Who: Toby Randall [narrative] What: Girl rolled a nightmare, hell's coming to town. Where: London's streets --> Toby's flat.
She’d had nightmares that began like this.
It was dark, it was long day finally ending, so much of the same for Toby who kept keys habitually lodged between fingers, splayed out like spiky furious fist with her own curled uncomfortably round them, and hand swinging loose at sides. It was the same tired coat too thin for the winter’s worst (Russia, they said, on the radio that was morning’s background noise to the coffee and baby ritual of getting out of the flat and to work on time. Toby spat toothpaste and disgust into the sink both at once) and the bag slanted across her body with shabby wallet shoved inside inner pocket of clothes -- she’d had it lifted too many times to count, first on her own in London without Q’s lanky threat lurking alongside, broad enough to blot out thieves’ desires. The Diner was at her back, was shadowy presence gone unfamiliar in the way street light painted it, outside only and there was the rattle of empty bottles in the alley beyond, night’s worth of cigarette stubs scattered in the puddle.
She turned her head. Shiver of apprehension skated light as laughter down her neck, tightened her shoulders. Her fingers flexed; the keys made a metallic sound.
It was footsteps behind her. Just out of rhythm, just out of sync, footsteps that were firmer, harder, louder, closer behind her as she quickened her pace -- was nothing behind her when she spun in the glare of a streetlamp, was few minutes’ quiet and juddering heart-rate mercifully slowing until they were back, until she was walking too fast to be walking at all and the bag slammed against her hip with each stride and the footsteps were collective rather than the singular pattern of just one man, just one follower.
The flat; ex-council block and hunched over malevolent and sulky-dark, no windows lit (and that could have been odd, would have been lips-to-forehead whisper of something is not right here -- but head gone light and dizzy with the shallow-panicked breaths of fear come home, come roosting, all personal demons shivering out of the woodwork and clustered at her back) and Toby’s hands shaking, fingers too terrified-stupid to turn the right ones, to unlatch the door, to get in quick and keep them out. She fled; past the first door and into the corridor, and her own door with its line of locks studding the whole, bristling like brass knuckles in the hall light’s dim glow. The keys rattled and swayed, caught against numb fingers, the locks scraped and caught, reluctant to let go; breath quickened, caught, was red-ribboning fire in her chest and throat, was lurching sickness in stomach at the footsteps coming along the hallway.
The door slammed open, her feet skidded with sudden purchase and falling, gasping at air, stumbling into her own flat and the door shoved closed behind her, body-weight pressing against it to keep what was out out as the bolt rattled home just as fists began slamming awful tattoo beyond. It was these drums that played out awful homecoming, the flat dark, the flat dim and walking from room to room to find no Lily in it. Lucas, and Toby’s mind reaching, stretching to raveled end for possible hope and closing over figments, snatches of thin possibility. Room to room and no sign, neatly folded quilt on back of couch and no crib in the spare-cupboard-closet of a room that was the bedroom, just the bedstead and rumpled quilt and nothing else and if it had hurt before, the way her heart threw itself against her ribcage it was nothing to the slow squeeze of air out of her body, to the frenetic searching, overturning furniture and flinching with each renewed assault on the front door.
The locks stood testament to money spent; Toby (hoping, pleading, note written in the margins with blunt pencil scrabbled from kitchen drawer) crawled under the bed and curled knees to chest, journal tucked beneath her cheek with the rhythm-rattle of ’they’re back’ and ’nothing’s changed’ and ‘where is she’ the cadence of the creditors, his creditors come claiming what was owed.