I unwrap myself from the tangle of arms, and look down, and scream.

The camp leader gives me a tour of the grounds. He’s a taciturn tour guide. There isn’t much to show.

The main stone building contains the common room, and the dining hall. The fireplace is crackling, and enclosed by three mismatched armchairs that look like rescues from the tip. A short bookcase at the opposite end of the room is lined with trashy paperbacks. There’s a gas heater and several black leather beanbags.
The wooden cabins aren’t far. There’s three or four, each with two rooms, and a double bed or pair of bunk beds by the window. Squat buildings, like fat toads, painted forest green. Foliage affords the boarders some privacy from the main dirt path that we’re currently on.

He does more than respect my needs for personal space, walking quietly over an arm’s reach away on my right. He’s an out-of-work engineer. He works up here for petty cash on the weekends. He doesn’t meet my eyes.

It was advertised as a rural retreat, a quiet getaway. We’ve booked a few nights. I felt the need to ‘recharge’ but I’m not sure what that means, given the current context. I am trying to ‘getaway’ from life. I’ve brought nothing but a stack of books.

How many other guests staying? I ask.

He shrugs. He has the physique of someone who enjoys life outdoors, with his broad shoulders and tanned skin, even as the clouds are gathering. His dark hair is tucked under a dirty baseball cap. A few, he says.

They’re in the common room that night. It’s a nightly fight for the three armchairs, so worn the stuffing is creeping out of the splits. The short-haired Asian woman is in her mid-twenties and wears owl glasses and a permanent scowl. The man in a leather jacket is either found outdoors chain smoking, or indoors by the gas heater, seeing as he can’t do both at once. There’s a card game I’m not invited to happening by the fireplace, and involving money, of which I have none. Three heads, one silver with greys, are bowed in thought. One has an accent. I excuse myself for the night.

Alex is in bed. We’re not sharing our cabin with anybody, and the lights are off when I let myself in. He asks me if this is what I wanted. Are you relaxed?

He checks, every night, and I’m ashamed that he has to ask. I’m fine. I might do some writing tomorrow. It’s a sign, when I’m happy to write. He nods, satisfied.

The next morning, I wake up with dirt streaks and grass stains on my feet. A not-insignificant bruise blooms on my left calf, a rosy eggplant. I attribute this to my welcome tour until I notice some bloody scratches on my wrist. I don’t recall fighting my way through bracken, or using my arms at all.

It’s a quiet day. I barely leave the cabin, or speak to anyone. The morning mist lingers until early afternoon, washing out the dawn and painting the world obscure. Shadows of shades of grey drift in and out of view. It’s cool and there’s a light drizzle. I pull on an ugly hearts jumper. Dinner is roasted lamb rump with gravy and baby carrots. I write a few pages in the evening and but largely contemplate the direction in which I’m taking my life.

He lets me crawl into the space between his chest and the bed, a cavity I occupy and fill, protected by his web of arms.

The next morning, I unwrap myself from the tangle of arms, and look down, and scream.

Thin wires, looping in and out between my fingers, piercing through the webbing, have fastened my hands together. Someone has stapled my hands. There are staples piercing the back of my hands, through my palms. There are staples running through each fingernail on the right to the corresponding nail on the left. There is barbed wire wrapped around my wrists. I look like I’m fixed in prayer.

My feet are bound together.

I scream until he wakes up.

There’s no blood. It stings when he pries the staples out, when he slides the entire length of the wire through my finger webbing, but it doesn’t bleed. When I forget to stay calm and struggle and panic, my skin tears and tiny rivers run down my arms. I untangle my feet frantically.

I was in the exact same position when I woke up. The same position as I fell asleep in the night before.

I don’t sleepwalk, in reply to Alex. I’m trembling. Even if I did, there was no possible way I could have mobilised in and out of bed. The wire was wrapped so tightly it left sharp crisscrossing indentations, and puncture wounds.

I draw the curtains, leaving the cabin in the dark. I scour the room for objects out of place, drawers open when they should be closed. I scan the carpet and the soft earth for footprints. I call the police.

Hi, you've called triple zero, the operator's voice is female. It is always female. Please state whether you require -

Then it cuts out. Replaced by soft static, and - barely audible - muted tidal breathing. Like someone is holding a cloth over the receiver, and listening. Listening intently.

I hang up.

The engineer is in the middle of his duties (whatever they are) when I catch up to him. He's pacing rapidly down the dirt path, almost as if he's trying to out-walk me. Who has access to our cabins, other than us? I ask.

I've got a master key. But not on me. It's locked away, for emergencies. He looks impatient. Why, have you misplaced something?

The assumption that I've lost something, as opposed to having it stolen, is an underhanded accusation but I am persistent. I have reason to believe that someone has been in my room. Nothing's been taken, or misplaced. Nothing's been broken. That leaves only one way in.

What he does next, I don't expect. He makes a backhand swipe at me; too far for it to come into contact, nor is it intended to land, but the threat is clear. Look, lady - some of us have work to do. He doesn't turn around again.

I can't eat breakfast. My throat is tight as a knot, and desert-dry. I can feel the palpitations in my carotids.

The young hipster Asian woman has just selected a paperback. I clamour over beanbags to reach her, hunching over her, desperate like a beggar. She barely moves a muscle but her eyes flick up over her glasses to take me in.

