Shaken, an incomplete short story…

The grass was crisp with frost against Laura’s cheek as she blinked her eyes open and tried to focus. Against the slope of the embankment, her body felt heavy and numb. Ahead of her, the dissused railway tracks stretched into the mouth of the tunnel like a pathway to hell. Lifting her head sent shards of pain up her neck so she closed her eyes again and tried to still the panic back down. She took a breath, pushed herself up a little with her free hand and winced as her grazed palm connected with rough, frozen ground. Beside her, Anna’s lifeless eyes seemed to mock her efforts to move. Laura met her sister’s dull gaze with all the contempt she could muster.

“You…stupid…stupid…bitch.”

Shifting her other arm from under her, she worked to get the blood circulating again, but in the sub-zero temperature it was all she could do to make her fingers twitch then bend. The blood had dried onto her lip but the metallic taste was still strong. Her tongue moved to where her front teeth had been; her gum felt rubbery and wet. Half closed, her right eye throbbed in dull protest whilst just inches away, Anna’s face was untouched, her effortless beauty held in a perfect moment of wonderment that made her look almost innocent. Almost.

“You stupid, idiotic, shit,” Laura spat through bloodied teeth.

Laura managed to sit up; her whole body screamed with pain, but if she didn’t move soon she was joining Anna. Her mother’s warning had been like a red flag waved in the dark, “Don’t get in a car with anyone you don’t know and don’t accept drinks from strangers.” Anna’s protests that Laura was dull and boring had bugged her so much that she’d got in the back seat of a two door car just to prove the point.

In Kimble Avenue, Maggie Pritchard stared at the clock and calculated again how late her girls were and wondered if the police would think her neurotic if she called.