Alone

Emily let out an involuntary squeal as the room plunged into sudden darkness. Forcing herself to take a deep breath and regain her composure, Emily contemplated her next movements. All the electrics had cut out; the Television had died, along with the main light and the small lamp she was using to work with. Carefully she put her sewing onto the small table she knew was in front of her.

Emily was becoming blasé to the electrics regularly cutting out, a small price to pay for being able to live in seclusion; her nearest neighbour being around five miles away. After the incessant ‘rat-race’ of living in London, the plan to move to Dartmoor had proven to be exactly what Emily and her husband had been searching for all this time. No, Emily didn’t mind the minor irritation of losing the power occasionally as the temperamental generator had a ‘hissy fit’ now and again.

“Hope Jack replaced those candles he used.” Emily spoke to the darkness as she carefully manoeuvred around the table and slowly made her way to the open, living room door. “If he hasn’t he’ll be in big trouble.” Emily often found herself voicing her thoughts aloud; she put it down to all the time she spent alone as Jack worked away so much. Jack often teased her that it was because she was getting old.

Once in the hallway she made for the large cupboard beside the basement door, opened the cupboard door and, after groping for a few seconds, retrieved two candles, one already in a holder, and some matches. Emily toyed with the idea of going down into the Basement to see if she could do anything to the generator and get the power back on. She gave a shiver at the thought of going into the basement and instantly dismissed the idea, besides; Jack would be home soon, he could go down there with the spiders and the cold to sort it out.

Striking a match lit the warmly decorated hallway with a flare of white and gold. The candle hesitated before the wick reluctantly lit, the reflection of the flame dancing across the faces on a photograph hanging beside Emily. She glanced at the portrait and smiled at the faces of her daughter and her family, a joyous moment in time, captured with the push of a button. A small feeling of sadness welled in Emily’s’ heart as she looked at the grandchildren she now only saw twice a year. Her one regret of the move. The feeling of empty loneliness had grown with the move and she found it could only be filled with the hugs of her family.

Using the candle to light her world she reached to close the cupboard door. It was then that she saw it. A strange box, it was dusty and old looking. It reminded Emily of the type of box containing a Jigsaw. Emily had never seen this one before; perhaps Jack had found it in the basement, and brought it up before he went to work, she reasoned.

Emily took the box out of the cupboard, it had to be a Jigsaw box, as she had taken it out, she had heard that familiar movement of wooden pieces. Curious, Emily made her way back to the living room to investigate her find.

In the living room, Emily ignored the small table with her discarded sewing; she put the box on the large dining table set in the oversize bay window, and sat on one of the chairs. Placing the candles and matches to one side she looked at her prize.

“Funny. Don’t remember Jack saying anything about you.” She addressed the box.

The box had no picture on; in fact, she could find no markings or clues to the contents whatsoever. With care, Emily gently slid the lid off the box. Inside she discovered a large pile of jigsaw pieces, just as she had expected, however she had not expected the strange and irregular shapes of the pieces. They were not the smooth, rounded shapes she knew from her childhood pleasures, these were wild, jagged and differing sizes.

With a furrowed brow, Emily emptied the box onto the tabletop and started to spread the bizarre, wooden pieces out to separate them. With a small amount of relief, she saw that they had the semblance of a picture on them, then she started finding a few with straight edges.

“Well at least I may be able to have a go and ‘unbefuddle’ you.” She spoke to the pieces, whilst separating those with obvious straight sides.

When satisfied she had found as many ‘straights’ as she could, she pushed the remaining pile to one side and began to offer pieces up to each other. When she managed a minor victory like getting two, sometimes more, to join together, she found herself cheering like her grandson, Nigel would; letting out a whispered ‘yess’.

After some time Emily had the outside edges of the puzzle completed, giving her a rectangular border to fill with the remaining pieces. She still found no clue to the picture on the puzzle, the ‘straights’ were all dark, with shades of grey in seeming random places.

