The stool flew away and suddenly there was nothing beneath my feet and the rope around my neck was strangling me. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and my fingers tore at the tightening rope for a second that seemed to last for a thousand years. In that never-ending moment I felt my head tip grotesquely to one side as the rope angled towards the knot and I could feel my body weight killing me.

The blood stopped flowing to my brain.

The air stopped flowing to my lungs.

I knew that I was dying.

I saw nothing.

I stared at the ceiling and I didn’t see it.

I looked up at the rope and I didn’t see it.

There was only the sensation of strangulation as my hands tore at the rope around my neck.

My hands fell away from my throat. My legs kicked and flayed, and I had nothing in me to stop them, and I felt myself on the very edge of the blackness that lasts forever, and it felt as sweet and welcome as home.

But then I reached behind me, my fingers scrambling under the back of my polo shirt, clawing at the base of my spine.

And I felt the plastic grip of the Glock 17.

Then it was in my right hand and I was pointing it at the ceiling, pulling the trigger, the crack of gunfire deafening in that confined place, then pulling the trigger again as fast as I could. I was aware of their screams and shouts but I kept pulling the trigger, trying to break the rope that was killing me, and then the sounds seemed to be coming from underwater and then I heard nothing, nothing at all, just an unbroken ringing in my ears as my heart surged with desperation when I realised that it had not worked.

I was still hanging.

The secret room turned red.

The blood flow to my brain had stopped and that blocked dam of blood seemed to be filling the room.

I closed my eyes.

My hand fell to my side. My fingers were opening, my friend’s gun was slipping from my hand and the unbroken blackness was all I wanted now. I felt the full kilo of polymer and steel in my hand. Someone was trying to prise it from my grasp. I lashed out at them with my foot.

Then something happened in my ears.

I could hear them shouting again.

Scream. Shouts. Cursing.

They were on me, pulling on my legs, and I couldn’t understand, then I saw they were trying to drag me down and get it done, finally get it done, get me over with forever.

And it revived me enough to kick out at their masked faces.

And I raised my right hand one last time.