First draft.

If she stared at the computer long enough, surely something decent would form. What she needed was a 500 word article for the local newspaper about the Bullsbrook Beagles had won a football match against the neighbouring suburb's Karnup Kangaroos. She tapped, "A glorious victory for the Beagles. A wonderful win. Truly historic." She stopped and rubbed her temples. Five hundred words was nothing, when she got that rush of energy, a new character that would emerge and demand to be given life, heated conversations that took place in her mind that needed to be transcribed. It had been forever since she felt like that. Right now she felt... ironic. Or maybe, under-caffeinated.

She walked into the kitchen, a small, white, stark space where she made coffee and noodles. She didn't have a domestically oriented bone in her body. She was dislocated from her family and she'd always felt adopted. Her parents had her when they were too old and she felt their tiredness growing up. They only ever smiled when she garnered an achievement. A spelling bee, an A plus on an assignment. Momentarily their faces lit up, then they would fade again.

She brewed strong real coffee and pressed down on the plunger with the last of the energy from her body. It was lean and pale and stringy. Even her feet were long. She felt too tall when she walked on the street, somehow conspicuous. She sat down at the tiny kitchen table in the centre of the room that seemed more circular than square. The tragic lace curtains passed down from the last owner were moth bitten and distant white, tearing at the edges. She thought, "I could have had a novel published." She didn't want to resent her family, but it was clear they disapproved of her career choice and it was easier to get out of their way. She packed her bags and left while they were at a benefit concert. Their house was two stories high and her room would encompass her flat's lounge and kitchen. The carpets were all the same colour, beige. When she left she didn't write a note. She just made her bed and remembered to leave the key. It was like exiting a hotel. The Hotel Barker. She was named after this building, but she had no real connection to it. She didn't think her name really suited her. Emily Barker.

She sat down at the computer and thwacked the keys, drumming out the piece about a breath taking, show stopping win that was more fiction than real. She breathed out when she finished, and digested the dregs of her coffee. That stupid voice that liked to say things to upset her reminded her, "That's another ten minutes of your life evaporated. I thought you were going to be a famous novelist, Emily." She wasn't crazy, but calling Emily sane would probably ignore some of society's requirements. Freud tells us, you have to be able to love and to work, to be considered a functional being, a proper adult. Emily was sometimes there and sometimes not, and love was an idea, not a feeling. She read about and noted the signs and symptoms: Constant thoughts about the object of love, intrusion on work, sexual, passionate feelings. Obsession.

Hidden away at the back of her drawers was a love poem to a hypothetical target of admiration. Full of phrases like, "My heart beats raggedly for you," she'd been confused by trying to apply the concept. In his absence, the boy was green eyed and blonde haired, and very tall, and sensitive. She liked green eyes, but she only ever saw them in the movies. She knew he should be tall though, because attractive men always are, and she was self conscious about her height. If she ever did fall in love, she wanted it to be with a suitable man.

She watched a dreadful movie, something with Jennifer Aniston in it. She looked at the big clock in her brown lounge room, nailed approximately to the wall above the TV. The wall was brick tiles in various shades of brown and grey, a vertical floor, it was a little unsettling. She was lulled by reciting the clichés as they occurred, and drifted into sleep.

There was something rattling. She sat up in the chair and saw a leg sliding through the lounge room window. Her hands clenched on the sides of it. She needed to scream but her entire body was frozen. She felt the cold air from the street. The leg was wearing jeans and more of it was coming through the window. The leg was followed by a hand, holding a knife. It gripped at the top of the window sill, hairy and large, ready to help pull the rest of the body in. She saw herself as a tiny child in her room on the 14th floor of the Barker Hotel, clutching at a stuffed toy, running down the hall and down the stairs to her father's room. She heard the thunder booming against the house.

Belatedly, she screamed. It came from the pit of her stomach and it was sharp and high and jagged. She felt it shock her whole body into life. The hand dropped the knife. The leg retracted. The arm disappeared. She collapsed, shaking, as she heard the body run down the foot path and away from her lounge room. She couldn't believe the scream was hers.

She thought about calling the police, but she didn't like the idea of being prodded for details, when all she had to describe was a hand, and a knife, left behind.

She decided to keep it. She sat down and turned her lap top on.

She started to write, not for the newspaper, but for herself.

Gradually the shaking subsided. She thought the next time she went into work, she might tell her boss, or anyone who listened, what happened.

She was proud of her scream.