Forwards. Backwards. Forwards. Backwards. A pause.

She wipes the sweat from her brow, blinking hard.

_Again_.

Forwards. Backwards. Forwards-

The door to the barn creaks open. Her head snaps around.

“April.” She sighs. The saw clacks as it hits the workbench. April peers through the door, looking unsure. “I thought I told you to go to bed.”

“Are you almost done?” She asks, glancing past the woman. Nina shifts slightly as to block the table from view.

She wipes her hands on her jeans, “Yes. Just go back to the house, I’ll be fine.”

“I’m really sorry.” April says, lip jutting out. “I can help.”

“You can’t.” Nina says and steps over to the woman. April traces her every move, though she stays entirely still. Like a deer in headlights, _or a hound sizing me up_.

April blinks once, twice. “You’re angry with me.”

Nina leans against the door, still trying to block out the rest of the room with her body. “A little.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“I know. Go back to the house.”

“I want to stay.”

“No you don’t.”

“I want to watch.”

Nina almost flinches at that. “Don’t say stuff like that.”

April brings a steadying hand up, resting it on Nina’s shoulder. Then her fingers dart higher. She fiddles with the short hairs on Nina’s nape.

Nina shivers and pulls away. “I have to get back to it.”

“Alright.” April says, practically mouthing the words. She is a ghost, a half-dead thing, a memory, a curse.

It feels dangerous to turn her back but Nina does so anyway. After a moment, she hears the rustle of hay underfoot and the creaking of the door as April leaves.

She returns to her station, only then realising just how awful it all smells. The chemicals and the hot metal mix with her sweat and the scent of bodies.

The night is cold. The job is long.

The workbench had been her father’s. There are saw marks and scuffs and bits of glue scattered on the surface. She tries to think of her father now, about his plot of land on the farm. It had been a bright spring day when he was buried. She had always loved the way he could mimic birdsong, so the birds had mimicked him from the trees when he was put below the ground.

She focuses on him as she moves backwards and forwards, sawing deeper.

Nina tries not to retch when it splits in half. Sinew and muscle are spread over the workbench, slowly staining it red.

Distantly, the gasping and weeping of April’s phone call plays in Nina’s mind again. Nina had been washing up when the phone buzzed. April didn’t call unless it was urgent. The woman had picked up her phone immediately, water and suds coating the screen.

She had known something was wrong when she heard the panting.

April’s small voice had said, “_You need to come get me. I’m in trouble.”_

“What kind of trouble?” Nina had asked, but she already knew.

_“Please Nina, I need you.” _

“Who was it this time?”

_“No one. A- a man. He was going to hurt me, Nina. I promise.” _

The barn creaks and whistles with the wind. Nina shakes her head, divesting herself of the memory.

She picks up the pace, sepeararing limb from limb. Evil from evil. She imagines a blind, just world, unattainable to her.

Backwards.

She pictures her father on his final day, when he said he would leave the farm to her.

Forwards.

And when Nina blinks, she can see April’s strange hazel eyes boring into hers.

_Again_.