Across The Table

Karen flipped through the smudged pages of the Farneholme Gazette with the grace of someone rifling through garbage. The paper, much like the village itself, offered nothing but petty crime, damp politics, and obituary columns. She’d once cared — once fought — but the creeping disillusionment that had infected Farneholme’s older folk had finally reached her too. Whatever fire she’d held for saving this place had gone out. Yobs, druggies, council rot… they could all have it.

She raised her chipped mug for a last swig of lukewarm black coffee, but something on the page caught her eye.

Her name.

Obituaries.
Karen Louise Miles.
Died 16th August 2009. Aged 43.
Loved. Missed.

The idea of a prank flashed through her brain, only to be crushed by a surge of cold panic. Her eyes jerked upward.

Someone stood across the table.
It was her. And not her.

A warped reflection: skin grey, slack, wrong. One arm missing. No lower jaw. A pair of startled eyes stared back at her, pleading.

It didn’t move like a predator.
It tilted its head, reaching forward with its remaining arm — as if trying to tell her something. To warn her.

But Karen was already screaming, already stumbling backward, knocking her chair to the floor as she crashed into the kitchen sink. Scrabbling for anything, her hand landed on a half-defrosted leg of lamb. She hurled it. It slapped against the thing’s face with a wet thud.

She didn’t wait to see the result — just ran. Out the door. Across the street. Toward her friend’s house.

There were headlights.
Then —
Nothing.

Simon Punish, age eleven, climbed down from the driver’s side of his dad’s cherry-red Ford pickup. He walked slowly — sixty meters, maybe more — toward the crumpled shape in the road.

It was a woman.
Missing an arm.
And a lower jaw.