Creative Writing Course

[Draken]

Ok here 'tis. I've agonised about whether it hangs together but sod it, has to be in this evening, I'm finished with it. Warning: it's quite a bit darker than anything above!

Memento Mori

It was the same dream. She was cold. She was always cold. Shouting and screaming had awoken her: a man’s shouting and a woman’s screaming. Even in her sleep she was aware there was a part of her that sat apart, rational and calm, knowing what was happening as it happened. She thought of it as the ‘now her’. But the person in the dream was the ‘then her’, scared and confused and trying to shut out the terrible knowledge the ‘now her’ held.

She woke, sheened with sweat. It was a proper waking this time, not the ‘then her’ emerging from a dream of sleep into a dream of wakefulness. She sat up in bed and ran a hand through her hair: she felt exhausted. The bedside telephone had stopped the dream before it ran its usual, inevitable course.

She shook her head and reached for the phone, glancing at the clock beside it. “Hello?”

“Hello, is that Natasha Browne? Hallelujah, you’re awake. It’s DCI Morrison.” As if anybody else would phone her at 10 am, just two hours after her shift ended. “We need you in, now. A bad one. Primary school. We’re pulling all the stops out. Get here as fast as you can.”

“Ok,” she muttered. “Give me half an hour.”

Hanging up, she got out of bed and set off for the maisonette’s tiny bathroom. On the way she passed a full length mirror hung on the door of her wardrobe. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of something in it that she should not have: a small figure instead of an adult: a flash of pink dressing gown instead of her grey flannelette pyjamas. She whirled round, her heart missing a beat. She only saw herself staring back, blonde hair tousled, brown eyes wide.

Again she shook her head, “You’re losing it girl,” she whispered to herself. She showered and dressed quickly before switching on the kettle and spilling some Alpen into a bowl. She only had just enough milk for the cereal so had to make do with black coffee. She stirred the spoon distractedly as her thoughts flitted between the dream and what might have happened that morning at the school. She sipped at her coffee and spat it out immediately. Never mind losing it, she thought. I’ve lost it. Stirring salt in my coffee!

She made another cup, found there was no sugar left in the brittle, long-opened bag and had to settle for a black coffee without. She stared out at the bleak, leaden December sky: the day was going badly, and something in Morrison’s tone warned her it would get worse.

*

She avoided the TV news and left her car radio turned off as she drove to the station: something made her want to avoid everything about this day. As she turned right into the station car park she did a double take: for an instant she thought she saw the small figure in the pink dressing gown again. But it was just a coat slung over the handles of a pushchair, swaying as a woman rocked it to and fro

She found out what was happening as she buckled on her body armour in the Tactical Firearm Unit’s storage pod area: a gunman had broken into a primary school brandishing at least one firearm. Shots had been fired, and there had been casualties, but with nobody sure where the assailant was the situation was very confused. There was a buzz among the authorized firearm officers as they laced up their chunky rubberised boots and checked the contents of their rucksacks. But Natasha, always on the edge of things as the only woman in the unit, felt more detached than ever today.

Morrison delivered the briefing: it was brief and vague, which only cranked up the tension further. One team had secured the perimeter of the school and another was working through it room by room. But with woodland backing onto the rear of the grounds there was every chance that the gunman had made off unseen, hence the desperate need to throw every available officer into as wide a cordon as could be maintained. Time was of the essence.

“We need to split up into pairs,” informed Morrison. “We’ve mapped out the most obvious routes through the woods, and we have just enough men…” He caught Natasha’s eye. “I mean, just enough officers to patrol them. If he stays off the paths he can avoid us, but his movement will be much slower: we have reserves from neighbouring forces on their way to help us flush him out in this eventuality.”

Natasha forced herself to concentrate, but couldn’t shake off the surreal distance she felt from events around her. She heard Morrison telling them which pairs would work where, and was faintly surprised that she was to accompany him along the pathway that ran closest to the school. She felt churlish for not feeling more grateful that she would be working with the boss in the thick of the action.

Sergeant Jim Broadstone queried this. He was the most experienced of them all, as he never failed to point out, and had a swaggering matey manner that attracted a clique of the younger recruits to him. He was visibly put out at being told that he was needed as a vital last line of defence: in other words, furthest out from the school.

“This is ridiculous,” he grumbled to one of his acolytes as the team left the briefing room. Quietly enough that the DCI didn’t hear as he strode off ahead, but doubtless meant to be overheard by Natasha. “You know what it’s about don’t you? Browne’s a nice blonde bit of skirt and Morrison’s at that age, I think he wants to get in with her, give her a leg up at our bloody expense.”

“A leg over for a leg up, eh?” quipped someone further back. “I bet our Nat’s a dead cert for that.” The conversation dissolved into laughter.

She ignored them, but couldn’t help but cast her mind back to her final interview with Morrison…