Page 194 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

Fear rarely raises its voice. It curls itself into corners, breathes into other people's ears, and waits for them to infect one another with it. Panic shouts. Terror doesn't need to.

My eyelids felt impossibly heavy, as though someone had stitched damp sandbags beneath them while I slept. Every thought drifted through thick syrup, arriving several seconds later than it should have, refusing to arrange itself into anything useful. Whatever had been inside that needle was still moving lazily through my bloodstream, politely asking my body to remain someone else's property for a little longer.

I opened one eye, then the other. The world arrived piece by piece instead of all at once. A dirty yellow bulb hung from a frayed black cord above my head, swaying almost imperceptibly. The movement was so slight it would have escaped most people, but it told me everything I needed to know.

No windows. Poor ventilation. Somewhere nearby, something heavy had moved recently. Metal. Everything around me was metal.

Corrugated steel walls curved upward into a rust-stained ceiling where old water had bled brown veins through faded grey paint. The floor beneath my bare feet was cold enough to steal the remaining warmth from my skin, the iron refusing to give anything back once it had taken it.

The air tasted wrong, not simply damp but like iron or diesel, maybe old timber and rust. Something sour beneath it all.

Blood.

Not fresh blood.

Old blood.

The kind that had seeped into cracks years ago, scrubbed away by people who believed bleach erased history. It doesn't. Rooms remember. Concrete remembers. Metal remembers longest of all.

I drew one slow breath through my nose and immediately regretted it. Copper coated the back of my tongue until I could almost feel pennies dissolving between my teeth.

My fingers twitched, they answered. Good. My legs followed a second later. I closed my eyes again, forcing myself backwards through memory instead of forwards through panic.

The kitchen. Warm dough beneath my hands. Garlic. Basil. The back door. A shadow where there shouldn't have been one. Cold metal touching my neck. Gerald…

Everything inside my chest tightened so violently it almost hurt.

"...Gerald..."

My voice barely existed, escaping my throat as nothing more than a cracked whisper. For one terrible heartbeat there was only silence.

Then I heard it.

"Honestly, I've suffered worse," Gerald grumbled somewhere inside my mind with all the enthusiasm of a tax collector.

"Although I do feel obligated to point out that smashing me onto cement was exceptionally rude. When we leave here, I expect a replacement. Marble would be nice. Bronze if you're feeling sentimental. Anything less and I'll file a complaint."

The breath I hadn't realised I was holding escaped my lungs all at once. Relief is a peculiar thing. It doesn't make you stronger. It simply reminds your body it hasn't fallen apart yet.

"That's outrageous,"

Frank complained immediately.

"Why does Gerald get upgraded? I endured the exact same traumatic experience emotionally."

"Nobody dropped you onto concrete."

"Emotionally they did."

"You're exhausting."

"Stop talking," I murmured, rubbing weakly at my forehead as the chemical haze continued to pulse behind my eyes.

"Both of you. I can't think while you're arguing."

They grumbled because of course they did but blessedly fell quiet. Only then did I realise the whispers hadn't stopped. They'd stopped because they were watching me.

Slowly, I lifted my head.