Something wasn’t right.

She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She could sense another presence in the room.

In the dinginess, in the shadows, among the stacks of debris, someone or something was there. She knew she wasn’t hallucinating. She’d taken more than enough heroin to know that it didn’t make you hallucinate.

She stared intently into the gloom at the far end of the room, but she couldn’t make out what lay in the depths of the shadows.

Small tendrils of fear began to impinge upon her chilled-out mood and her heart began to beat a little faster. Was it a guard? Was it another inmate? Most importantly, was her stash in danger?

‘Who’s there?’ she whispered hoarsely. Her voice seemed to echo around the room like the ringing of a huge bell.

Her only answer was silence.

‘Who are you?’

Still no answer.

‘What do you want?’

Nothing.

She began to walk forward in the direction of the door, but with each step that she took, the more the sensation increased of someone in the shadows looking directly at her, their eyes boring into her.

She stopped, unable to proceed any further. She swallowed, her mouth dry all of a sudden. Then she began to back slowly away from the blackness in the further reaches of the room because that’s where it was.

She could sense it moving towards her. Soon it would emerge from the shadows.

She suddenly remembered now. The gossip. About that murder in the laundry. How horrible it had been. How they still hadn’t caught whoever had done it. She hadn’t paid much attention to it. She’d had more important things on her mind. Like her next shot of smack. But now it hit home with a sickening dread… that maybe, just maybe, there was something that she should be very scared about.

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she begged, imploring the mute shadows. ‘You can have my stash. Take it all. Just please don’t hurt me.’

She stumbled backwards, her feet scraping the rough floor…

…And bumped into something.

She gasped and spun around.

A pile of concrete blocks. She had backed into a pile of concrete blocks.

She let out an exhalation of relief and smiled to herself. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she was just jittery. Maybe just…

SCHWIPPP…

Poodle’s ears perked up and she tensed. The noise had been very close to her. It had been accompanied by a strange tight feeling in her chest. She tried to swallow but found that she couldn’t.

She looked down.

Protruding from the centre of her chest was a long glistening metal blade. A globule of her blood ran along the blade and came to the end. It hung there, crimson and viscous.

She watched it, entranced, as it swung there, hanging by an ever-extending thread, which then snapped.

The drop of blood fell to the floor in what seemed like slow motion. It seemed to take forever to hit the floor. As it fell, it assumed a circular shape, revolving and rotating, the light reflecting off its pulsating surface. Then it hit the floor and disintegrated with an audible splat.