Thanks to all those who read and especially reviewed; glad you like the eek factor.
The room Harry found himself in looked as if it had been a badly converted store room, or maybe an old file archive, from a time before, when a room's worth of information couldn't be held on a tiny plastic stick. It did have a window, but the leaden skies just added to his feeling of depression. There was a table, two chairs, both bolted to the floor and a prisoner's copy of the Gideon Bible.
He leant against the wall and peered out the window. Looking down on the street below he watched the cars stopping and starting, weaving in and out of the parked cars, taking turns to crawl another five hundred yards of their day's journey.
His life he surmised was like a journey, one that he had started at the top of a cliff or gorge and that day by day as time passed he plodded on and on inexorably downwards, further from the sunlight and with no promise anymore that the beautiful mountain stream that he remembered glimpsing at the top was even there at the bottom waiting for him. There were plateaux as the path meandered less steeply backwards and forwards down the side of the cliff; those were the periods of stability in his life, and then there were the cataclysmic drops, where everything changed in a matter of seconds.
That's how it had all begun.
How this had all begun.
How he had ended up here on this awful Tuesday morning.
Ten seconds that had changed everything.
He knew the feeling.
He recognised it instantly.
He had felt it for the first time nearly thirty years ago.
He imagined himself looking back up towards the top of the gorge, tracing the path he had followed, seeing that first drop where the world had suddenly fallen away from him. He knew exactly when it was. That time; when the path plunged him into the shadows, and where no sun reached him for years afterwards.
The first ten seconds that changed his world.
"Come in Cunningham," he'd heard the Headmaster call in response to his quavering knock.
Imagining that sight now still made his stomach lurch, even though he'd blocked many of the details from his memory. He did however remember his mother's best coat, her business like demeanour and that look of overwhelming pain.
He was smart enough to realise his life would never be the same again; the death of his father had had a profound impact on him but even so the journey continued. The path levelled again, the turning Earth finally allowing the sunlight to fall across his path once more.
He didn't want to look back; there were plenty of those dropping places. Tiny moments in time when the world continued to turn for everyone else but where he was cast down, into the gloom; lost loves and opportunities, secrets and revelations, terror and relief. There were so many, some steeper than others. He wouldn't look back; it would only confirm his suspicion that his journeys' end was not that clear and cool mountain stream, burbling through a tranquil meadow but a descent into hell itself.
"Can you get me a new box of gloves please?"
Who could have imagined that that would be the phrase, the words that changed everything?
But they were, and that was another awful Tuesday morning he thought wryly.
If only the new lab tech had done their job properly.
If only his hands weren't so big.
If only she were taller…
If only he hadn't looked
If only…
If only…
But it had happened, ten seconds no more no less but that familiar feeling was back. That feeling that life would never be the same, when all you once thought you knew and understood simply vanished in an instant and all was darkness, and fear and confusion and pain.
"Nikki, Can you get me a new box of gloves please?"
She had shot him a look of course, she wasn't his lackey and they both knew it, but these situations required a response. It was almost mandatory in the quirky and unpredictable relationship rules that they adhered to.
But she was too short to reach into the high cupboard, and his hands were scrubbed and clean ready to begin work. So she had fetched the stool, climbed up and reached for a new box of latex free extra-large. There had been a joke in that once upon a time, but even she had tired of mocking his big hands and sensitive skin.
She had reached up and the sleeves of her scrubs had fallen back, and just at the same instant when he could have been taking the preliminary notes from his new body, he looked up at her and saw what he never wanted to see. What even today he wished had never been there. He saw, and she knew and their eyes connected and the world as he knew it suddenly disappeared.
To anyone else it wouldn't have mattered of course. But he wasn't anyone else. He was Harry and it mattered to him. It really mattered to him.
Four brown marks, one set on the back of each arm, with no doubt the matching thumb print on the front, only he couldn't see that side from where he was standing. She knew he had seen them, she knew he had seen them for what they were. She didn't catch his eye again. Not even when handing over the box of gloves. She knew he knew what they were and how they had got there and for once she had nothing to say.
He knew it was his fault.
Why was it always his fault?
"Answer the question Dr Cunningham!" the words the judge and spoken to him just now rang in his ears.
"Have you ever hurt Nikki Alexander?"
"Yes I have," he ran his fingers through his hair and banged his head lightly against the window frame muttering all the expletives he knew to the rhythm of the banging.