The ear-splitting whine of speakers squealed around town, sending anyone under twenty running for the safety of their homes. Blood seeping slowly from their ears. Drip Drip Drip 5 pm on a Friday was always the same, 6 pm was the time limit for under thirty and 7 pm for anyone under the age of forty. We all knew the drill: retreat to our shielded homes, log in, and the shields would activate, and the noise would blissfully stop. If you weren’t locked in your home, you would suffer. Debilitating ringing in your ears, followed by increased heart rate, and blood oozing from your ears, eyes, and nose. Every orifice is pulling at you to make it stop until permanent deafness—a quiet you long for but a silence you dread. I had been born deaf, so for me, the obedience noise never bothered me. I only realised it was there when red droplets began to creep down my face, staining my skin as they went. Tonight, as the streets emptied like rats deserting a sinking ship, I wondered. As the doors slammed, as the lights flicked off one by one, the town felt hollowed out. I stepped forward, my soft ballet shoes whispering over the pavement, feeling the vibration beneath my feet, the only hint that the noise was still there. The air shimmered in anticipation as I crossed the street through the school gates. The old, rusted gate creaked at my touch. The halls stretched open, long and pale beneath the flickering fluorescent lights. Lockers stood open like broken teeth. I drifted past classrooms with chairs that were knocked over, long-forgotten school bags spilling their contents like teenagers' secrets. Dust danced lazily through shafts of light, turning the air into a mystical playground. For a moment, it felt peaceful. Like the world had somehow corrected itself. Skipping down the empty street behind the school, I ambled into a small shop, its door left wide as if someone had simply been plucked from the Earth. Inside, colour exploded, the shelves were stacked with rows upon rows of biscuits, the glossy wrappers reflecting the light from every angle. My Snickers sat untouched, perfectly aligned, the rich, sweet promise was absurd in this abandoned world. Picking up just one, I took a bite. The chocolate melted instantly, the combination of sugar and cocoa exploded across my tongue. It should have felt wrong. But it didn’t. I moved deeper through the shop, trailing my fingers across jars and tins, everything just left behind. By the time I reached the hospital, stars had started to appear in the nights sky. The automatic doors hid monitors that blinked steadily, green lines crawling across screens that no one watched. Even here, they had run. A single wheelchair sat abandoned in the hallway I stood still, letting the emptiness engulf me. The world hadn’t ended. It had just… paused until 9 am.

The damage to the walls was considerable; fire, then water had taken its toll. It had started in one of the flats, according to the inspector’s report, where a man, of a certain age, had left a candle burning, then he’d fallen asleep. The smoke alarms had probably woken him, it continued, but the fire was too far gone, and he had choked to death on the smoke fumes before he could get out. The report went on to say that the curtains had gone up first, then the carpet, and the rest quickly followed. Everybody else in the tower block had filed out quietly, though terrified by the alarms and the smoke, then made their way down the stairs to the safe point outside. I had simply walked out with them, then away into the night, to continue my life. It hadn’t been remarked upon, officially or otherwise, that the old man’s wheelchair had made it out into the corridor, leaving him to die on the living room floor. No one had even suspected that it had been casually rolled away from him as he lay there crying and choking, begging for mercy. They say that no one is beyond redemption, but I contest this. Neither he (the old man), nor I will see the light of Heaven, or whatever passes for the place where the good ones go. It had taken me a long time to track him down, and by the time I had, he was too old to have offered any resistance to my allegations, or his execution. He knew what he had done, and I didn’t waste time talking to him about it. There were probably more like him out there, and some like me too. I wouldn’t care to share though, that would mean admitting what I had done, or still could do, to someone else, and that would be a risk. I didn’t feel the need to explain why I had done this, not to anyone. No matter how righteous I felt my cause was, my means were certainly not ‘good’, I was judge, jury and executioner. When the time comes for my accounting I will simply admit everything, and I wouldn’t change it, whatever threat of sanction or punishment lay before me. In the meantime, I am free to kill again.

Wild swimming. Camping. Hiking. Me. Him. Indian Summer. Joy in nature. Just us until suddenly it’s them too…a husk of hares all people shaped. Silent. Looming. Sentinels. Territorial. I think Mike is gone. His screams went on forever. I’m hung. Hooked to a tree. But there’s no pain. I think my back’s broken. Or is it shock? Vomiting usually makes you feel better, but all I can smell is blood. His. Mine. The retching won’t stop because they’re rendering his flesh in a cauldron and the sizzling and hot porky stench tries to wrench my bowels clean out of my mouth. I see their eyes through the rabbitty masks, cold, raptorial, glazed as iced donuts. I swear their road kill ears twitch, tuned in to me. Anticipating. Ravenous. They communicate with grunts and gestures as they lovingly crumble herbs onto what’s left of what laughed, cried, breathed. Lover…husband…father. The foetus within me is so still perhaps it’s departed, wisely deserting a vessel that no longer holds hope. I glance up a sky sulphur with storm clouds. We are due home tomorrow. Oh, God, how long? I’m cut down. Dragged across the earth. Doused with water. My limbs are folded, tucked, trussed. They stuff a gag of greenery into my mouth, bitter and aromatic. More shoved into other orifices, scratchy twigs, bunches of leaves, sprigs and pinches. I fit into the bain marie as snug as duck confit. On my back, legs tucked up behind, arms across my naked chest. It takes three of them to lift the cauldron, to pour hot human fat in a glistening arc of gold. Golden as the ring on my third finger. Til death do us part? I sense the heat but don’t feel it. At least not until the boiling water hits my face. I try to scream but my mouth is full of bouquet garni. I wonder how long I’ll take to digest. The thought makes me laugh. I’m being peered at as though I’m the mad one, a sentiment that makes me chortle all the lounder. One of the hare men tugs the bunch of herbs from my mouth, cocking his head like some inquisitive bunny. I remember something Mike always used to say when life seemed unfair or everything was going tits up. “It’s not the dog in the fight, Charlotte. It’s the fight in the dog.” I bare my teeth at my murderer then smile. ‘”I hope I give you the fucking shits!”