October 25, Evening (Coda)


A mature woman runs thorugh the back streets. Her steps are firm and deliberate - she has run like this before many times. Every few yards she throws a glance over her shoulder, although she knows that it will do no good: they don't have to be able see her.

Her flight is brought to an abrupt stop as her whole body spasms. Her arms fly out at improbable angles and her back arches impossibly. For a long moment her form seems suspended in the air - the front of a single extended foot the only contact it makes with the ground. The moment passes. Her limbs fall, as though released by some unseen force, and a scream rips its way out from her throat. Her body hits the cold paving stones.

As her body lies there it twitches and writhes. It is not her muscles, though, its the very bones beneath - the essential stuff of her body. Her joints buckle and twist as the mass shifts and melts.

She screams to an uncaring sky: "Not again! You bastard!"


Copyright © 2000-2003, Liam Routt
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