As he sat there, choking on his overpriced apricot galette, it struck Julia just how pig-like her once handsome third husband had become. He was clawing his throat, the harsh grey bristles which he refused to shave off standing on end like a toilet brush. Urgh. ‘Help!’ Ronald gagged, reaching into his briefcase for his Mitsubishi 8000, and falling off his chair as he did so. Julia stood over him, looking down as he shook like a Kunekune having a seizure, and asked him, rhetorically, ‘what did you expect? You spend more time doing lines in the office or drinking old fashioneds with those wankers you work with than you do with me, how could I not find someone else? He might be your son, but he treats me like a woman! He knows what I want, what I need, and he can still give it to me!’. With that she stormed out of the fancy French restaurant, and out onto the howling rain. She told herself it was rain pouring down her cheeks, but the saltiness as it touched her lips couldn’t be denied. She stumbled blindly, into the road, just as the moped cornered too fast.

Minutes later, an ambulance howled through the night, pulling up outside the restaurant and sending a tidal wave of brackish road river over the waiting waitress. ‘he’s inside’, she said, ‘but I think he’s OK now, our bartender knew the Heimlich. Maybe you should deal with these two first’ indicating at the two tangled bodies in the street. Julia’s leg was bent at an awkward angle under her body, her left arm obscured under the trashed moped, and blood flowed steadily from a wound on her temple, mingling with the rain and making the whole scene, if possible, even more macabre. The moped driver was somewhat better off, he was sitting up at least, but seemed unable to stand, and his right arm looked horribly mangled.

The paramedic ran to Julia, ‘pulse is weak, get the stretcher’, he called to his colleague, and in a blur of damp professionalism her prone frame was transferred from the rainy street to the dry ambulance in moments. The second bed was quickly populated with the moped driver, and the paramedic, in an attempt to reduce costs to the overstretched NHS, suggested that the choking victim inside be placed in the spare seat to be taken to the hospital.

-

11 minutes later, and the ambulance arrives at the hospital. The doors open and a large, sweaty man stumbles out, eyes wild, shirt covered in blood and partially masticated apricot galette, he looks around furtively before disappearing into the night. As the doctors rushed to the back of the ambulance, the front door opened, and the driver tumbled into the street, blood pouring from an open wound in his throat. Opening the back doors, a gruesome sight was revealed: one paramedic, throat also slit, one motorcyclist, smothered with his pillow, and a woman, mouth stuffed with gauze and vomit, eyes wide, wild and empty, with the words ‘he’s shagging your daughter’ scrawled across her bedsheet.