Eight months have passed since that night. Graham may have managed to escape from a physical torture but his mind, his thoughts have refused to let him move on with his life. The many surgeries to repair the damage he suffered, mostly to his left hand and to his nose ensured that there would be no physical escape from the memory of that night. The surgical dressings he wore and does wear do not aid him whatsoever with moving on. They are a constant reminder, making sure that any such efforts to move on would be futile.

For the first time since his attack, Graham returns to the place where he had been so brutally tortured, and he does this in an attempt to understand what had happened. He does this to possibly find some sort of an answer as to why it happened or more importantly why it happened to him. The best way so he figured to deal with his pain is to face it head on.

The house where Sarah had lived was still abandoned, as it had been since he told of what had happened to him. Had this Sarah person actually lived there at all? Graham had been unable to trace any sort of whereabouts for her, and beside he couldn't even be sure as to if Sarah was her real name, most likely it wasn't.

Graham made his way into the house and down to the basement, the place, the darkened room where the attack had taken place. Just being back there sent shivers down his spine. It hit him with a wave of emotion. Being so overcome, Graham went down on one knee, touched the ground, and began to cry uncontrollably.

Without any warning and in just an instant, everything went dark, so dark that Graham couldn't see a thing. Just as with the last time he was in that room, he was in total darkness. Before he could question this, Graham would hear movement, movement that was not his own.

Before he could say anything, he could hear a voice speak 'hello, Sarah, you there?'

The voice he heard was his own, but he had not said anything. An acetylene torch ignites providing some light in the room. With that, Graham could see an image of himself chained to a chair, wearing only shorts and nothing else. There would be another person he could also see, a person dressed in protective clothing wearing a kind of mask that welders would wear. He did not get to see or have an opportunity to see who this other person is or even to be able to provide a guess to who it might be.

Graham was somehow witnessing his own attack as if he, right at this point, was nothing more than some sort of observer. It felt as if he was really there, right back at the time of his own attack, having an out of body moment and he was about to watch that very attack unfold.

As the flame from the acetylene torch moved towards the left hand of his other self, Graham let out a shout of 'no, what are you doing?'. The shout came with a definite panic in Graham's voice, but he was unable to do anything about what was happening. It was like he was a ghost or something to that effect. Graham was totally unable to interfere; all he could do was watch as his own personal torture would take place all over again.

Talk about de ja vu with a new edge to it. Graham cried and roared out profanities while his other self-suffered through the ordeal, an ordeal to which he would eventually escape. Graham followed his other self as his other self would manage to make it to a nearby petrol station where he would collapse on the fore court and vanish.

Graham dropped down onto his knees and began to cry. Some customers of the petrol station aided him back to his feet. Unsure as to help someone who obviously is in distress, they moved him and sat him down on the one and a half foot high wall at the front of the forecourt. Graham was so unresponsive toward these people that there was nothing that any of them could do for him so he would be left to his own thoughts.

Seconds pass before he would look back upon the forecourt, Graham's other self soon re-appeared, hands no longer tied in chain. As if there was some kind of awareness, Graham's other self simply looked in his direction and reached out with that badly burned left hand which oozed blood. It was as if he his alternate was gesturing for help.

The petrol station is in such a location that it sits on a corner at a junction of a crossroads, and as Graham looked across and down along the road on the far side of this junction, he could see her. He could see Sarah. Even though it was his relationship with her that lead to his ordeal, he still had feelings for her. How odd that is, and he had hoped that there had been some reason or another for the part she played.

Maybe she had been blackmailed or had some other plausible reason for leading him to that moment of torture. At this point and maybe all along, Graham did not believe that Sarah was the perpetrator of the actual torture. His immediate reaction to seeing this woman down the street was to get up off the wall and get over to her. Sarah, this lady down the street as it seemed to Graham, was just staring right back across at Graham.

Has she something to tell him? Perhaps a job is unfinished, perhaps Graham's escape is weighing upon her.

It is a busy crossroads and the frenzied traffic was cause for great delay to Graham as he tried to cross over. After a little more than a moment or two he got to where Sarah was, but she was no longer there. Distraught and confused Graham allowed his mind to wander. Had all the events of the day just been something which took place within his own head? Did he really witness his own torture? Had he really seen Sarah?

To say Graham was on the verge of total breakdown would be an understatement. He was completely losing it. His present torment was just as bad if not worse than the original event that brought him to this very moment in time, but as the saying goes 'time heals all wounds'.

The hell it does, if anything it was having the total opposite effect, and Graham could see no light at the end of his tunnel, so in a moment of madness and despair Graham stepped out in front of an oncoming bus. The driver had no time to react so the bus hit Graham full on. Maybe, just maybe, Graham could now be at peace with the world and with himself.