*
Celia was walking along the lane. Night was settling in. It was not yet completely dark and she saw the country lane clearly as she walked it. She had stumbled. She remembered running and falling and then nothing. Everything had become darkness and yet, here she was, walking down a quiet country lane.
The farmhouse. She remembered running towards a large farmhouse at the far edge of the field and it all slowly came back to her. But where was the farmhouse? Where was she now? Light was fading fast and the air had that feeling of a summer’s night, that heaviness that bordered on mugginess.
She walked to the end of the lane. It came to a road that she thought she knew but then, everything looked different. The whole surroundings looked alien to her and the place she thought she knew had changed. Familiar vistas of tress and fields were no more. Now it was rows and rows of housing. Heavy street lighting ran along the main road at close intervals. What had once been darkness and unlit was illuminated. And the cars that raced by looked different and strange.
Celia walked along the path. A lay-by, that recess from the main road. She remembered it clearly now. She remembered the car stopping. She remembered her husband Simon getting out. There had been muffled sounds of a conversation, and then gunshots. That’s right, there were gunshots.
Her mind was trying to piece together so much. It was frustrating. But she was walking, had to keeping moving. She had to keep to this path as if her whole soul had been taken over and was being controlled remotely. But what disturbed her was that her shoes didn’t make a single sound on the concrete path. Not a single click or sound of feminine heels was heard.
There was a man standing up ahead. He was immaculately dressed in a diner jacket and trousers. He wore a crisp white shirt and a velvet bow tie. He looked so very dapper. But as she drew closer she saw that his right eye was missing and a tiny rivulet of blood was staining his shirt, the crimson mark expanding with the passing seconds.
“Ah, Celia,” said the loveless voice of Simon. “How nice of you to join me.”
Celia felt her body shudder in abject fear. He sensed her unease and smiled.
“Don’t worry, I have no intentions of harming you,” said Simon as Celia stopped dead in her tracks. “You see, we are both dead; so very dead. You have been dead a long time. Your boyfriend stumbled on my corpse as he fired a shot at you and the bullet hit you in the back of the head. You died instantly. Your lover was found cradling you when the police arrived, the gun that took your life still in his hand. He confessed to everything. He was a blubbering wreck. He was found guilty of my murder and was hung. Just take a look.”
Suddenly Celia was in an old building. A grey and lifeless room. She saw the noose and a trap door and a small, neatly dressed man standing there, waiting. She saw Dennis being walked into the room by two prison guards, the chaplain close by, reading out the final prayer. His hands bound behind his back, the hangman smiled to put Dennis at ease. Legs strapped together. The hood was snapped on swiftly, the trap door sprung. The long drop to eternity. The rope pulled tight, and then a creak as it took the weight of its gruesome burden.
The scene suddenly vanished. And she was back standing beside a main road, stood in front of Simon.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Celia,” said the rapidly decomposing Simon. “You really shouldn’t have killed me.”
Simon smiled then turned away. He faded into the night and she was left all alone. Alone in the darkness and in a place that she both knew and yet didn’t know.
Cars raced by and the night gradually gave way to the first signs of daylight. Simon was right. She shouldn’t have done it. She shouldn’t have plotted his murder. And now there was nowhere else to go, and as she finally faded away, she knew that she would live this night over and over……for all eternity.
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