Wait. That's all we did. Wait. Wait for the door to open again. Wait for the snow to melt. Wait for the aching in our hearts to pass.

But the worst thing beyond all that was the pain of waiting. It was this pain that was the strongest pain on earth. It was this pain that made me lie awake every night, expecting Dad to come back home. It was this pain that turned my face white and the skin underneath my eyes black. It was this pain that caused Maisie to stop complaining, because even at such a young age, she knew wait-pain was worse than food-pain. It was this pain that made Mum crinkle up, rocking back and forth in her despair whilst muttering incoherent words.

When Dad was gone, the pain flooded in.

So, when the three of us were in the kitchen, silently looking at nothing, but secretly thinking about everything, the grinding noise began.

I remember Maisie jumping up as though she'd just woken up from an empty dream. Her face lit up like the candle flickering to the right of us, shadows creeping along the bare walls, and rushing to the door.

"Daddy!" she shouted and the ringing started in my ears. Ever since that moment, it had been hushed voices and silent communication. "Daddy's home!"

"Maisie," I said, taking a step forward. The ice cracked beneath my feet. "Maisie, don't shout like that."

"But Daddy's home!" Her smile was something that lit up the flame of pain inside of me. It hurt to see her so happy. It hurt to see a sole innocent smile in the vast manipulative world. The pain had been there from the beginning, a tiny spark, and now it was as strong as ever, burning away at my heart.

Nonetheless, she obeyed my strict orders and piped down. We listened as the grinding sound continued and my heart was hammering in my chest like a yo-yo. Back and forth. On and off. Light and dark. Like the torch the day he'd left.

Finally, the noise stopped and there were a few seconds of us staring at the door and the door staring back at us. Then it opened.

The door opened.

The coldness beat at my eyes, reminding me of the dangers out there. Reminding me of what I should have remembered. The figure stepped into the hallway, hands pulled out, as though inviting me into a hug.

"Hands up," it said, "or I shoot."

And there was the man standing in front of us, not wanting a mending hug, but wanting a destroying hug. The hug where you hug the floor. His coat made him look like he was on steroids and I wondered what percentage underneath was actually muscle and what was fat.

The figure moved fast. His feet barely seemed to touch the floor as he dived into our cupboards, seizing the last few tins of our precious gold. That set me off. I could just imagine it. The stomachs turning from the size of a pea to the size of a microbe. The last thing we see being the ceiling of the deserted house. The last thing we feel being the wait-pain and the food-pain and the cold-pain all in one. Inside my mind, I was subconsciously aware of someone screaming but then it was probably me. I was charging towards him now, screaming and crying as his brow touched the cupboard frame, revealing a streak of red.

But then he was gone and I sat there, sobbing bitterly into the empty cupboard, the wait-pain building up and up and now it was overflowing in the form of tears. Now it was all coming out, as the thoughts smacked me in the back of the head. As the realisation made me cry even harder. Because I realised what the storm was trying to do. It was ridding the humans of their humanity.

It was turning us into savages.

The torch battery had run out. The life battery had run out too. Now we were on the last few minutes until the whole thing shut down and the world wouldn't stop by for a minute, but would run on and on, never stopping by. That's when it became clear. With our little treasure gone, it was so clear.

It was clear we were going to die.