His hand came away with a speck of blood showing darkly in the light from the dashboard. He slowed down, looking for somewhere to pull over so he could investigate further. He was cursing the bloody idiot who had left their sewing needle in the leather when he experienced the first effects of paralysis. With a sense of increasing dread, he realised that the hands clasping the steering wheel were no longer his to control. His hands, and now the arms attached to them, felt like they belonged to someone else – some godlike puppeteer had replaced his own arms with unresponsive dead weights. His mobile lay within reach, but his hands refused to obey his increasingly frantic demands to call for help. The brake pedal was under a foot that no longer obeyed his command to push downwards. When his lips became numb, his mouth feeling as though a dentist had just injected novocaine into the gums, he began to panic. A cold sweat beaded his forehead and a chill travelled down his spine as his heart began to physically stutter in his chest. He could feel it frantically beating as if determined to escape the confines of his ribcage. A desperate need for air took precedence as the first warning signs of suffocation entered his primal brain; the autonomous action of breathing in, breathing out no longer responding to messages from medulla to diaphragm. It was at this point that he first realised he was going to die, his body frozen into inaction with a mind that remained as sharp as ever. The car continued to creep along the road towards a hedge as his brain screamed a warning that he needed to breathe. With a surreal awareness that this was happening to him, he sat in the warm leather seat, a disembodied passenger in a car slowly forcing its way off the road and into the undergrowth. The engine finally gave up the fight against the obstinate foliage as a wheel sank into a ditch, coughing one last protest before stalling to a halt. Lagan’s heart gave a few massive leaps, a last attempt to keep pumping blood around his body but it was too late. Saliva speckled his lips, already turning blue as oxygen was starved from his system. One last breath escaped his mouth, denying him a final opportunity to cry out as pain spread along every nerve in his body. The headlights illuminated pastureland, glinting off the still black waters of Loch Mhor. It was, in its own way, a beautiful scene but of no consolation as he continued to suffocate, drowning slowly on dry land.

XXXIII SATURDAY 06:11

XXXIII
SATURDAY 06:11

Corstorphine woke from a troubled sleep, scrabbling around beside his bed for the mobile that had finally managed to intrude on his consciousness. He squinted at the number before admitting defeat, eyes too old to focus so soon after wakening, and keyed the green accept button.