(A.N. This is the second of two updates this weekend - Fifty Nine was posted yesterday)

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The air is stifling on this torrid summer evening, filling my lungs with a thick, dusty heat. The grass beneath my soles is brown and crunchy, parched from the lack of rainfall over the last month. The sky overhead is a dusky shade of twilight, with enough light to see all the way across to the estate beyond the children's play area. In the distance, several of the windows from the high rise blocks are illuminated; glowing yellow rectangles dotted here and there amidst the unforgiving grey cladding. I am trying to hurry, my feet almost tripping over each other, eager to get home as quickly as possible, nervous of what lies behind me but too afraid to turn and look directly at it. No matter how fast I try to scuttle my movements are slow and fluid, as though the world is suspended in water and I am living in slow motion.

A clammy hand on my skin startles me and I gasp in fright. I let out a yelp of fear, turning round as I attempt to free myself from the unwelcome contact. Chris's bony fingers are enclosed around my wrist; he is leaning towards me, invading my personal space, so close I can smell the beer and weed on his breath along with the subtle undertone of unwashed skin and clothes. 

"When are you gonna loosen up?" he snarls in my face. "I know Harry does it for you instead, these days. He does it for Colette too, don't you Harry?"

"No!" I shout, whirling round fuzzily to see Harry standing a couple of feet behind Chris, glaring at both of us. "He isn't seeing Colette. Stop spreading lies about him. Leave us alone." 

"You've been talking about me behind me back," Harry growls at Chris, advancing on him as I try desperately to free my hand by shaking my arm wildly, but Chris refuses to let go. "You've been talking about me to every man and his fucking dog."

"I haven't said anything about you," Chris denies, but as I look up at his weasel-like face and the atmosphere shifts from dream-like to reality, I can see his eyes darting shiftily from side to side and I know instantly he is lying. "Unless you mean to Chloe," he adds slyly. "She's gagging for it, mate. Reckon she'd have us both back at hers. What do you say, Chlo? Let me satisfy at least one of your urges tonight."

"No!" I cry, my pitch rising with my panic, struggling with more conviction against his body as he refuses to release me. "Let me go!"

"You love it," he breathes in my ear. "Rubbing yourself against me like this. You're already wet, aren't you?"

With my free hand I claw desperately at the fingers restraining me, able now to move my limbs properly, and scratching the skin on the back of his hand deeply causing him to yelp in pain, loosening his grip as he does so and allowing me to break free. Before I can even shift my weight onto one foot to start to run, I feel the air move behind me and a split second later I hear the smack of a fist making contact with a face as Harry punches Chris with a force so powerful that Chris staggers and sways on the spot. 

As I run for my life across the grass to my block of flats, my feet no longer wading through treacle, I hear them grunting and scuffling on the ground, and another couple of cracks of fist-to-face contact. Only when I reach the entrance to the building I call home do I risk a glance behind me, just in time to witness Harry deliver a blow that knocks Chris to the ground. I expect him to stop now that Chris is down, but I watch as Harry throws his fist at Chris's face again, bending down to reach him this time, followed by two kicks in the side. Chris doesn't move.

As Harry straightens up, panting, and turns to look in my direction I sidestep quickly inside the door and out of sight, terrified of being seen watching. Breathing heavily and barely noticing the usual stench of urine in the concrete, fluorescent-lit hallway, I daren't move. I strain to listen for any sound of Harry coming this way, afraid of him but grateful to him at the same time for defending me against Chris and allowing me to escape unscathed. I have been afraid of Chris for months, bordering on years, but tonight for a brief second I was truly terrified that he was going to take his crude comments one step further and possibly force me to do something against my will. After all, there were two of them and only one of me, and until the point Harry intervened I wasn't to know how he would have reacted; he could have been just as sick and twisted as Chris.

After half a minute of deep breaths in and out, I gather my courage in both hands and peer out across the darkening evening to the edge of the children's play area where a dark shape lies motionless on the ground. A quick glance around finds no trace of Harry - he must have fled in the opposite direction back towards the pub. Looking back at Chris again I feel a stab of unease. I should call for help, and at the very least go and see if he is alright. What if he is dead? What if I have just witnessed a murder? What if Chris' body is mangled beyond recognition? 

I feel nauseous at the thought of his dead body, but I know I can't just leave him there, even though he deserved everything he just got. My entire body is trembling as I make my way slowly across the land to where he lies in the dirt, and I silently pray that someone else will come out of one of the buildings first so I can shout them over to do this for me.

But no one comes and as I pick my way closer and closer and his face comes into view, I feel bile rising at the back of my throat. His nose looks undeniably squashed. There is barely a square inch of his face that isn't covered in blood, and the dirt surrounding him is decorated with splashes of crimson. I can smell his flesh, the scent carried to my nostrils by the balmy summer air, and twice I am forced to turn away and cover my mouth, my stomach heaving involuntarily. I can't tell if he is breathing or not and I am too frightened to kneel down next to him to check. My vision starts to blur and my legs wobble beneath me as panic starts to set in. I know I should phone an ambulance but my arms and legs won't work; I am unable to move. And suddenly a tiny shred of triumph rears its head: What goes around comes around.

