The cleft of a hill blocks a miserly sun, rising slow and lazy. Her thin smock clings chill and comfortless and yet she does not move. The cold wraps around her goosepimpled skin, blue, tightwoven. And in her clenched hand the phone is buzzing. She holds it tighter to feel its motion and moves deeper into the undergrowth. Scratches are innumerable, skin tingling with pain, blood and water. Sleepy birds an anxious rustling somewhere deeper in. She shivers and cleaves tight to the ground no longer certain that this is any fun. 

Am I scaring you yet? The message from an unknown but known sender. It’s been going on all night this game, this cat and mouse thing. Touch table tennis, dirty words and dirt all over her body, her mind satiated with shifting equilibriums. Fear. Focus. Shared imperatives to arouse and thrill, but going too far now. Is it becoming murderous or is that just more of the resonance?

She can’t get out. He knows she is there, huddled in her dirty damp dress, shivering under the shrubs. Sparrows are starting to chatter, the slope still blocks the light, but light is coming stealthy and toxic. Sparrows and light together they betray her. Dress rending a sad small cry as she creeps slowly higher and sees a crouched form. It creeps menacing slow in the paling darkness as the night gently seeps away. A rock and a break in the shrubs to her right and she reaches out and throws herself into the open. 

He sees only a screaming banshee as she jumps down from her small vantage point, unseen rock in hand. The blood seeps slowly into his eyes as he cries out but he cannot remember the safe word. She raises her hand again and brings down the rock hard so close, its mass splitting her nails and grazing his head. He looks up at her fury, mouth gaping and lap wet. Into his open maw she drops a handful of stones and damp earth. From his open hand she takes the car key and walks out into the rising sun.