Jesus! One side of my face was on fire, the flesh was disintegrating away, and my bones were pressing into the damp ground. The smell of burning stung my nostrils. Only when I brought my hands up in a panic to try to put the fire out did I realize that my skin was not burning. I looked at my hands in shock. Shards of sharp glass stuck to my palms and they were dripping with blood.

What the fuck!

Something was burning though.

Dazed, I turned my head. A few feet away my car was on fire. I watched it blaze towards the sky. Even in my disorientated state I could see how beautiful it was. Suddenly, I saw Stanley’s face rise up from the seat. It was full of horror and his mouth was open in a scream of terror. I hadn’t worn my seatbelt so the force of the crash had blasted me through the windscreen, but he was wearing his, and now he was trapped behind it and couldn’t get out.

I had to get to him.

I tried to lift my body, but it wouldn’t cooperate. As though I had turned to concrete. I couldn’t feel anything. Not even the biting cold. I tried to crawl as excruciating pain ratcheted though my body, a hundred different places at once. A single cry bubbling up inside.

“Stanley!” The word tore from my throat. “Stanley!” I screamed and crawled onwards, grabbing at what I could of the glass and tarmac beneath my hands. He was saying something, but his face was bubbling and melting.

“God, no.”

I filled my lungs with freezing air and went to drag myself up. It was like being stabbed in every part of my body, but not an inch could I move. Sweat poured out of my body as I pounded my hand on the ground in frustration. In agony, I watched the slight silhouette of the man who was more of a father than my own had been, collapse and fall out of view.

“This is a dream. Just a nightmare,” a voice in my head screamed. I began to beat at my own body.

Wake up, wake up, Brett. Wake the fuck up. Now!

I jerked awake in the darkness of my room. Sweating. Coughing, and clutching at my chest for dear life. I shot out of the bed, and such pain racked my entire back that my knees gave way underneath me. Grasping the bed, I stopped moving and stayed still, my teeth gritted. I just had to wait for the spasms to pass. They always did. I just had to be patient. To wait. The pain dulled to a bearable throb, but the dream remained vivid.

It would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Beads of sweat dotted my forehead, and misted on my chest from the nightmare. I glanced at the digital clock by my bedside. Only a few minutes past two in the morning. I had put myself to sleep barely forty-five minutes earlier. The thought of the long night still ahead made me groan quietly in misery.

With a sigh, I rose from the bed and hobbled over to the window. Seven months ago I was still crawling on my hands and knees to get to it, so this was progress, and I was grateful for that.

I opened it to allow the cool autumn wind in. Leaning against the pane I inhaled deeply, and tried to put the sickening images out of my mind. It was so still and quiet I could hear my heart beating. There was a wedge of moon in the sky. It cast its ghostly blue light on the flat wild landscape and made it seem magical. I closed my eyes and remembered the first time I saw this scenery. I could not connect with its raw untamed nature, or its complete isolation.

I was not a country boy. The hustle and bustle of the city was in my blood.

And yet I could not, not buy this fortress. Some primal instinct would not let me walk away from it so I acquired it. I imagined keeping it for a few years, then divesting it for a profit. Little did I know it would become a place where I would hide like a wounded animal from the world.

The revving of a car engine in the distance jarred me out of my thoughts.

I opened my eyes and looked out, past the massive iron gates. I watched a bright red Porsche zoom up the hill. One by one the two gates swung open, and the car pulled up at the courtyard below. The passenger door was pushed open, and a pair of glittery heels landed on the cobble stones. It was followed by long, ivory legs.

Then my wife of nearly a decade lifted herself out.

She looked stunning in a silvery mini-dress. Waves of silky long blonde hair blew in the slight breeze as an intoxicated laugh bubbled from her lips and rang out into the quiet night. I watched as the man at the driver’s seat threw his door open and strolled over to her. He had dark hair, which he had slicked back, classic Mediterranean good looks. Dressed in an expensive suit. Something about the way he moved told me he’d never done an honest day’s work in his life. His life was spent servicing rich, lonely women.

Slamming the passenger door shut behind my wife, he thrust her roughly against the sleek metal and she immediately raised her knees and opened her legs wide. He pushed his hand between her thighs and after a few seconds, thrust it upwards so violently, her head jerked back. In the moonlight her mouth was a dark O of shock and pleasure in her ivory face.

It seemed almost impossible to think of her as Stanley’s only daughter, his Princess, the only real love of his life. He would have died for her. The day I married her, he cried and told me I had fulfilled his greatest dream.

The dark-haired man began to pump into her, fisting her so roughly it was as if he wanted to tear her apart, but her cries of pain mixed with pleasure rose like wings in the night air.

She’d finally found a man after her own heart.