Emily briefly paused, looking up at the windows around her was like looking at a reflection in a mirror, her image lit by the gentle flickering of the candle. Emily hated the finality of the night here, she was used to street lights and passing headlights of the occasional vehicle, here though the darkness outside was almost a solid tangible force, pressing on the glass, accentuating any feeling of solitude. Back in London, she had never felt alone, even though she knew none of her surrounding neighbours or the people that bustled passed her in the street.

Emily visualised the normal day time view she enjoyed so many times from her ‘breakfast perch’; rolling hillsides, and outcrops of granite rocks, covered in a generous coating of snow now that winter was here. That view had soon become her friend and never ending companion.

Emily stopped her reverie and glanced at the small clock on the mantle piece, the one her Grandchildren had given her on their last visit; they had modified it by gluing a photo of themselves on the pendulum. Once again she felt the small hollow in her heart open at the thought of the children, (and how she missed them without measure). The clock informed her it was nearly nine o’clock.

“Jack’s late. I wonder where in the world he’s got to.” Emily muttered. She was used to her husbands errant time keeping, it came with his job, had done since he became a driver more than thirty years ago. Now as a transport manager it was no different, except he now came home every night, no longer away all week. Emily hadn’t minded him being away so much then, she had the children to look after; they kept her too busy to worry about being a part time one parent family. In recent years though, it became a different story; she had started to feel very alone.

Resuming her challenge of the jigsaw, Emily snapped out of her self propelled moroseness, and began to find more pieces that slotted together. Once again, quickly becoming engrossed in the puzzle, with its’ jagged edges and weird sizes; it was as if a picture had been haphazardly broken into shards of wood. If it hadn’t been for the smoothness of the piece edges, denoting a cut not a break, she might have believed that had indeed happened.

After some time, Emily could see that there was a picture to the puzzle; it looked like the interior of a room in semi-darkness. As she worked inwards from the border, pieces turned from black to wispy greyness, then she began to make out the shapes and shadows of furniture and fixings in the room.
Some of the furniture was familiar to Emily. Then she realised it was a picture of the room she was in. As pieces slotted together she was able to see the sofa she had recently vacated, the small table in front of it, even something that resembled her discarded sewing. Mesmerized by curiosity, she continued to place puzzle pieces together. Emily started to get quicker and quicker at her task, her deep seated inquisitiveness and fascination at the picture, forcing her onwards.

After a while the picture revealed a large table, set into a bay window. Now there was no doubt it was the room she herself was in. She hurried to get the remaining pieces together, soon she saw a woman, hunched over the table. Startled, Emily realised it looked like herself.

In shock, Emily stopped. It was certainly the room she was in, it had the same layout, all the same furniture, the same shadows. Shadows cast by a candle on the table. Feeling very unnerved, Emily looked at the woman sat at the pictured table. It was as if she was looking at her own back, unbelievably, the woman wore the same clothes and was hunched over the table doing, what seemed to be…a jigsaw. It was her!

“What in Dickens’ name…?” Emily’s’ voice had a tremble to it.

The picture even showed the large bay windows before her. There was a large hole in the window where some pieces were yet to be placed to finish the picture completely. Slowly, Emily picked up the remaining pieces, turned them over in her hands without looking at them.

“This isn’t right!” Emily stood suddenly. “No. No. No. This is all wrong. This can’t happen. Where’s Jack? He’s playing a trick.” Deep in her core, Emily felt real fear. Cold, icy razorblades ran up her spine. She fleetingly thought of the phone in the hallway.

“Don’t be stupid!” she berated herself. “Who you going to call? And what do you say?”

Decision made she returned to her chair, quickly slotted the remaining pieces into place and froze.
As if coming out of a dream she looked at the finished picture before her. Emily was too stunned to think. Fear grabbed her as if a frozen tidal wave had swept over her.

Her fear didn’t come just from the impossible picture of her in the room, doing a jigsaw puzzle. It came from the vision of the wild and tormented face at the pictures’ window. Beside the face, the bloody, severed head of Jack.

Slowly, unwilling, an invisible hand forcing her; Emily looked up at the window. All the air seemed to rush from the room.

“Oh my god! Oh my god!”