You Are Dead

26

Friday 12 December

Logan grew up on a small farm near Ripe in East Sussex. Her parents were third-generation tenant farmers, and as the EEC regulations gradually bit deeper, their income dropped progressively. They needed to make savings, and the only real ones they could make were staff. They had to let two of their farmhands go, and a few months later their herdsman, who had been working for their family for thirty years. From the age of eleven, Logan had to take turns with the rest of her family to get up at 5 a.m. and milk the cows. It was a daily routine, seven days a week, every day of the year. Cows didn’t understand things like Christmas Day. They just wanted to be milked.

Her father was a committed Green environmentalist who did not believe in mod cons. The only heating in the house was supplied by a coke-fired Esse oven in the kitchen that was kept going all year round, and a wood-burning stove in the hall, that was unlit during the summer months. Years later, although she now lived in a centrally-heated flat in Brighton, she still woke up some nights with the smell of burning coke in her nostrils.

She could smell it now. Sharp, acrid. Was she hallucinating?

Then she opened her eyes and realized she was not, she could smell it clearly. Burning coke. Tickling her nostrils. She saw a blurry, diffused red glow above her. And pinpricks of green light beyond.

Then the familiar sliding sound, and musty-smelling air on her face. Now she could see the red glow much more clearly, directly above her.

Someone was standing over her. Someone holding something that was glowing bright red.

‘Who are you?’ she said, trembling with fear, her voice quavering. ‘Who are you?’

Suddenly she felt a gloved hand clamp her throat, forcing it down against the hard surface she was lying on. Then the red glow descended towards her midriff. An instant later she felt an agonizing burning sensation on her right thigh. She howled, crushing her eyes shut against the pain, writhing, trying to move away, but she was pinioned down. She screamed. Heard the hiss of burning flesh.

Her flesh.

‘Nooooooooooooooooo!’

It was like being stung by a swarm of hornets. She screamed again.

‘Ssshhhhh!’ a muffled voice said. ‘Ssshhhh! It’s OK, babe!’

She writhed in agony, as far as she could move. It was burning, stinging, hurting like hell. She tried to bite into the glove holding her down. The pain was getting worse.

More intense.

‘Owwwwwwwww. Owwwwwwww.’ It was burning right through her as if her entire leg was on fire.

‘Owwwwwwwwwwwwww.’

Then she felt something cold and soothing on her thigh, for a brief instant. But rapidly the excruciating pain returned.

She saw the red glow rising above her. The hand released her. She gasped. The pain was unbearable.

She vomited.

Moments later a cloth, wet and reeking of some vile disinfectant, was wiping her mouth. The pain in her thigh felt as if it was burning right through to her bone, like corrosive acid.

Then the muffled voice again. ‘You’ll be OK. The pain will go. No harm done. You’ll be fine.’

‘What have you done, you bastard? Is this how you get your kicks?’

The sliding sound above her. Then silence. Through her tears of pain she shook in terror.