Chapter 1
She'd known before she sprang, claws drawn, flesh tingling. Another mistake. Another nameless, shapeless fear that held no sway here, only whispered and beckoned in the darkness on the edge of sleep.
But it was too late. She was invincible, or at least felt it – each movement almost predestined, every sense fine tuned to the point of precognition.
Funny, then, how she hadn't seen the wall. Again.
Robyn winced, both at the impact and the crunch of skin and bone against plain, rough plaster. Normally she prided herself on silence – the natural stealth possessed by unpopular people, the kind that leaves you alone in a crowd and invisible under the spotlight – and she couldn't help feeling that her louder side, as if in revenge, chose only the most inappropriate moments to emerge; too late for the neighbours and their oh-so-perfect children, who by now would have thanked the God in which she didn't believe for making them real-life Barbie dolls and settled down to dream saccharine chick-flick dreams, too early for her splitting headache. She wondered whether if she pretended to be dead they'd finally leave her alone – people cared so little now, surely they'd ignore her properly once all the flaws took flight and there was nothing left to complain about – and lay back, gazing up at the million little Robyns playing between the crystalline teardrops of her junk-shop chandelier.
She hated that thing. Once, a long time ago, a little girl had watched its shining eyes wink and thought it pretty, but now the image of the babe corrupted only tormented her, each rainbow-hued clone stabbing "Failure" like a glass dagger into her blackened heart.
Robyn sighed. Life sucked, no doubt about it, and not even the omnipotent benevolent smile of Johnny Depp gazing down from the accursed wall could mask the fact that she was a freak. What, for instance, had been all that "claws" nonsense? She knew she was weird, but surely she was still human? And yet...
No. That was stupid. Real people don't have claws. Logic had to prevail – the ugly red grazes that slashed her knuckles were just that; a childish accident. Even now they had begun to fade away. It was a dream, that was all. Nothing more.