A groan from the ground interrupts my whirl of thoughts and I squeak in surprise as I look down at the shape before me that is starting to stir. I watch in horror as an arm moves, and then a leg, followed by a cough that sounds crackly and choked, as though the lungs are filled with blood. I am frozen in horror as Chris opens his eyes, an inhuman wail seeping from the depths of his throat, and extends his arm towards me. 

"Help me," he gasps. "Help me."

I look wildly around but there is no one to help me, the gold rectangles of light seeming impossibly far away from this gruesome atrocity. 

"Chloe," he rumbles, a little more clearly. "Get help. Get help."

He must be wondering why I am not moving; indeed I am wondering the same as he leans further towards me, his hand now less than two feet from my left ankle.

"My... phone...," he tries again, his eyes appearing to focus on my face now, although his own are rendered incapable of expression thanks to the bruised and swollen flesh surrounding them. "Chloe!" he manages to exclaim, louder now and more controlled. "Dumb... bitch... get help."

His words pull me out of my trance, and finally I manage to take a step back from him just as his stubby fingers are within grabbing distance of my leg.

"Fucking... bitch..," he curses, his arm flopping to the ground with the exertion of trying to reach me. "Fucking... finish you off... once I'm able... frigid bitch," he announces, and he lays his head back in the dirt, the sound of his heavy breathing reminiscent of a gurgling drain.

Through my fear comes a new and unexpected wave of fury, not only with Chris for being a vile, despicable bully, but with myself for being such a pathetic creature that, even when beaten to a bloody pulp and needing my help, he still believes me worthy of this treatment. Before I am fully aware of what I am doing, I lean down towards him on the ground and with as much conviction as I can muster, I hiss through gritted teeth, "I am not a frigid bitch. But you... you are the most loathsome creature ever to walk this earth."

If he could have smiled through his battered flesh, I believe he would have done. He lets out a huff of mirth and with great effort chokes out, "You are frigid, bitch... But next time... I swear...  you won't have... a fucking choice."

If the memory of consensual sex with Chris isn't horrific enough, the idea of being forced into it against my will is the final straw. I have suffered the most unimaginable pain and heartache at his hands, and endured the ridicule of all those who are part of his pathetic little gang. I destroyed my own child out of fear of what this man could, and undoubtedly would, do to me. But I refuse to live in fear of him any longer. As I stare down at his abhorrent form lying in the dirt, exactly where he belongs and deserves to be, my eyes focus on a large, squarish piece of rock a couple of feet away, easily within reach. I take a step to my left and pick up the rock, turning it over in my hands. It is heavier than it looks, with several rather sharp corners that look like they could quite easily do some serious damage. 

He doesn't speak as I step back towards him and raise my arms high above my head. If he realises what is coming he doesn't even flinch, but accepts his fate with surprisingly good grace. I look into those evil, sick eyes, to where his soul should be but isn't, and with inexplicable calm and exceptional aim I hurl the rock at his head where it lands with a stomach churning crack and bounces off, rolling into the dirt at his side. 

His eyes are still open, but they no longer see. Blood leaks from the various gashes in his face, pooling on the ground and trickling away in various rivets as though eager to be free of his monstrous form. His chest stops rising; the bubbling sound ceases. 

For the first time in my life, I walk rather than scurry across the derelict land to my block of flats. I take the stairs calmly, one at a time. I insert the key in the lock, open my front door and let it slowly fall shut behind me. I set my keys down on the side without switching the light on. I take a deep breath, and feel the room swim around me as finally, shock sets in. I sink to the ground, my legs like jelly, and everything goes black.

With a bubbling gasp, just like Chris' final breath, I sit up in the tent, my stomach churning with nausea, my skin slick with sweat. I scramble on my hands and knees to the flap, unzip it enough to crawl through the opening and stagger out into the darkness of the beach where I retch for what feels like hours, emptying the contents of my stomach onto the sand. In between my retching I am shaking uncontrollably and sobbing silently as the dream I have just had replays over and over in my head, each time with more clarity and detail as the fragments of my memory return one by one.

When finally I can heave no more and my stomach is empty I stand up straight, placing both of my palms on the cliff face to steady myself, my legs wobbling just like they did that night before I passed out. I look up and and down the beach, the black of the cloudless night engulfing me, suffocating me, squeezing the breath from my body. I will myself to see something, anything, that will give me a focal point and spatial awareness, rather than this feeling that I am floating in the abyss. I half expect to see Chris's face looming out of the darkness, taunting me, laughing at me, tormenting me, just like in my dream.

Except this latest dream is far more than just one of my nightmares. This one is my reality, my story, my missing puzzle piece that my mind had buried in a desperate attempt to rid me of guilt, of consequence, of accountability. But my subconscious couldn't keep the gruesome truth locked away forever, and now I understand the meaning of the terrible dreams, the fear, the shame, the desperation, the flight. 

Harry may have beaten Chris to a pulp, but he didn't hit him hard enough to kill him. He didn't deliver the fatal blow. 

Harry isn't a murderer. I am.