Her fears were gone, ousted instead by a hatred for those holding them captive.

‘You’re all fucking psychos,’ she screamed. ‘It isn’t real. Can’t you get it through your stupid fucking heads? The creeper isn’t real! You don’t have to do this!’

Chloe had stepped too close. In the swiftest motion, the wasp gripped her by the throat. Ben was immediately wrested away from her. She faltered forward, suspended by the man’s hand, choking for air, receiving none. The villagers had seized Ben like wardens in an asylum. An arm locked around his neck from behind, and two other men rushed in to ensnare him from either side. Stronger than any straitjacket. His heels raked through the mud as they dragged him from Chloe’s side. The wasp released his grip and she crumbled to the ground. No attempt was made on her part to buffer the fall. The air had been strangled out of her. The weak ankle collapsed first, and the rest of her followed like a bag of bones.

‘You’ll do,’ the wasp said, looking down at Chloe as she gasped for air, pawing where his fingers had embedded their mark on her.

‘If you touch her,’ Ben shouted, ‘I swear I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’ the wasp spat, suddenly staring at him as though he genuinely wanted an answer. ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll to do, boy. You’ll watch. You’ll watch all of it. Hold him down,’ he ordered the men now forcing Ben to his knees.

The wasp returned to the one disfigured into the creeper’s likeness, still held aloft, his head slumped lifelessly forward. With the gentlest touch of his hand, he lifted the man’s chin so that their eyes met. Both were human. But Ben could barely bring himself to look upon the tortured one so blessed as to receive this gift.

‘Can he stand?’ the wasp asked the men.

They exchanged a glance. One of them shook his head.

‘No matter,’ he said. ‘He can still kill.’

‘What?’ Ben screamed. ‘No! What are you doing?’

‘Silence him,’ the wasp requested.

The man holding Ben’s left arm swung his fist like a battering ram into his gut. He had never experienced a sensation like it, so beyond his pain threshold that it almost didn’t register. Tremors rippled around his body. Through the spots that peppered his vision he tried to breathe, but nothing came. Ben could feel his body deflating. Still, his handlers held him up.

‘Hold her down,’ the wasp said, beckoning three from the crowd.

Ben recognised one of them from his interviews; the simpleton enamoured by the long summer evenings. He had spoken so softly in the half-light of the stable with a kindness that was now just another lie sold to Ben amongst many others. His hands seized Chloe by her skinny calves, while the other two each pinned down an arm.