I placed her tibia on my desk and laid down in bed.

I stared at the bone. I don't know why I seperated it from the pile.

I searched for an emotion but felt nothing. I wanted sleep to come and swallow me whole. But it marched slowly towards me instead. Beating its drums. By the time it arrived light had already broken through the windows.

That night I dreamt of lightning striking Line Manor and burning it to the ground. The only survivors, palm trees and coconut shells.

In the morning I took my 40 grams with water from the sink, picked up the tibia and took it to the safe to join Miss Hayley's other 205 bones.

The breakfast buffet was warm but I didn't feel like eating. I opened one of the silver lids, and scooped up a hard boiled egg.

I walked to the top of the small green hill and sat down above the palm tress below. Looking out over Line Manor's protected bay of the great Pacific. I closed my eyes and thought of her screams.

She had fought. Clawing at my chest and face in desperation. I quickly removed both of her arms, one strike at her left elbow, another to her right.

Her face lived behind my eyes. That face. Every frame of her face that night, from that confident, hopeful, distain to her cold dead smirk. Frame by frame, they repeated, they still do.

When I opened my eyes the sun was west and low.

I sat up, placing my hands on the warm grass. In front of me a shadow with no owner.

I heard the final scream of Miss Hayley. Armless, blood-drained, now an object, no longer a person.

She was here.

Facing me.

Her long shadow running down the hill.

"HOW?" I cried, "I took your bones."