He was five or six paces away – the same distance I would have to cross to reach the pitchfork by the wall. I threw myself towards it, two manic paces and then a great ungainly leap, crashing down into the mulch of straw beside the tumbledown wall and seizing the wooden handle of the pitchfork with both hands; all pain forgotten as the adrenaline flooded me for one glorious instant of utter terror.

I heard him slip. Curse. Slither and tumble as he stepped in my spilled blood and melted flesh.

I didn’t think. Didn’t aim. Just spun and thrust out with the pitchfork, bracing the handle against the apex of floor and wall.

It went into his chest like a table fork into a baked potato. All the tines went through him and a hot spurt of blood spilled down onto my upturned face; his eyes two perfect circles, his mouth opening to vomit up a gout of thick crimson.

He staggered back, the fork sticking out of him like a flagpole. Then he clattered down onto his back, kicked out, and was still. His last breath was an ugly, gurgling sound that I can still hear if I pay attention to my worst memories. And I just sat where I was for a moment, blinking a stranger’s blood out of my eyes, replaying the last moments. I’d killed a man before; a terrible person who had been enjoying the act of my slow murder far too much to be permitted to live. But taking a life should always weigh heavily on a person’s soul and I felt sick and cold as I realized that this person had died at my hand.