

CRACK crack crack

That one is Rita, her watery blue eyes and toothy smile, collecting neighbours like marbles, and looking at me with that wide, vapid gaze. As if being Queen Bee on this miserable street even cracks my top ten right now.

CRACK!!

My bank account. Empty. Bills will be due soon. That bloody husband of mine... I can't afford to seethe. I must stay cool. Hold it together. Even the tiniest vibration could be what finally causes the ice to give way...

Of course, some of my finances are invested in various places, bonds, property. Long term, I won't starve. But right now I have almost no cash, and it's like missing a limb. Or a phone.

crack crack

On the periphary, right in the corner of my vision, a disgruntled estate agent, lurks just outside my scope of attention. An outsider, too, someone who never fit and slipped away like sand, and who knows what she might know or do or say...

I can feel them both grinning across the chilly expanse, my foot slips-

My stomach swoops. I'm plunging downward so violently, I think for a moment I'm going to vomit up my oesophagus. It's almost like someone grabbed my ankle and yanked... but then, even worse, they let go. I don't know which way is up, so I can't even try to orient myself. There is nothing to steady myself against, no frame of reference. Everything is scrambled in this moment. I know only that I will be dead at any moment, when my body breaks on impac-

+

Someone is screaming. Yelling. It's me. It takes me several seconds to get a handle on it. and when I do, the screaming continues. My throat is ragged. I bring a hand to my face to make sure that, no, I'm not screaming, it's not me, so what... Who...

My brain is still scrambled, exactly like my skull got smashed like an egg on an unforgiving surface.

I grope sideways, reaching for the lamp, and-

He's standing over me and screaming.

His eyes are wide and blank, an uncaring ocean. There's tension around his eyes and mouth; he looks older and it's only been, what, a day? The fluffy purple handcuffs are still fastened around his wrists, weak chains dangling limply from them.

His shrieking mingled with mine at first, but even setting that aside, I should have come to with a start. I should have felt another person in my room. Some bone-deep part of me, some hair-trigger fraidy-cat that is hyper-alert to tigers and other threats, the bit that has kept the human race out of the jaws of all sorts of things for millenia... That bit of me should have jerked me awake. But it didn't. I didn't register the presence of a person in the room.

He's not close enough for me to feel his breath, which adds to his eerie aspect. He could be a ghoul, or a vampire or a ghost. Something that doesn't need to breathe, something not truly alive. Not human.

Even if Jac is in there, buried underneath the frantic layers of agony and confusion... Would any part of him be able to reach me, under all these layers of revulsion and fear?

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Thank you for reading