Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

I wish we hadn't parted on bad terms. It was the last time I saw him uninjured. He shouldn't have been driving; he was way over the alcohol limit. His car ploughed into the outer lane barrier on the M2 at the Medway Bridge, a hundred feet above that black river. Midas stopped me on the landing to tell me that my ex-husband had not been wearing a seatbelt. Shocked into silence, I tried not to imagine how he knew. Michael was hospitalised. They wouldn't let me see him for days.

The last week of August was unbearable, the hottest for years. The icemaker in Ari's store broke down and all his vegetables spoiled. The days were stuck together, melting into nights. In the height of summer a London night has but five hours of darkness. Many of the clubs and bars in the area close with the rising sun. Midas' guests stayed long after that. I lay sleepless and lost in an empty hot bed, listening to the obscene laughter of the revellers on the landing. I could feel my nerves fraying further each day. The most I could ask was for Midas to leave me alone. And he did until the first Friday in September, when there was a familiar knock.

'I must talk to you,' he said quietly. 'May I come in?' I held open the door. He had lost a little weight, looked great. I felt a wreck, not up to confrontation.

'You've changed things around.'

'I had to,' I said. 'All the plants you gave me died.'

'I can't afford to lose you, you know. I've never lost anyone.'

'Oh? What about Danielle Passmore? Do I look as much of a victim as her? Did you think I'd be easier to convert?'

He showed no surprise. 'I can do so much for you, Judy, if you believe in me.'

'Oh, I believe. You're no crank, I'm sure of that. But I prefer to rely on myself.'

'Then I must make you realise your mistake.' He disclosed a clear plastic tube in his hand and snapped open the cap, allowing the milky contents to leak on to the doorframe. 'Just as my seed can bring fertility to the barren lives of others, so it can be used in other, more persuasive ways.' As soon as I realised what he had in the tube I shoved him out of the doorway. He allowed me to do so. He knew his strength. 'Let me know when you're ready to reconsider,' he called.

I had no idea what he meant until the next morning. I had taken two sleeping tablets, and groggily awoke to another cauldron-hot day. The bedroom was stifling; the window had slid shut in the night and wouldn't budge when I tried to open it. None of the lounge windows would open, either. I thought perhaps the paintwork on the sills had become sticky – until I tried the front door. The latch refused to move even a tenth of an inch. The wood had become sealed in its frame. There was no other way in or out of the apartment.

Determined not to panic, I picked up the telephone receiver to call Ari, but found the line dead. The junction box in the skirting board looked as if it had been damaged. Okay, I thought, I'll have to break a window. At first I considered using a hammer, but remembering what had happened to Danielle I decided to stay out of the storage-closet where I kept the toolbox.

Instead I entered the lounge with a tea towel wrapped around my arm, clutching a hiking boot, and whacked the window with all my might. Nothing happened. No sound, no shatter, nothing. The glass didn't even shake. That was when I started to lose it. I screamed my lungs out for a while hoping that someone would hear me through the walls, but no-one came running up the stairs. In the boiling streets below, pedestrians passed without stopping to look up and listen.

By midday the temperature in the flat was 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and I forced myself to stop panicking long enough to take stock of my position. I carried out an inventory of supplies; I had half a day-old loaf, a little butter, some yoghurt, a tin of beans, a packet of sliced ham, an almost-empty jar of peanut butter, some breakfast cereal but no milk. That was it. I usually stocked up on Saturday. At least there was an unlimited supply of tapwater. I tried the windows again, this time hammering them with a steel-framed kitchen chair, but they seemed to absorb the sound and impact of every blow.

The computer. I ran to it and switched on the modem. I tried E-mailing Gloria through the internet but my message just rerouted itself back to me, endlessly scrolling down the screen until I was forced to shut the monitor off. The next time I tried it, it didn't work at all.

My clothes were stained with sweat, so I took a shower. I do my best thinking in the shower. There had to be a way out. I figured I'd be wasting my time taking the floorboards up or burrowing through the walls with the puny hand-drill Michael had left me. There was an attic above the apartment that might be able to get me to the roof – except that the entrance to it was set in the landing ceiling, beyond the front door.

If I was truly under an enchantment, I wouldn't be able to escape so easily. I thought about the few friends I had made in London. They never came around without calling first; how long would it take them to report my dead telephone line? How long would it take an inquisitive friend to climb my stairs?

The first night seemed to last forever. Through the front door I could hear Midas' damned madrigals and the imbecile laughter of his debauched acolytes. Secured in my baking cocoon, I began to consider the possibility that he had decided to let me die here.

I tried a few other ruses to attract attention; turned the TV, the radio and the CD player way up until the collective volume was ear-splitting. No effect at all. He was keeping the sound in, just as he kept others from hearing his celebrations. It was like being sealed away from the world in an impenetrable bubble. On the third day my food supply, with the exception of a few items like gravy mix and maple syrup, ran dry. I had carefully bagged my garbage but the flat was still starting to smell funky and I was out of ideas, trying not to panic. What could I do but sit and wait for someone to find me? I watched TV, read books, played music, listened at the sealed front door as Midas prowled back and forth, laughed, partied. I couldn't believe I was being held prisoner in the middle of a city of eleven million people. It was as if nobody knew I was still alive. Perhaps they didn't; the thought flipped my stomach. Perhaps he had changed their perception of me. Perhaps, like an unloved octogenarian, my bloated body would be found weeks after my death. That night, the fourth night, I lay in bed and cried myself sick.

The following morning I rose unrefreshed and switched on the TV. The weatherman promised that the summer's endless heatwave would end in the mother of all storms, then a game show host unveiled a cheap-looking car to a collective wave of oohs and aahs. I tiredly followed my track around the apartment, trying to think of ideas and clutching at even the most foolish, like running to the radio for a phone-in number, only to remember that the phone wasn't working.

I carried out my daily inventory; I was out of soap, shampoo, washing powder and suddenly I was out of water. Turning on the faucet produced a thin trickle, then nothing. He must have turned it off at the mains supply in the attic. I had half a can of flat Sprite in the refrigerator and nothing else. How long, I wondered, could a person survive without water? Three days, four, more? I lay on the floor of the lounge, drained of energy, watching as simpering couples won video recorders on the game show: The thought of giving in to Midas no longer occurred to me. I knew now that this apartment was to be my oubliette . I would die here, an unremembered martyr.

That afternoon I carefully scooped the water from the toilet cistern into a saucepan, boiled it, then stored it in the fridge. Going to the bathroom wouldn't be a problem; there was nothing to eat. My stomach growled constantly, but there was no pain. I told myself it was like going on a diet. But I knew it wasn't. It was dying by degrees. I felt myself slipping into a fugue state, aided by the incessant drone of the television and the stifling heat of my cell. The door and windows remained unbudgeable. I lay with my burning forehead pressed against the window as the tide of passers-by ebbed and flowed. Day faded to night and back to day. I could feel myself wasting away, stomach shrinking, tongue swelling, muscles atrophying, and I no longer cared.