The face that stared back at her was abhorrent; puffy eyes, the right of which was swollen and darkening, to the point where the eye was almost closed tight; a bleeding lip; sweaty and matted, brown hair with split ends and a crooked nose that was certainly broken.
In an attempt to stem her emotions from overwhelming her again, Ellie put down her round hand mirror with a sigh. It was one of the very few things she owned that wasn’t broken. She slid it into her rucksack. With her bag finally packed, she zipped it up quietly.
She gave the dingy little room she called her bedroom, with its discoloured walls and rusty radiator one last glance, checked her purse for the fourth time—still £17.80 in there—and walked out into the hallway silently.
Ellie creeped down the stairs and put her shoes on at the bottom; from the living room, she heard the sound of drunken, laboured snores.
Ignoring the nauseous whirl of her stomach, she opened the front door and slipped out into the darkness, closing the door behind her.
There was a cold snap in the air, and she instantly regretted not grabbing her scarf. Not having the courage to go back in the house, she settled for buttoning up her coat and lifting the hood. The chill in the air of a Scottish winter did at least ease the burning of her beaten face.
It hadn’t always been this bad; when she was a child, her mother and father were a happy, if imperfect, couple. Then, when she was seven years old, her father had some sort of breakdown. Ellie never found out what happened. When she was nine, her mother left her father and her for someone else, and moved to England. She remembered her mother telling her she would see her on telly, that she would be modelling in catwalks all around the world.
Ellie remembered her mother promising to come to visit her every weekend. She visited twice in the first month after leaving, once in the second month and then never again. She never did see her mother on television.
By the time she was twelve, her father was drinking heavily, and by the time she was fourteen, he began hitting her. Rarely at first, a rogue slap here or there.
Today was the first time he had beaten her.
Ellie briskly walked down the road, her hands tightly tucked into her pockets, as flashes of the night’s events intruded her thoughts.
She had just started shift work at a clothing store and it was her first full time job; the idea of socialising with her colleagues seemed like something she should be doing. So when some of the girls invited her for a drink after work, she accepted.
And while she didn’t have much in common with her colleagues, they were at least nice and welcoming to her.
Nonetheless, after one drink, Ellie bid her goodbyes and left. She used the excuse of wanting to get enough rest for work tomorrow. She told herself it was because she had taken such a big step socially and she didn’t want to overdo it.
But she knew the real reason was far simpler: her father.
She didn’t want to give any reason to antagonise him or put him in a bad mood.
It was only seven o’clock and she figured that was a reasonable time to come home.
She was wrong.
He was already drunk when she arrived home. He had probably been drinking all day. He hadn’t worked in years; unless you included drug dealing and hoarding benefits as working. He was in a rage from the moment she walked through the door.
Ellie broke out of her thoughts.
She shivered; it had nothing to do with the cold weather.
The rest of what she remembered were flashes of clarity in a haze of confusion. Belligerent screams and insults; swinging, pulling, falling. She didn’t want to relive any of it. She focused on where she was going.
It was a Saturday night, gone eleven o’clock. If she walked into town, there would probably be swarms of people. This was a small town; but the nightclubs were a popular attraction to the masses after a week of work.
She did not want to see people.
Instead, she walked up a road away from the town centre, where she knew it would probably be deserted.
Having charged her phone before she left, she plugged her earphones in and started her playlist. Her urge to be distracted overpowered her concern over her draining battery.
As the sweet tones of the opening of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac drowned out her thoughts, she continued to walk up the road. She got warmer as she progressed up the hill and even unzipped her coat a little when she reached the top. She took a moment to drink some water from her bag, then looked around.
There was a side road with some terraced houses which she was pretty sure led to a dead end, and a path leading into a park. She knew some woods lay beyond that park.
It was an easy choice for her; she yearned for the quiet and deserted area. Sure, it was dark, but there was a torch on her phone, she wasn’t exactly new to the area, and the worst thing she’d find in these particular woods would be a squirrel or a fox. She had decided she’d sooner chance that than stay at home or meet other people.
She walked for ten or so minutes following the path.
With the town lights growing more distant, Ellie could barely see ten feet in front of her.
Now unnerved at the idea of her music drowning out sounds around her, she pulled out the earphones and stopped the music. Tucking the earphones away, Ellie turned the torch on and continued her walk, feeling more comfortable now she at least could hear the world around her.
Her eye was throbbing now but she tried to ignore the pain.
Just get to the woods, she told herself, away from everyone. Then, you can focus.
The park soon fell behind as Ellie strayed from the path and moved through some bushes, arriving at the shrouded, wooded area at last.
She felt a weight lift from her shoulders.
Except for the occasional whistle in the breeze and a few insects buzzing in the distance, the place was completely silent. It cleared her mind in a way nothing else could. She walked for five minutes until she arrived at a big tree with a large, smooth rock next to it and sat down.
Ellie laid her head back against the tree and sighed.
And then the tears came.
She let them fall and sobbed quietly to herself for a while; truthfully, it was cathartic. A release she had been holding in for half of the night.
Eventually, she wiped her eyes and nose with some tissue, took some painkillers she had packed in her bag with more water. She was hungry; but her split-open lip was painful, and all the food she had managed to pack was hard food and the prospect of chewing through the pain was daunting.
She had money, and there would surely be some places open in town, like the 24/7 supermarket and a few service stations, but that would involve leaving this quiet woodland, and talking to people, and showing her face.
So instead she drank some more water and decided she would eat tomorrow. She glanced at her phone battery: 86%. She tried to go online, but the reception was poor and the pages wouldn’t load.
Suddenly, she realised how exhausted she was.
Physically and emotionally drained, she just wanted to sleep.
Here was as good a place as any; the smooth rock allowed her to use her bag as a small pillow.
She had no idea what she was going to do or where she was going to go; all she knew was that all such problems could wait until the morning.
For one scary moment, she put down her sudden drowsiness down to symptoms of a concussion, and almost worked herself into a panic.
But she was too tired to even focus on that thought for longer than a second and soon, she was fading fast and drifted into a deep sleep.
Sweltering heat, and chills to the bone were what followed a troubling, harrowing sleep for Ellie. She felt nauseous and dizzy, waking up every now and then for a particularly nasty jolt, and then drifting back off into fever-filled sleep. At very rare moments of awareness throughout the night, she would wonder if she was dying because of her injuries, or freezing to death, despite how hot she felt and how much she was sweating, but all awareness was lost in the haze of sleep so that she could never fully wake up and act.
And the night took her…
© 2026 Rhys Clark. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, including scraping for AI training or large language models, without the prior written permission of the author.
Writing by Rhys Clark 