The lip of the rug was a cliff face. Behind him the pale forest with its doomed inhabitants stretched on for miles, before him the empty plains of her bedroom floor awaited.

His stomach growled, gnawing at him for want of food. His tongue was like cloth, scraping desperately in his mouth. He wouldn’t last much longer.

With trembling hands he swung himself over the side of the rug and began to climb down its brown, chequered side. The descent was short, only three or four times his height. He dropped the last few feet, a bag of tired bones clattering onto the varnished wood. He could have kissed the ground.

He had no idea how many hours had passed since she had left but he was deathly aware that time was not on his side. He rose to his feet shakily, taking heavy steps forwards as he began his exodus across the great flat expanse.

His plan was to get as far away from the rug as possible. If he could make it to the corner of her dresser perhaps he could attract her when she sat down upon her bed. It was the best plan he could think of.

His mind swam as he walked onwards. The featureless distance, the brown skirting board, the white walls, the wooden dresser all danced like a mirage in front of him. He needed water, he needed food, he needed to continue.

He had walked three hundred steps before he sank to his knees. He crawled a hundred feet more before he slumped to his side, his breath tasting of blood.

He felt her before he saw her.

The ground trembled beneath him, fluttering against his skin. It intensified with each foot fall, the vibrations quickly being accompanied by the distant booms.

The door opened.

He staggered to his feet as she entered the room. He waved his arms desperately, shouting her name once more.

Shockwaves ruffled his hair as she stepped forwards. The grey rubber soles of her black and white converse squeaked against the polished wood. Her legs stretched upwards, clad in thick black tights to protect against the north eastern winter before disappearing into a black pencil skirt. The green college hoody she wore hugged her slender frame. Her eyes were green too though paler than the pea colours she was dressed in. Her black hair was swept to one side and spilled over her shoulders; her warm pink lips were set in a cute smile.

A pair of headphones pumped music into her ears, the black wire that connected them to her phone disappearing into one of her pockets.

In two steps she was upon him.

He screamed as the shadow of her immense foot swept across the floor. In seconds any hope he had was dashed from his heart to be replaced by pure terror.

The sounds of her footfalls exploded around him. He ran, forcing his tired legs to propel him forwards as the sky turned grey above him.

The shockwave nearly tore him apart as she stepped down. He fell forwards, landing heavily on his face barely a second before her foot collided with the floor.

A scream, primal and animal like flowed from his lips like vomit as his lower leg disappeared beneath the tread of her shoe. He twisted in place, his eyes boggling with fear and agony as a wall of white sat where his lower leg should be. Her ankle, a twisting mound beneath black fabric, shifted above him. The lace of her shoe swung downwards, hissing across the black canvass of her converse. He screamed as her foot lifted again. He was yanked upwards, the viscera of his ruined limb sticking him to her sole as she took another step into her room.

His screams were raked from his lungs by raging winds as he was thrown through the air. Her foot landed again, his bones shattering as a shockwave sent him skidding across the floorboards leaving a sad trail of blood behind him.

The world rippled and span around him, his vision blurred by stinging tears. He tired to move but was unable to. Beside him his arm was shattered, his fingers bent and broken by the fall. His remaining leg burned. His attempts to move it yielded only screams as the expose shard of bone ground in the flesh. Beside it the stump of his other foot bled into the wood. The warm red puddle seeped around him, soaking his fractured pelvis and making his useless fingers slick.

Above him she moved towards the bed and, after kicking off her shoes as she always did, fell upon it.

On her bedroom floor the screams of a tiny broken creature, his moans of agony, his pleas for help, went unnoticed. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Each breath he drew was laced with blood that he coughed across the floorboards. He would be lucky to survive the night.

She had been reading for just over an hour when she began to yawn. She closed her book and having changed earlier, turned out the light.