Hey, I start,  I don't know you very well, but I'm Rebecca. But I was wondering if you'd noticed if someone's been snooping around in your room lately - I think someone was in mine last night, but I can't find any evidence, and the staff won't believe me or help me investigate -

No, she replies, and continues reading.

I think, I say firmly, as we're both female, and both vulnerable, that we should stick together. Especially if there's a creep staying in the cabins, we should really be on alert, and let each other know if there's anything strange going on -

She takes in my unbrushed hair, my red-rimmed eyes, teary with fear. I can't help you, she says, slowly, patronisingly, drawing out every syllable. And I don't want to. If you've been inviting strange men to your room -

I haven't -

- it's none of my concern. Stop trying to make it everyone else's problem.

That night, we double-lock the door from the inside and push the desk in front. It's a flimsy barricade; the desk isn't even hardwood. But we're a bit short on furniture choices, other than the bed. I feel that sleeping is impossible and am convinced I spent the night tossing and turning, semi-conscious, listening to the second hand tick.

Dawn peers around the heavy drapes, still drawn closed. Sleep smooths the furrows out of his forehead. It's amazing that you can look so innocent in the mornings, with the creases and wrinkles gone. He's breathing deep even breaths. I'm wide awake, and I check my wrists and ankles. Nothing out of the ordinary.

My phone emits several low buzzes on the dresser. I haven't checked it in days; wasn't even aware that I had one. There are several unread messages; some alerts from social media updates, some unread emails, three texts from this morning from a number I don't recognise. Strangely, the number's been saved in my address book.

I open the text message. It's me.

It's a photo of me, naked, eyes closed, in a red velvet armchair. My body is distorted, in an unnatural position I could never have maintained awake. My head lolls, unsupported by my neck, in a way that suggests that I'm asleep - heavily sedated.

The next two are also of me.

I check the door.

The desk is two inches out. Not where we left it last night.

I've tried explaining the photos to Alex, over and over again. How I couldn't possibly have taken them myself, achieved that level of ridiculous flexibility, shifted the desk without help, how I didn't even know where the photos have been taken. The armchair, much more extravagant than the salvaged three in the common room, appears to be in some wooden structure, with straw strewn all over the concrete floor. The lighting is poor and it's out of focus but there are hay bales behind the chair in the background. Neither of us have ever been made aware of a barn on the camp grounds.

However it happened, you can't deny that that's you. In the photo. He sounded resigned.

No, I can't. But I can't be held responsible -

I'm sorry. But without you helping someone to get in, it doesn't add up.

The engineer, he has a master key -

It doesn't make a difference. It's not like they dragged you to the barn -

And what makes you think they didn't?

He sighed. Look outside, he said, pointing to the ground.

Even I could recognise my little Size 7 footsteps, one after another, imprinted into the soft mud.

I lifted the soles of my feet. They were caked.

***

It stormed that night. Stratus clouds had been accumulating for days, and the winds had swept them into threatening funnels of cumulonimbus. Rain pelted the cabins with an unrelenting ferocity, and even low-lying trees fell victim to lightening flashes that cut up the sky.

Dinner was soup, of some description. Alex and I were barely on speaking terms. We had spoken to no one else about the photos. The common area was, as expected, crowded, now that no one was at leisure to go outside for a smoke. We were all hostages of the weather. The Asian woman was steadfastly ignoring me.

The camp leader entered via the glass double doors, his windcheater wet from the rain, his stupid baseball cap soaked through. With water streaming down his face, he delivered the bad news: the roof had blown off one of the cabins and was uninhabitable tonight. Ours.

The company in attendance looked at Alex, then at me - on separate sides of the room. Silence. Finally, the Asian woman offered the spare bunk bed in her room (she was occupying the top bunk), but that'd only be enough to fit one of us - she wouldn't hear of us both squishing into the bottom.

Her meaning was clear. Clear enough that I suddenly attracted the alienating, hateful eyes of all the friends I hadn't made in the last few days. I caught the stare of a pair of eyes I hadn't seen before - witheringly cold, and ice-blue like a glacier.

Grab a sleeping bag, said the camp leader. The hay can get prickly.

The garish red armchair was in front of an old wooden desk which an out-of-date computer that still turned on. Skid marks and floor impressions showed me how and where it had been dragged for last night's photo shoot, exposing its final resting position to be under the solitary naked hanging bulb responsible for lighting up the room. The entire space was about the size of a small chapel.

The computer was, by some miracle, connected to wifi. I couldn't risk using my social media accounts, but signed into Steam under Alex's username. One player, thefierydevil, was online.

Hey bro, I typed. I think I'm in a bit of trouble.

Dude. What are you on about?

If anything happens to me tonight, call the police. Just so you know - I love you, alright? Stay safe.

I hit ENTER, and then the light goes off.

***

What happens after this is a bit of a mystery, even to me. I remember crawling into the space under the desk, and hearing heavy footsteps approaching the desk. Someone occupies the armchair, the seat that I had been warming not a minute ago. I try to squeeze by the desk legs at the sides, by the armchair.

Then there's a struggle. A pickaxe is involved. It gets hard to breathe as he closes in on my throat. I see a flash of ice-blue eyes. Then I stab someone with something, feeling it go in right between the ribs, the way we're taught to in school, and wrench it a full 90 degrees, which is not what we're taught in school. He releases my throat and my first breath is freezing cold. It's all a bit hazy. I just keep seeing those eyes.