The veins in Tommy’s face and neck began to bulge as the copper wires tunnelled along them. Dozens of pin-prick holes opened up as each sharp metal thread pierced and nicked the blood vessels as they squirmed their way through, thin trickles of blood running down the boy’s skin. As he continued to watch, he saw Tommy suddenly gasp, his body, entwined with cables, stiffening against the wall for a second.
“Tommy?” Malcolm screamed, certain he had just witnessed his friend’s death. “Tommy – what’s happening?”
HUNGRY…
Both boys reacted as they each heard the voice booming inside their heads. The torch began to flicker wildly, flashing on and off, sometimes bright, sometimes barely more than a tepid glow. Amongst the strobing, Malcolm screamed as Tommy bucked and thrashed, blood now pouring from the pinprick wounds. His face seemed to be imploding - his cheeks hollow, eyeballs bulging in their sockets. A crackling sound filled the corridor as all fluids were drained from Tommy’s body, and his skin, now desiccated and barren, fell from his bones in leprous flakes.
As the last of the torch’s light guttered, Malcolm stared in silent disbelief as the wall behind Tommy split wide open, wooden laths puncturing his lifeless body like teeth and swallowing his pal whole before the wound healed over as if nothing had happened.
The torch flickered out.
Malcolm was left hanging in the darkness, the last vestiges of his strength almost gone. He felt something touch his foot and screamed out the remnants of his sanity along with the contents of his bladder as unseen coils wrapped themselves around his legs and pulled him through the floor.
PART TWO
18 MONTHS LATER…
9
The Monday morning sun was blazing through a chink in the bedroom curtains. Roger gently stroked the smooth curves of the woman’s hip as she dozed on her side, her warm back towards him. He nestled closer to her, relishing her heat and softness, his ‘morning-glory’ probing between her thighs, his mouth nibbling gentle kisses at her neck. The scent of her dark-brown hair and the faded remnants of her perfume filled his nostrils as he felt her push back against him in return.
Lisa stirred, rolling over to face him, a blissful sigh slipping from her lips.
“Good morning, baby…”
Oblivious to any concerns of morning breath, she smiled and kissed him, wrapping her fingers around his stiffness.
“Mmm…I think someone’s pleased to see me.”
Roger pulled her tight against him, pressing his lips to hers, his tongue keen to find its mate. Lisa quickly shook off her ‘just woken’ lethargy and climbed astride him, eager to feel him inside her again…
*
After the crash, Roger had spent two months in hospital recovering from his injuries: two broken ribs, a busted nose, fractured skull, shattered kneecap, a ruptured aorta and an amnesia that had shredded all memories of the accident.
Lisa had been a nurse on his ward, attending to his needs several times a day until he was well enough to be sent home. From the start, there had been an obvious attraction between them which, as Roger’s condition improved, blossomed into a flirtatious repartee that, although never crossing the boundary of professional conduct, was still energised with a spark that made it clear to both parties that this was more than just mere banter. Once he was out of the hospital, the couple were free to pursue their relationship.
Roger hadn’t been on a date since Rachel. The trauma of discovering that the girl whose shoulders had carried the weight of his future dreams was not the innocent virgin he had naively assumed, and the manner in which he found out – in all its deep-throat glory – had built a wall around him which no woman had since been able to scale.
Until Lisa.
Roger wasn’t sure whether his ease with her was because he felt he had come to know her so well after his weeks in the ward - or because of the one other casualty of the accident: his gift.
Since he had first come round in the intensive care unit, he knew his ability had left him. He couldn’t really explain how he knew; it wasn’t as if he’d had any chance to try his powers while he was bed-ridden and connected to a dozen beeping monitors. He just seemed to sense… its absence. It was as if his gift was now something that someone else had and that he had only read about or seen on TV – a thing he was aware of, but not his thing. He struggled to define it any other way and, as the antiseptic-scented weeks passed by, memories of his ability slipped further into the murky recesses of his mind until he barely thought about it at all. Eventually, even the gag-inducing recollections of that night with Rachel had dwindled to little more than the clipped remnants of a long ago nightmare.
The couple’s first date was a Thai meal, a few drinks and back to Lisa’s flat. There was no ‘three dates till we mate’ rule with her - she was hot and horny and, keen though he was, when she made her dishonourable intentions clear, Roger felt the icy tentacles of anxiety creeping into his gut.
Lisa was an attractive thirty-year-old who’d almost certainly had recent lovers and, under the influence of alcohol had hinted at something of a ‘wild’ past. Roger, however, was still a virgin and sex for the first time was as thrillingly terrifying for a thirty-five-year-old as it was a shy and awkward teenager. He figured the best thing to do was to let her do all the work in
