Matt Dovey

Two corners, three, it's still on them, four, six, nine. Then Vik stumbles, trips, scuffs across the floor. When he picks himself up, his fibrous face mask is torn and shredded.

The crack in the window let in the ghosts. They came with the night breeze, whistling their mourning songs and carrying with them the stink of rotten water that lay across the paddocks, down past the crooked fence that bent and bowed where the earth had sunk away to let the sea creep closer. Where the salt ate the grass brown, then grey, before the water swallowed it up.