Against the sun-bright French windows, and within that rectangle of celestial light, Flo hovers in mid-air. Above the wheelchair an aged woman levitates. Head tilted back like a baby bird about to receive something between its stretched jaws, Flo’s mouth is a black hole. Her throat moves as if she’s gulping at the air, yet the client makes no sound. Her aged arms and lumpy hands are raised palm upwards.

A cloud passes over the house and douses the sun’s glare. The colour of Flo’s face darkens. As do her limbs, until they appear even more horribly stick-like, completing her transformation into a blackened and terrible spectacle. As if the new darkness is spreading outwards from the shadow that transforms Flo, the very room dims to its corners. When Flo speaks it is Tony’s voice that barks from her withered mouth. ‘He broke your teeth, bitch!’

Turning owl-like, Flo’s head swivels to stare at Jess. With her hair so wild, the client resembles a mad conductor whose hands have risen to draw the highest note from an orchestra.

Jess rises to her feet in one unnaturally swift movement, a floppy marionette pulled erect by the puppet-master and made rigid once more.

Flo drops her hands and Jess is released from the force that held her and dragged her upright. Mouth bleeding heavily and eyes frantic with terror and disbelief, when she regains her feet and balance, she staggers sideways and nearer to the fireplace.

Tony remains still and agape below the monstrous elderly figure hovering in thin air.

Jess finds and meets Flo’s infernally white eyes. The stare is held and a moment of understanding passes between the two women.

Jess steps to the fireplace and snatches up the barbed iron poker.

Flo speaks again. In Tony’s voice. ‘Pulled your hair out! Spat in your fucking face!’

Tony totters, paralysed by the suspension of reason and natural law within the living room. He’s stricken by hearing his own voice continue to issue from the aged form hovering in thin air. He can only blink in wonder and horror at Flo.

As if within a solar eclipse, Jess is briefly silhouetted against the windows overlooking the garden and she also grows as dark as her client. Her eyes and her teeth in that bloodied mouth are white and wild and horrid against the shadowy surround of her face. From her hand, a weapon protrudes.

A mother cornered, her child threatened, Jess twists around, the speed of her movement startling. Unleashing a primal, inhuman shriek, she whips the poker into Tony’s head, hard. Flesh and bone absorb the impact, producing a sickening thud.

Jess’s face quivers. Her eyes possess a malevolence unbearable to look upon for long. She swings the poker again, from the waist, throwing her entire back and shoulders into the blow.

A dull coconutting sound ends wetly inside the living room.