The meanest Flood

said nothing, but kept her tied and confined and in ignorance of what had happened to Rolf she would go to pieces. He thought that if he wore her down like this then she’d be pliable when the time came for him to assault her.
    When the time came! My God, the time had been here all night. Nicole had been assaulted over and over again simply by having this naked maniac in her house. Rolf was assaulted when the man slapped him across the head with that huge dagger.
    But she also knew that if she was going to survive this intrusion into her house she would have to be clever. The man was clearly mad. She would need to talk to him, to win him over, to show him understanding. She would have to pretend to be his friend, even his lover.
    She spoke to him through the flannel and the masking tape. She said, ‘Hello, I wondered when you would come back.’
    The words didn’t get through the obstructions in and around her mouth. She heard the sounds that resulted, what amounted to a long modulated moan. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please take this thing out of my mouth so we can talk properly.’
    He shook his head, an arrogant smile around his lips. He couldn’t understand what she was saying. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He had the heavy dagger with him, hanging from his right hand. So long that the tip of it brushed the floor.
    He took another step towards her. ‘Remember Sam Turner?’ he asked. ‘The detective? He was here a moment ago. Over the street.’
    Nicole wanted to cry. ‘Sam? Here?’ Why would Sam be here? What had this man got to do with Sam Turner? She hadn’t seen Sam in years, hadn’t thought about him for months. She couldn’t imagine any way in which Sam Turner could be mixed up with this madman.
    Sam had been a mess and he’d treated her badly towards the end of their relationship. His drinking and his lack of self-esteem had led him to an attitude of contempt for almost everyone else in the world, and being his woman had meant that she was in the front line of his derision and loathing.
    But he’d let her go. When the crunch had come and he’d eventually transformed her love to a cynical despair, he hadn’t gone into battle. He’d fought against it for an instant and then shaken his head, walked away. Left her with her freedom. Surely he hadn’t come back after all these years to torture her like this, to leave her in the hands of a deranged nutcase with an antique bayonet?
    Nicole felt a whispering breeze pass over her forehead. She was calm. The man with the weapon was outside of her. Perhaps he was close, in the same room, or perhaps he was a figment of her imagination, a dream figure. Either way it didn’t matter. Sam Turner may be in the street or not, he might have been here to save her or to destroy her. He was in the past. Something, someone, she had known. Another of those relationships that had held eternal promise but had resulted only in tears.
    Even her husband, Rolf, with his phenomenological theories, seemed part of another and distant universe. What seemed real was an image from her childhood, a long and empty beach, her mother huddled in a deckchair and her father downwind arcing a Frisbee across the painted sky towards her.
    The picture was like an early video. The colours were not quite true but every detail was known and recorded for posterity. It was something that had already happened and could not be undone. Her mother was reading a medical dictionary, trying to discover if heliotherapy would cure her dermatitis. She was wearing a short flowered skirt with a bikini top and dark glasses.
    Her father was wearing long shorts and open sandals with knee-length brown socks. He’d grown a paunch and accentuated it by wearing his short-sleeved shirt tucked into the elastic top of the shorts. He was still handsome, though. Dashing with his green eyes and dark moustache.
    The Frisbee curved around the sun. It rose and disappeared from sight for a moment before falling, looking for all the world as if it would not reach her. Nicole took a step towards it and at the last moment saw that its trajectory would bring it down in front of her. She dived with her arms outstretched, saw the missile come towards her and grasped it with both hands. Her father laughed and cheered and her mother looked up from her book of miracle cures.
    The man with the weapon took Rolfs pillow and placed it over her face and chest. She tried to shake it off but he