My grandmother had a box that could only be opened with a key.

Honestly, that’s the only way to do it. Now that she’s dead my whole family’s been trying to open it, but it resists everything. Every key they can find has been tested for it, but none fit. They’ve tried to break it open, but it’s too tough even for axes and chainsaws. My family just tries even harder. They’re like that – determined.

I’m not. I’m the timid one, who never auditions for a role in the school play, who never tries to score goals in any kind of sport, who is quite happy to put something aside and move on if I don’t think it will work. I know my brothers are half ashamed of me, but they and my parents still try to coax me out of my square. Because, you know, they hate giving up on anything.

What they don’t know is that I could open the box, if I wanted.

Because before she died, Grandma gave me the key. She gave it to me, she said, because what’s in that box should never ever be let out. She didn’t tell me what it was, just that she trusted me with the key because I wasn’t stupid enough to try to open the box.

Not like the rest of my family.

I’m tempted, of course – it’s difficult not to be. Pandora had her work cut out for her, I know. The world shouldn’t be so hard on her. But it turns out I can be just as determined as the rest of my family. I’ve hidden the key somewhere only I can find it. When I have kids, I’ll choose the wisest of them to pass it on to, and hopefully they’ll do the same, and so on. I know eventually somebody will open the box – that’s just the nature of these things.

But not while I can help it. The key to determination is finding something that’s worth the effort.

My baby has a strong heartbeat, according to the sonographer sweeping her device across the smooth cold expanse of my stomach.

Huh, I said it: ‘my baby’.  My shrink will be pleased, but I feel that something essential of me is slipping away.  They say that it’s normal in pregnancy to feel a little disassociated, or resistant to the changes that sweep over your body.

Turns out they don’t react too well when you tell them it isn’t your baby.  Each time I’ve told someone that, they look at my belly and back to me as if somehow I haven’t worked out what my massive bump is all about.  It’s easier for them to think I’m mad than to acknowledge the truth of my situation.

No, I haven’t slept with anyone in the last year, and no I’ve not drunk or taken drugs in that time.  I explain this in great detail each time, but they all think I got impregnated when I wasn’t looking, or am a pathological liar.

The lady in the light blue scrubs is trying to hide it but I know from her faltering overly cheerful voice and the way the colour drained from her face when she looked at the screen that something has deeply worried her.

I wonder if they’ll take me seriously now?

The tremor transmitted up from the ground through the sturdy wooden chair to Casey’s warm thighs and buttocks roused him from the dead-end contemplation of a conversation with Winona that will never happen. A graceless stab of his hand silenced the drone and extinguished the phosphor light of the late news update discussion panel show thing he had been looking at without really watching and certainly without listening. He had moved too quickly and failed to divine what they had been talking about so he could pretend to himself he had been paying attention instead of dwelling on some unrealised opportunity and thus avoid the self-recrimination of what was a sensible bedtime on a week night for an adult with a nine-to-five desk job.

As the rhythm of railway bogies rattling across expansion joints started its crescendo Casey lifted his great frame upright and steered it down the hallway toward an ironic bedroom scene where nothing more climactic than a change of clothes would or had ever happened. His gaze passed over the sideboard: his wallet, house keys, car keys, portable media player which was now five years old and unable to support the latest audio file formats. It didn’t matter because he could listen to music sufficiently well in the old formats and surely the determining factor was the speaker in the equally outmoded earphones plugged into the superseded electronic gadget. It wasn’t even an issue because he didn’t love the music rather than the memories of better days it evoked and he didn’t need high fidelity equipment to achieve that when he could still be halted on his track by a tinny dress shop monophonic speaker leaking ‘Give Me a Reason to Love You’ by Portishead into an echoey mall arcade.

“I just want to be a woman” ran through his head as the hem of his nightshirt dropped to his ankles and he smiled briefly at the pyjama gender dichotomy of nightdresses cut to essentially the same pattern before his mind wandered onto the track of how he came to be on the verge of negotiating his way into the bed linen when he couldn’t recall ducking through the doorway or the freight train passing out of earshot.

Blink. Open.

