A bullet is a pain that deafens. A sound that hurts. A pain-sound that is in one finely honed place and everywhere, up against each bit of skin, bone.

There had been the sound of my blood, stopping. The pain of my heart, becoming a loch. I feel it again now.

I looked behind me and there was a light.

A light, fringed and spiked. A shimmering mist. A light that looked almost like a girl.

No words came. I kept running.

A girl and another girl, on the road. Wings. She and I.

See who I am. See what I was.

There was someone in front of me.

I didn’t have time to stop. Hands around my arms. I let out a scream.

Jim’s eyes, glowing white.

‘No, please don’t. Please don’t—’ Dead. I was dead.

Whisky on his breath. He was shaking me but looking past my head, back down the road. I felt his grip harden, fingers on my elbows, before he shoved me onto the verge. I staggered into the ditch, knee first.

Not dead.

I wanted to throw up. Blood was whirlpooling in my skull. Voices – Jim’s, mixed in with others, male and female, one quite high, pinched. I pushed myself up, waited for the road to stop undulating and let my boots lead me back the way I’d come, ducking erratically, wondering where the bullet might sing in from.

‘Oh, come on, just having a bit of fun.’

Fraser.

Jim’s voice was quiet and knotted. ‘That’s fun, is it?’

‘I was never that close.’

‘You like taking potshots at people?’ No answer. ‘What’s she done to you?’

They were right in the middle of the road, Fraser and Jim and Becca. A few metres away.

‘You can talk, you fucking psycho.’

Jim’s voice dropped further. I could hardly hear him. ‘Oh aye, I’m a real fucking psycho. I’ll come for you.’

One of Fraser’s hands was underneath the butt of his rifle, the other under its slim neck. Half angled towards Jim. ‘Yeah? Do it. You’re just going to get banged up again. Back where you fucking belong. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be near people.’

A sliver of silence. Every bit of air in me plummeted to the soles of my feet. A sense of waiting, almost polite.

Jim moved. There was a moment of concentrated sound – a scuffle, exerted breaths, gravel scratching on the tarmac – before a crack, wood against bone. An owl scream from Becca.

Fraser crumpled.

Jim was holding the rifle at the barrel end. ‘Get.’

Becca seemed to be levitating, dancing an inch above the ground, unsure as to whether to fly at Jim or go to Fraser.

Jim nudged Fraser’s leg with his boot. ‘Get.’

Fraser rose, very slowly, an oiled shadow peeling itself off the road. He lifted his hand to his head and looked at it. Becca stepped to him, tugged on his arm. They turned and walked back to the village and the glowing field.