Joan Thursday's head is spinning. Opening her eyes, she is greeted by the dead eyes of a disembodied head. "Bloody hell!" She yells as her heart shifts into high gear. "A mannequin head? A bald mannequin head? Where the hell am I? Why is my head so groggy?" As she attempts to stand she feels lightheaded and has to sit down immediately. "Was I drugged?"
She forces her brain to work, and she begins to remember…
Under the light of the house with Morse. Being held by him, kissing him…"Did that really happen? Yes."
Coming home, Mum hugging me so hard the air left my lungs. She and Dad were so relieved to see me. "God, I missed them."
I remember saying goodnight. Getting into bed, closing my eyes and falling asleep. I dreamed…What was it? She blushes, as the images come into focus and she remembers being in his bed, sleeping. Then, he was there. Endeavour, laying next to her, up on one elbow, the other hand touching her hair. She threw her arms around him like a school girl. He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, then they were kissing, limbs wrapped around each other, smiling, laughing. Morse laughing? Limbs?
Her eyes have adjusted to the dim light of the room and she looks upon a sea of limbs, ladies arms with bright red nail polish, men's torsos and feet with shoes still securely on. "What a strange room…Like a battlefield at the end of the war - a war waged by magazine models."
As her memory returns her blood pressure rises and she feels sick. A foul smell. There was a man, holding one of her hankies against her nose, she struggled, then everything went black. She feels like she is drowning, gasping for breath, trying to swim to the surface, but never getting closer to a light, far above her…She was at the edge of death. "My God, I almost died."
Anger bubbles up inside of her. "No one is going to ruin this. No one. I love him… the way he looks at me, that smile, one corner of his lips lifted slightly, head angled downward…His lips. The way we fit together." She allows a ripple of pleasure to shiver up her back and lets out a subtle moan. "No one, no one is going to take this aways from me."
She pushes her body through the plastic body parts, toward the door, which has a small window. Through the window is a very dim light, provided by an emergency exit sign. "I can get out of here. How hard can it be to escape this closet?" She rubs her eyes and forces her mind to clear away the fog. Looking out the window she sees a mishmash of things, a Tyrollean house facade, fake trees, a dining room table, costumes on a long bar with feathers, satin, sequins, and taffeta poking out this way and that.
"Am I in a theatre? Beneath the stage? A prop room?"
She looks around at the mannequin war debris, then glances upward. Suspended above her head is an enormous white spider's web. It seems to move, like laundry on the line with a gentle breeze moving it forward, back, up, down. A small hole begins to appear in the web and out pokes a hairy spindly leg, much like a picture of a tarantula she saw once in a National Geographic.
"Blimey! I must act now."
She moves slowly, calmly. No need to announce her presence to the hairy monsters. She grabs a particularly sturdy leg. "It's just a regular window. How hard can it be to break it? I won't have too many chances to strike the window." She breathes in and holds it. A spider has dropped through the hole which has grown larger. Another follows. Then another…
"Here goes nothing." She braces her feet, pulls her arms backward, preparing to slam the leg into the window. Spiders are now dropping in clumps through a hole in the web. Something brushes her leg. "Calm, breathe." She hits the window with the plastic leg and the glass shatters. "Thank God." The spiders are now dropping, on her head, the floor, and climbing up her legs. She looks out the broken window and sees the flash of a torch. Staying as still as she can she yells "Over here. Get me out of here."
Around the corner comes a tall figure wearing a hat, a mack…