Eva could hear the sound reverberate in her head, yet all around her the silence was deafening. It was an eerie quiet punctuated by an equally eerie darkness. She tried to turn but she couldn’t move as a crushing weight pinned her body and her legs were numb. Were they even still there? Of course they are, she chastised herself. I’d know if they weren’t…wouldn’t I? And where the hell am I, she thought.

Closing her eyes Eva tried to gather her thoughts and her wits about her, to gain some logical perspective, and then get herself out of here. Where ever “here” was. If she could just work that part out she could then at least put a plan into motion for an escape, if one was necessary. But first, she racked her brain trying to remember what the hell happened in the first place.

Just then, she heard a sound. Only a faint one, but it was there. A kind of scraping noise, though distant, and something else... Eva grabbed the opportunity refusing to let it get away without a fight.

“Hello?” Eva called out. “Hello? Is anyone there? Can you hear me? My name is Eva Lancel. I – I think I’m trapped. I need some help. Hello?”

But her words only bounced off the confines of the place in which she found herself imprisoned somehow. She listened again but the scraping had stopped. Maybe she’d just imagined the sound. A figment of her imagination because really, she was beginning to think she didn’t know what was real anymore. Still the realisation that maybe the sound was just a hallucination hit her - no one was there. She was all alone.

Sighing with a resignation she refused to give in to, Eva felt her resolve begin to crumble. Where was she? And how was she going to get out of here? What had happened? If only I could remember, she thought. Slowly, tears began to sting her eyes and streak the sides of her face, falling into her ears. At least she knew she was laying down. Gravity had just told her that. Prior to this she had no idea where or how or why? Well, she still had no clue, but at least now she knew where ever it was she was laying down.

Eva closed her eyes and sighed. If she could just remember… maybe… it would make some sense… But how would she know it wasn’t just another delusion…? Tick-tock. Tick-tock… Oh, time goes by so slowly… especially here…in the silence…in the dark… Tick-tock. Tick-tock… Time’s running out…. Tick-tock. Tick-tock…. Time’s up! Damn, she should turn off that alarm clock…

Silence.

Eva opened her eyes and looked around her. She’d no idea what had just happened but she was in her bed, having just woken from what felt like a long sleep. Checking the clock on her bedside table which informed her it was 8.15am, she cursed. She’d slept in again!

Twenty minutes and a refreshing shower later, she was standing over her kitchen sink rushing a quick breakfast of toast and coffee. Sustenance for not only the day ahead, but the rush hour traffic she was sure to get caught in. Chastising herself again she’d realised she must have turned the alarm off, which is why she’d slept in. Though it wasn’t the first time it had happened. This was the third time in the last two weeks she’d done the same thing. And she was always late to the office. She was not going to be in anyone’s good books today either. She sighed. Time to go.

She grabbed her keys off the rack without noticing the empty hook where her spare set usually hung, slung her purse over her shoulder and hurried out the door. Already she knew it was going to be one of those days. That notion was only confirmed when she saw the paper flapping beneath her windscreen wiper. She didn’t have time for this. With a sigh of exasperation she reached for the paper and unfolded it before she stopped dead in her tracks, her heart pounding.

The note read simply: Tick-tock. Turn back the clock.

Eva looked around her but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Her elderly neighbour was in her garden pruning her roses, the people across the street were heading off to work while the children were walking down to the corner to catch the school bus. Everything seemed normal. With a sigh Eva shook the notion from her mind and told herself that she was being silly. She was probably still a little paranoid from that strange dream she’d had last night. Tick-tock indeed! Probably some childish neighbourhood prank.

Which reminded her, time was getting on and she was running late enough as it is. Eva climbed into her car and put the key in the ignition. She was about to start when she noticed there was something written on her dash… Squinting her eyes to read the smeared print, her confusion soon turned to terror as she screamed.

Tick-tock, sleepyhead. Bang bang, you’re dead!

Mrs Peabody next door looked up from her roses to see Eva eject herself from her car with the dexterity of a pole vaulter, looking as though she’d seen a ghost.

“Are you alright, dear?” Mrs Peabody called from over the fence, but Eva was too disoriented to comprehend that her kindly neighbour was talking to her.

Gasping for breath, Eva found herself hyperventilating from the shock. She tried telling herself it was ridiculous, but after all the strange happenings this morning and the last week, she felt she was justified in feeling a little paranoid. Who had gotten into her car? She could understand a childish prank left under her wiper, but blood-smeared writing on her dashboard? And how would they get into her car anyway? Of course it was always possible, but she didn’t think the neighbourhood children would go that far. And that’s what had her scared. So when she heard someone creeping up behind her, she braced herself for attack.

“Is everything alright, dear?” but it was Mrs Peabody from next door.

Eva smiled with a sigh of relief. She’d never been so happy to see her nosy neighbour in her life.