She walks into the room and I skip a breath.

Blink. Open.

I look past her but not far enough for her escape my peripheral vision.

Blink. Open.

She scans the room. I look right at her.

Blink. Open.

Our eyes meet.

Long blink. I want to hold it. Burn it in. Open.

She disappears out the door. She didn’t find what she was looking for.

Blink. Damn, it’s already fading. Hell, I’ll just keep ‘em closed.

They’re coming to get me. I can’t. I can’t let them get me. They are taking our people, one by one, and I cannot let them get me.  I’m running, as fast as I can, because if I am captured they will force me to become one of them, turn against my friends, my people.  I’ve seen them do it. It works. People who once I knew turned mad, turned murderous. Gone.

I can’t give up my identity, my freedom, even though my breath is burning in my lungs and there is sandpaper in my throat. My legs are pounding on the ground. Run. Run. Run! There’s nowhere to hide. They’re still after me.

I glance back, once, just once, and feel a thrill of horror. It’s my friend. Madness burns in his eyes. They’ve taken him, turned him against me. I can feel myself weakening, tiring. There’s no hope.

What’s a promise? Does the madness eliminate past promises? I remember a moment, a fleeting moment of stillness in the mayhem, where we swore to each other that no matter what happened, whether we were taken or not, we would never turn each other in.

From my torn throat comes two words, a cry, a plead: “You promised!” He hesitates. Confusion in his eyes, along with the madness. I yell it again, and his name, and briefly he nods. I stagger away. I think he was the only one who’d seen me. I could escape. I could… But I stumble into someone. Someone who puts their hand, like a claw, on my shoulder. It’s over. It’s all over. They have me, and even as stand there I begin to lose myself.

I feel the madness set in.

Tag.

There was nothing.

So ‘nothing’ was there that even to say there was a ‘there’ for it to be at, and a ‘was’ for it to be in, is a careless and confusing exaggeration of the situation.

This situation went on forever; but as there was no ‘was’ in this situation, forever took no time at all. That was fortunate because it meant there wasn’t long to wait for something to happen.

When something did happen it was the first thing to ever happen – though a situation did precede it, that situation was nothing. In exactly the same way as zero precedes one, there was nothing before the first thing happened.

But afterwards, in just a moment, there was space and time and all those good things.

There was a big hill between Hannah’s house and the playground. Hannah liked the hill because when they got to the top Martha was always really tired. When they arrived at the park Martha would settle down under her crocheted blanket and yawn. She tried to stay awake to keep one eye on Hannah, but every day her age got the better of her and she drifted off.

Hannah poked her just to check. Martha half opened one eyelid, murmured, then went straight back to sleep. Hannah smiled and unbuckled her shoes. She knew she wasn’t supposed to have bare feet at the playground, but no one was watching. She took off her socks.

Where to start? The see-saw was fun, but not by herself. The bouncy duck? The slippery dip? The chain bridge? Surveying the options was part of her daily ritual, but she always started in the same place. Stepping lightly onto the tanbark, and watching carefully for hidden dangers to her bare feet, she made her way to the swing.

Once on the black rubber seat she tiptoed back as far as she could go then lifted her feet. Pulling back tightly on the chains she kicked her legs out, then back, out, then back. The swing climbed higher. Hannah closed her eyes.

Swinging like a pendulum she giggled each time her tummy jumped into her mouth. It was almost scary, but she didn’t want to stop. Her hair blew in her face as she swung back, then flowed out behind her when she kicked her legs forward again. She loved the breeze, the feeling of flying. Was this what birds felt? In her mind she soared with the cockatoos she could hear screeching above the trees.

But those noisy cockies had woken Martha. Hannah heard her distressed cry and opened her eyes. She swung once more then leapt high, landing with a thud on the tanbark, leaving the swing clattering behind her. Her unprotected feet hurt now, and she hobbled over to Martha, who was suddenly louder than the birds.

Hannah pulled back the blanket and picked up Martha, shushing and patting her until she stopped crying. Replacing the dummy, she put her back in the pram for the downhill walk home. She glanced up at the still-moving swing while putting her shoes on. She smiled -there was always tomorrow.

