Diary of a Detective

Hunted

6/12/1997 2.20am Irvine's house

Irvine lies uncomfortably in bed. She can't sleep - now even more so ever since she's been suspected of all the murders. She's going to get framed, she thinks, turning over in her covers. The silvery moonlight trickles through the gaps in the blinds, softly illuminating her otherwise pitch-black bedroom. The night seems almost tranquil.

As Irvine's eyelids start to droop, the sound of her back door creaking open jolts her to reality. She sits up. The wind? Her imagination? I'm sure I left it locked…

Irvine listens intently, completely still. Sure enough, the barely audible pad of silenced footsteps below her sends her heart racing. Great, an intruder, she thinks. Now that the police have got all my weapons. Well, almost all.

Hardly daring to make a sound herself, she reaches under her bed and slides out a dusty Remington 870 shotgun. Her personal firearm - one those officers fortunately hadn't found. The solid brown ebony smooth to her cold touch, she loads a round as quietly as she can. Standing, she creeps to her bedroom door.

Irvine hadn't even realised how dark her house was at night. Shadows loom over every surface, and Irvine mistakes several for people, the paranoid hunter sweeping her firearm left and right in front of her. She reaches the stairwell and descends it, catching sight of the lit table lamp in the middle of her den. She freezes in fright, heart pumping fiercely against her ribcage. No one in sight, but the oddly eerie lamp on the table is as plain as day. Shooting a nervous glance behind her, she edges slowly down the stairs.

Not a soul stirs in the den, the ambient glow of the lamp but a solitary lighthouse in the still silent sea of darkness that is her very own living room. She is all too aware the solid, inky blackness could give way to something far worse, and clutches the shotgun tight in her hands. Treading gingerly to the table, she notices a lone cylindrical object shining in the lamplight. She picks it up: the bullet casing from earlier. She turns it over, slowly coming to a horrific realisation she cannot believe she missed earlier. Her phone, her phone - she must call someone.

A single footstep behind her brings her back to her senses. She instinctively drops to the ground and rolls as a gleaming butcher's knife slices the air where her head had been a mere second ago. She brings the shotgun up and fires as a dark figure dodges with surprising agility, the windows behind the figure exploding with the force of all fifty pellets of buckshot.

Irvine backpedals and loads another round just as the sinister blade of the cleaver emerges from nowhere, smashing the shotgun's barrel and forestock and rendering the weapon useless. Wasting no time, Irvine tries to whip the person in the head with the heavy stock of the gun, but her strike is countered with a blow so forceful it snaps the shotgun in half and sends her reeling. The last Irvine sees is the glinting cleaver flashing in the darkness right before her eyes, before everything goes black.