I don't know how long this is going to be or if I am going to continue it. I have no idea why I wrote this three weeks before my exams but oh well... enjoy!


His knuckles reflected off the wall as his hand juddered away from the untainted point of infliction; he cursed the brick's steadiness and the deep throbbing in his fingers. He kicked out for good measure, feeling the shuddering crack of his toe against the hard surface. Screwing up his face, he mentally stabilised himself before the next uncontrolled assault on the inanimate object. Somehow he could almost see her crooked smirk in the crevices, and thus surfaced a snide snarl of contempt, not unlike that of a pit-bull in a feeding frenzy. Somehow he could almost see her auburn tresses mirrored in the dispenser machine along side, somehow he could almost see-

"Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or to pity you," she drawled aloud, eyebrow pointed, arms crossed.

Jonny lashed around. "Pot, kettle... do I have to finish, Jac?"

Her eyes slid upon his cradled arm, and her frown tightened. "I see you're still working on your anger management issues. Good for you. All that dirty laundry wouldn't sit so nicely in court."

"Ah yes, court. Drawn up a nice little case against you. Lawyer needs a whole cemetery to stash the skeletons in your dark, perverse, little closet," he spat. "They'll soon see how unfit you are to be a mother."

Her fists were drawn taut by his words; she stepped menacingly closer, elbows brought in perpendicularly, before a bed smashed her into Jonny's chest.

Side pounding, she sensed the soft bounce of his careful reflexes, and the rich sensation of skin against skin, and then the disapproving push on her shoulders as their contact reached more than a second. Her head spun for a moment. She could barely take in his disgust. The ward's bed parked itself next to them, via a red-faced nurse who had begun to apologise as if his life depended on it.

But then as the seated patient swam into complete view, she stiffened, felt the air turn hot. It must have been an infinity in which she merely stared, sunk too far into disbelief to resurface. She wondered if Jonny would notice.

Before she knew it, the wheels had twitched, squealed, and slithered off, both nurses having followed suit, leaving her alone to collect her screaming thoughts.

"What can I say? I learnt from the best," she muttered just to fill the empty silence.

She slid cautiously through the doors and back to the ward.

Jonny handed the case to Mo. "This is Ms Burrows, collapsed after a long haul flight from India-"

"Paula, please."

"Paula," he corrected himself, "experienced chest pains shortly before admission and has had shortness of breath for-" He looked searchingly at her for an answer.

"A week." She left him no ambiguities.

"A week," he repeated, "which is why she's been shipped in to us-"

"Other than the marvellous décor, surely, or the fancy health care, all free of charge-"

"Jac," Jonny hissed reproachfully, his chin jutted. Jac threw him a glare. A nauseatingly charming smile soon appeared.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of insinuating anything, Ms Burrows-"

"Paula." Her mother's beam was of equal sweetness.

Her eyes thinned and she paused. "-Paula." Her suppressed fury revealed itself as a bitter smirk on her features. "But I don't believe in coincidences."

The shot shattered the glass window. Twinkling fragments clicked on the gray floor.

The second was merely an instant after. It failed to penetrate.

The next five didn't.

Blood welled a course amongst the dead, and shrieks through the body of movement.

Paula wrenched out words amidst the screams, "Do you now?"

Her mother's grave gaze was almost slapped from her.