We were in a small freezing room, devoid of furniture apart from a gurney that looked like a relic from a haunted asylum horror flick. Undaunted, Vic had been pummelling my bruised flesh and stretching my bones with such a sustained ferocity that I was at points wishing that I really was dead.

“You’ll feel better in the morning,” was all he would say. I was lying under a thin cover stark naked. It was freezing and my teeth would have been chattering were it not for the biting cold.

“My mother always told me to live in the present,” I moaned.

“You never knew your mother and I’m beginning to doubt you ever even had one. Oh, by the way, keep your door locked, you and the blond geezer, what’s his name? Rudy isn’t it? Especially him.”

“What about all that owe you stuff Vic, are you planning to off us tonight in an all singing all dancing show of just how grateful you are?”

“Rose, haven’t you noticed what tonight is?”

“Go on, amaze me.” I winced as he dug his fingers deep into the meat of my shoulders.

“Lock the fucking door, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”

I pondered this with a sinking of spirits that I thought had already flat-lined.

“What if it doesn’t hold,” I said eventually.

“Well that would be an end to all your problems wouldn’t it? Now hold still.”

I felt the slow trickle of something warm across my back and didn’t bother asking him what it was. A low rumbling sound filled the room until a heavy weight fell across me muffling my hearing but it didn’t matter because I could feel it, like a cat’s purr but the effect was chilling. A warm lassitude spread through my limbs as though I had been injected with something. A little voice at the back of my mind was shouting something about danger, but I paid no attention and willingly embraced oblivion. My body had sustained some serious damage and I was at the end of my strength. I had to trust that Vic would help me and with that thought I blacked out.