Opening his eyes jimmy was aware of a thick smoke filling his nostrils, he suddenly sat up, only then noticing the shackles binding him to the rotten bed. A woman’s voice spoke in the darkness “you will perish as the others did”. Shocked he followed the voice and saw a figure sitting in the darkness. He squinted and tried to focus but he couldn’t make out much. He tried to speak “what? Who are you?” But it only came out as a croak. Silence decended as jimmy tried to work out what was going on, how he got here. Out of nowhere the woman started laughing, a high, shrill, long cackle of a laugh and then she spoke again, barely a high whisper “I am the only one”. She stood up then, slow and wearily, bones creaking and grinding. She approached him slowly. Nearing the bed she staggered downward uneasily and came up with a bundle in her right arm. She stumbled up and took a breath and then made the rest of the way to the bed, and jimmy. Now above him jimmy saw a very old lady. Thin, greasy white hair, a wrinkly face as old as time itself and eyes, sad and desperate eyes. From somewhere a flash of recognition lit up his brain, but faded as quickly as it came. He tried to reach for it but his mind was too groggy still. Still above him, closer than before, the old lady reached into the bundle in her right arm and then held aloft in her left hand a mask. Suddenly the flashes of memory burned brighter in jimmys mind and he lay still and silent with shock. In the old woman’s right hand she revealed the final part of her little bundle, a long, curved, wickedly sharp knife, thick at the base, thin at the point. After a pause she raised the knife, high above jimmys gut and held it there. She then applied and fixed the mask to her face. Only then bringing the knife down with a deadly force and speed. And then jimmy remembered all. It came back in a rush, a flood, it only took one moment, it overwhelmed him, choked him, suffercated him, drowned him all at once.

Leaving school, the shop, catching the eye of the pretty assistant, trying things on, mucking about, trying on the mask. And then the blood, the screams, the death, destruction and time, so much time. The young pretty assistant again, now old and haggard and slow, the mask again. The knife and the sweet release of death. And as the knife plunged through his soft flesh he cried with relief at this easy death.

He died.

And then he drew breath again.

Reborn.