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WALKING DEAD

I am frozen in time. I can’t move. It feels like I can’t breathe.

“I loved you,” I whisper.

“Someone who loved me could never do what you did. I know what happened that night, you know what happened, everyone on this island knows what you did to me. What I want to know is why . I’ve waited a long time to ask that question, face-to-face, and I think I deserve an answer. I wanted to wait until you lost everything; the house, your career, everything you ever cared about, because that’s what you took from me when you did what you did that night. The thing I cared most about in the world was you. I loved you too, Grady. I really did, but now I hate you. So why did you do it? Why did you try to kill me?”

When I look in her eyes all I feel is pure terror.

I don’t want to hear any more of this story. I want to delete it, rewrite it, burn it. I run out of the cottage and across the green. For once, the village is not empty. I can see them, women in the distance, women looking out of the windows, women walking down the lanes, all of them holding walkie-talkies, and all of them staring at me. I feel like one of the walking dead, as though there is a target on my back. I run past Christie’s Corner Shop and The Stumble Inn, past the church and up the hill. Despite feeling breathless, and ignoring the pain in my chest, I run until I reach the forest. I have to get Columbo and I have to get off of this island. The trees seem to block my path as though trying to stop me. The silhouettes of a thousand branches reach out like arms, slowing me down, scratching my face and tearing my clothes but I don’t stop until I see the cabin in the distance. The lights are on inside and the windows look like glowing eyes. Watching. Waiting.

I push the door open and see someone sitting on the sofa with a glass of whiskey.

Someone I did not expect to see.

“Hello, Grady.”