“I’m fine, Mrs Peabody, thank you,” she replied gratefully, a momentary lapse of reason. For kindly Mrs Peabody from next door transposed into a Hyde-like personality, a terrifying demon taking possession of her dear old neighbour who was, although a little nosy at times, a kind and gentle soul.

Bundled into the backseat of her car by her frail old neighbour, Eva was a little puzzled by these turn of events. Just what was going on? Who was this woman masquerading as Mrs Peabody, now an evil reflection of something more sinister? And why her? Why me? What have I done, Eva could only think.

“W-w-why…” she found she could hardly get the words out.

“Why you?” Mrs Peabody answered. “Oh, I think you know, even if you don’t think you do.”

Eva looked at her blankly, oblivious to anything other than she was being kidnapped by the old woman from next door, in the back of her own car!

“Did I ever tell you about my childhood?” Mrs Peabody went on. “I was abandoned by my mother as a baby, and was taken into foster care. Oh, it was supposed to be for the good of my welfare but sometimes that just doesn’t cut it. Foster families are supposed to care for you, aren’t they? I mean, why else are they foster families in the first place?”

She glanced at Eva to make sure she still had her attention, smiling her satisfaction to see her almost hanging off her every word. But Eva was more concerned about what all this had to do with her, and why she was in this predicament at all.

“It’s not easy being a mother, I guess,” Mrs Peabody went on. “But then if we all chucked it in because we couldn’t handle it, where would the rest of us be? Just because my mother didn’t want me didn’t mean somebody else didn’t. Well, that was the idea anyway. Turns out I was a little hellion of a child. And no one could figure out why. Why was little Emmie such a monster, they used to say? My foster families found even they couldn’t handle me, so they carted me off to another family, and so the cycle went on.”

“But –”

“ - what does it have to do with you?” she finished Eva’s question. “Oh, much more than you think.” She paused. “Haven’t you ever thought about YOUR childhood, Eva? What it was like?”

“I have some very fond memories,” Eva whispered.

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Mrs Peabody answered absently as in reflection, pulling the car up to what appeared to be an abandoned building, then snapped back to the present. “But not all of us do have fond memories. I’m sure I would have if my mother didn’t abandon me. I think I would have had a happy childhood too, but as it were, my mother didn’t want me. She chose my sister over me, and then abandoned me.”

Looking over at Eva like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary, she smiled.

“Yes, my sister,” she spoke almost softly. “I had a twin sister, you see, and my mother chose the ‘good daughter’ over the ‘bad daughter’. Couldn’t handle me, I dare say. No one could. But I reckon half my problem was BECAUSE she had abandoned me. Had she kept me with my sister, I may have well had a happy childhood to have some fond memories of. But as it is, I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Eva could only say, still wondering about its significance. “But what -”

“Oh, yes, forgive me. What does it have to do with you?” Mrs Peabody replied, then reached up behind her neck with a sigh. “Oh I shall be glad to get this get up off at last!”

Eva could only watch in awe as the kindly elderly Mrs Peabody was transformed into a younger version as she slowly peeled off the ‘face’ which masked the one underneath. Suddenly Eva felt as though she were gazing into a mirror. The face sitting in the front seat of her car was a reflection of her own, as slowly the pieces began to fall into place.

“It makes sense now, doesn’t it?” her reflection that was Mrs Peabody said to her through a daze.

“I – I had no idea,” Eva stammered. “I never knew. I mean, I had dreams and memories of something like it, but I thought that’s all they were – dreams. I didn’t realise I really had a twin sister. What’s your name?”

“Emma. And now you know, time has run out,” her twin sister spoke without feeling.

“Tick-tock…” Eva whispered, realisation dawning. “It was you.”

“That’s right. Tick-tock. We used to say that all the time when were young, do you remember?”

Eva shook her head.

“It was the first word we spoke. We did and said everything the same. I learnt a word, you learnt it too. And vice versa. Ah, the good old days….pity they had to end,” she smiled callously. “But all good things must come to an end. Tick-tock, you turned back the clock, now tick-tock, you will die!”

Then everything went black.

Eva opened her eyes to a darkness once again. Was this a dream? Or was what just happened a dream? She couldn’t tell anymore. And Mrs Peabody? Was she real, or was she fantasy too? And Emma…tick-tock…oh gosh! Emma.

Eva felt the space around her frantically until her hands finally touched something cool and solid. A flashlight, she thought with relief. Fumbling in the dark she felt for the switch, and the space in which she was confined lite up at last. Eva screamed. Her legs were strapped to a small box with a mass of coloured wires protruding around it. She knew now the ticking sound she heard had not been her imagination. She was wired to a bomb….but that wasn’t all, as she took in her surroundings...

Eva was buried alive. Tick-tock…

© Christina Smith
24th May, 2006