Ready or Not by Rachel Thomas

last dance was enough to keep him warm for a while yet.
                  He tripped on what appeared to be nothing and laughed loudly into the cold night air.
                  Footsteps approached closely behind, echoing amongst the arch of trees that hung around him, their long branches wrapping him in darkness. Joseph turned in a drunken swirl to greet his fellow late night park-goer.
                  ‘Adam!’ he said, surprised; lightly punching his friend in his chest. ‘So nice,’ he slurred, staggering sideways. He hiccupped loudly and put a hand to his heart. His other hand reached around his friend’s shoulder, weighing heavily upon his neck. ‘So nice of you to walk me home. I’m taking you home, Adam,’ he declared, ruffling Adam’s hair playfully. ‘Come and meet my wife – my wife will love you. No word about the strippers though, yeah? She’ll kill me.’
                  Adam secured his grip on the hammer he held behind his back.
                  He smiled thinly and his bright eyes flashed in the darkness. ‘She won’t need to,’ he said.
                  Adam ducked and escaped the hold of Joseph’s arm, his moves as graceful as a dancer’s.
                  The blow was precise. Joseph Ryan didn’t have time to react or respond; Adam’s arm swung with the speed of an express train and Joseph hit the ground with a thud that seemed to echo right around the park. The hammer stuck, but Adam was not prepared to leave it; it was his favourite hammer. He gave it a good wrench or two until, with a satisfying sound, like a baby slurping a yogurt, it came free. Adam smiled.
                  With gloved hands Adam removed the scarf from inside his jacket; the scarf that Joseph had forgotten to take from the back of his chair in the bar earlier that evening.
                  He threw the scarf over Joseph’s head, obscuring his victim’s face. He reached into Joseph’s jacket pocket and removed his wallet.
                  Try fucking around now, he thought, and nonchalantly walked away.
                 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Thirteen
     
    There were times she thought she saw him still. Sitting in traffic jams, shopping at the supermarket: she would turn and see him waiting alongside her, queuing at the next checkout and for a moment her heart would stop. Once she saw him, she would know what she was looking for. She would see what she wanted to see.
                  She wasn’t stupid. She knew what other people thought of her. The little girl who couldn’t let go of the past: the woman who was searching for a ghost. She pretended that their words didn’t sting, but of course they did and they stayed with her long after those people had left; people like Stuart who came into her life and left again without ever really knowing the person she was or the things that she lived with, day in, day out.
                  But the people who were permanent features in her life – Chris, Clayton – they sometimes thought the same, though they wouldn’t admit it to her face. And that hurt the most. They thought that Kate was chasing a memory, a ghost: a missing boy, her brother who was missing forever, lost in an unknown world that she would never be able to so much as peep into. They didn’t need to say the words for Kate to know. It was written all over their pitying looks and expressions of concern.
                  Once, at a petrol station, she had caught her ghost by the arm; grabbed him as though, if she didn’t, he would evaporate in front of her and be lost again. The man had pulled his arm away, as though her touch had burned his skin. He cast a look of unapologetic impatience and mumbled something under his breath and she was left alone on the forecourt, feeling stupid and ashamed. Yet again her critics were being proved