The graying gentleman in his brown tweed blazer looked out of place against the cold sterile white room around him.  He was hunched over looking towards his weather beaten hands, his thumb continually massaging the centre of his palm,  but his gaze seemed fixed on some ineffable target miles away.

Looking at him through the two way mirror, Alex didn’t need his years of training to tell him that this was a broken man.  It had been several weeks before they’d managed to track him down, this innocuous and caring GP fending off retirement with his drive to care for others.   In this time the damage had been done, and the casualty rate exponential.

Alex was hoping they’d find a cure for the epidemic in the spindly veins of the man weeping in front of him, but he knew that even protecting the last few survivors would give this man no solace.

We stare at them, across the no-man’s land, and they stare at us.

Two armies, paused on the brink of war. Lines of soldiers, armed to the teeth. The outcome is anyone’s guess. My heart is beating like a drum. The drums of war. I am frightened. I am terrified. I am exhilarated. When will it begin?

The battle cry sounds, and we let loose. There is not enough ammunition. A cannon ball slams into the legs of the soldier beside me, and we salvage it. I’m half horrified by the brutality. We can’t save the comrade, but we can save the ammunition. Heavy bullets arc across no-man’s land, deadly. If they hit right they’re fatal.  But the distance makes accuracy harder and dodging easier. To take down more of the enemy, running out into the feral territory is your best bet. But not when they come out, too. They can’t make it past our blockades, and we can’t make it past theirs, but out there, it’s all a wild melee. Dangerous place, no-man’s land.

Both sides are taking casualties, heavily. The battle is swift. The fighting is fierce. The losses are rapid. We are winning. There is only a fraction of their well-ordered line remaining. There is only a fraction of ours, also, but we are more, we are still organised, we are coolly confident and know what we must do. We have most of the ammunition. They are frightened, and helpless, and full of the stragglers from the back of the line.

We charge into no-man’s land. All ammunition is fired. Fire, fire, fire! Cannon balls hurtle into their remaining, dishevelled ranks. They are going. They are gone. One last cannon ball flies through the air and catches me unaware, but I don’t care, I am leaping and laughing and smiling because we won.

We all shake hands, and get ready for the next battle. Dodgeball is an intense game.

It wasn’t his question that encouraged her to talk, but the look in his eyes. What was that look – compassion perhaps? Delight? No. So she talked, knowing it would come to her in time. He held an apple, a Fuji, her favourite. His eyes on her, he peeled off the sticker and flicked it away. She watched it flutter to the ground and fought a desperate desire to pick it up, to stick it somewhere. She kept talking – fascination? Was that it? No. He opened his mouth to take a bite. His teeth broke the skin sharply. It was fresh, the crunch loud, and tiny droplets of juice spurted onto his fingers. She watched them as she spoke. Too small to form rivulets, they sat there like ladybirds wanting to fly away.

She had stopped talking. He asked her another question and she looked at him once more. Hunger – he was hungry. Was he? He took another bite, eyes still on her. No, that wasn’t how people ate when they were hungry. He was eating slowly, deliberately, chewing carefully and swallowing only occasionally. She noticed his adam’s apple move and almost laughed at the thought of shredded apple passing behind it.

Those eyes – was he angry? Was that a smouldering anger she saw? He bit again and wiped juice and spit away with the back of his hand. The ladybirds disappeared. No, she recognised a softness that didn’t sit with anger.

Another question, still more words, she didn’t really know what she was saying or even what the question was anymore. His eyes held her captive. Power? There was an element of that, but what power did he have over her except to keep her talking until she had worked this out? Interest? In what she was saying? Unlikely – she knew she was beyond making sense now, just talking to keep him there, keep him looking at her.

And then she ran out of words. But it didn’t matter. They sat in silence. She held his gaze. He finished the apple. She followed the core with her eyes as he tossed it behind him. His eyes were still on her – all this time, they had never left. She understood the look now, and felt like the apple: enjoyed, chewed up and thrown away. He had disguised it well, but she knew those unyielding eyes expressed only lust.