The Drop

course, hitting him a couple of times in the body and the side of the head but I couldn’t get him off me and I was starting to feel the heat in my face as he was cutting off my airway. He was staring at me like he was mightily pissed-off I’d disturbed him. He must have known he had to finish me or he’d be a dead man.
    He was still pushing me backwards and we ended up in the living room struggling. He knocked me right back to the far wall and I still couldn’t prise him away. I was kicking out at his shins, trying to knee him in the bollocks and punching him but nothing I did seemed capable of stopping him. Eventually, he virtually lifted me off my feet and I felt the wall slam hard into my back, knocking the wind out of me. His fingers squeezed tighter round my throat. I knew I was in serious shit now. He was going to kill me if I didn’t do something, and quick.
    I snaked my free arm out across the wall and stretched as far as I could, desperate to reach the heavy wooden plaque with its ornately-carved elephants that we’d brought back from Thailand. I’d only nailed it up there a few days ago so I knew it had enough weight. I could give him a smack round the head that would fell anyone and then I could kill the fucker with it. I’d almost blacked out but I was an inch away from it, and he suddenly realised what I was trying to do and gripped me even tighter round the throat. I was choking so bad I couldn’t extend my arm any further. It was no use, I couldn’t reach it. I strained for it once more and felt the back of my fingertips graze it but again he lifted me off my feet then bumped me away from it, slamming my head against the side of the shelf nearby for good measure. I managed to get a punch into the side of his head and it was a good one. He listed slightly, off balance for a moment but kept his grip round my throat and I knew I would black out soon. In desperation, I flailed my free arm out to the opposite side and my hand connected with the only other item in the flat that I could now reach.
    As my hand touched it, I pushed my other palm up under his chin and gouged my thumb into the flesh just above his Adam’s apple. He shrieked in pain and loosened his grip round my throat for just a second. I pushed his arm away and butted him hard in the nose with my head, drawing blood and forcing him back just a little. He blinked as he tried to clear his head and I knew this was my only chance. I grabbed the heavy object from the shelf and, as he came rushing back at me, I twisted my body. His arm was lower than it should have been and I brought my weapon smartly across in a nice, hard, fluid arc, until it crashed into the side of his face with a sickening smash. Weasel-face screamed like I had just put twenty thousand volts through him and the urn I was holding smashed on impact into dozens of sharp pieces, sending a spray of blood into the air.
    Everything seemed to move in slow motion then, including the blood that gushed all over the bastard’s face and slid down the side of his head, but that too was instantly obscured by the huge cloud of ash that followed it. The late Angela Cooper seemed to hang in the air for a second before covering him. The ashes were all over his face like a swarm of insects and he went down screaming, frantically wiping his eyes. He must have been wondering what the hell I had hit him with.
    That was all the energy I had left. I dropped to the floor like someone just took my batteries out and ended up propped up against the wall like a puppet with its strings cut. As the room started to spin and turn slowly black, I was vaguely aware of Weasel-face scrambling to his feet and I thought oh fuck, he is going to finish me now, he’ll have all of the time in the world to do it as well and I’ve nowt left to give, but instead he got up unsteadily, clutching his face, screaming like he was on fire and leaking blood big style. There was a thin shard of china sticking out of the side of his face and all I could think was what a shame I didn’t get the chance to wedge that into his neck. He gave one last shriek and ran from my flat.
    The last thing I remembered, before I passed out, was trying to reach my mobile phone from my pocket and being dimly aware that Laura’s mother had slowly fallen to the ground around me in a great big slate-grey plume of ash; thousands of her component particles now littered my carpet. It was funny; I’d have said she’d be the last person in