Excerpt: Between universes

Megan Quinn logged out of her work computer, stuffed her organiser and phone into her day bag and marched out of the office. It was just after three in the afternoon and the sun was shining after three weeks of rain and cloud. She trotted down the stairs and out through the glass doors and froze.

To her left there was a wide concrete planter filled with whatever flowering plants were in season. The building management company regularly evicted perfectly healthy plants to replace them with something else. But today, for a fraction of a second, there were no plants in there. Out of the corner of her eye Megan saw metal birds, two statues of ravens, back to back and three feet tall, eyes that looked menacing even made of dark grey metal. The image lasted until she looked at it, then it was gone. She swallowed and closed her eyes, her mouth twitched and she willed herself not to cry.

"It's alright," she whispered to herself. "They're not real. None of this is real."

She walked to the car still holding back tears. Can't cry, mustn't cry, can't cry and drive at the same time, she thought. Hold it together girl, just a little longer.

The car was a red Mazda3 hatchback, she called it the rocket powered skateboard. It had more engine power than it needed, low profile tyres on alloy wheels, and an impressive amount of acceleration. Megan loved it. She fed it too much power and the wheels squealed on her way out of the parking lot.

Everything seemed normal as she drove but the image of the metal ravens crouched in her mind like a thundercloud about to burst.

In another place, far away, a man stepped out from behind a statue of two giant metal ravens. He trailed one hand across the feathered back of a bird, up to the beak, staring at a blank section of the wall in front of them. He wondered who the girl was and why she was hurrying. Her clothes were strange, the shoes looked particularly uncomfortable. Why did women do that to themselves, he wondered. She had looked sad and distracted and tired. He wondered what her name was.

A noise rumbled in the distance, metal under stress. The floor trembled slightly and he smiled, loping away down a long corridor.