The Last Pink Lady

Date: 10/17/2025

I’m at the supermarket, half-asleep under the fluorescent hum, scanning groceries through the self-checkout. Beep. Beep. Each sound feels like a heartbeat, a metronome of domestic drudgery. I reach for the next item—and freeze. Half of my trolley's contents are gone. Vanished. “Oh crap,” I mutter, glaring at the empty wire basket. Phoebe’s nearby, my daughter, giggling with some new friend I’ve yet to introduce myself. The pair look far too carefree for my liking. “Right, you two,” I say, summoning my best Mum voice, “go grab the stuff that’s gone missing—milk, apples, the lot. And hurry up! I can’t lose my place.” The queue behind me is now an angry snake of impatience, shifting and hissing. I feel its breath on my neck. But the girls are taking their sweet time, and the moaning grows louder. A sigh behind me almost knocks me off of my feet. “I’d better find them,” I decide, abandoning my half-scanned groceries and sprinting towards the fruit section. They must be at the Pink Ladies. Phoebe always picks the prettiest ones. Except — when I get there, the display is stripped bare. Every apple gone except one lonely packet, clutched by none other than Dionne, an ex-colleague. She gives me that smile — the smug kind, polished and poisonous. “Bitch,” she snaps. “You can think again.” I glare. Cold. Icy. She glares right back, clasping the bag of apples like a prized possession. I know I’ve lost this battle before it’s even begun. The walk back is the real punishment. The queue glares as one collective organism, eyes burning holes through my jumper. I can almost hear the disapproval, cursing my existence under their breath. Then—salvation. Rachel, my manager, stands at the checkout, keeping my groceries afloat. “Bloody kids,” I groan. “Tell me about it,” she laughs, and for a moment, the tension melts away. But then the scene changes in the roll of an eye. Suddenly I’m home. Only, it doesn't feel much like home. Everything’s dim and dust-heavy, like a house abandoned mid-sentence. There are cobwebs everywhere. One of which, I walk straight into, regretting it the moment it hugs my face. Panic explodes. Arms and legs flail like a Morris dancer on steroids. I can feel something crawling—tiny legs skating across my cheek, one spider finding its way toward my mouth. “Get them off! Get them off!” I scream, spitting and spluttering like a demented camel. Mat stands there, observing the whole fiasco. Useless. Amused. “You alright?” he says, like I’m performing a pantomime. At last, I manage to untangle myself from the web. Spiders scatter, disappearing into shadows. My chest heaves. My skin itches. And just when I think it can’t get much worse, I feel it—the fever blooming behind my eyes. Snot. Heat. Pulsing temples. My body is burning up like a disco inferno. On the counter: syringes filled with an unsavory orange liquid. Medicine, maybe. I squint at the box. The words slide and blur like oil on water. Three syringes sounds about right. I down them, one by one. The taste is bitter, metallic, wrong. Within moments the room starts to tilt, spinning like a carousel of melting faces. My stomach lurches. Mat rushes in, his voice slicing through the fog. “How many did you take?” “Three,” I say—or think I say. My tongue feels slow, my words suspended mid-air like a hummingbird lost in thought. “Jesus, Mandy! You were only supposed to take one. You’re overdosing!” “I read the box,” I protest, but the sounds coming out of my mouth are thick, distant, like someone else’s voice underwater. The floor tilts. My body follows. I collapse. The world folds in on itself—voices shouting, feet scrambling—but they’re all fading into static. And then… silence. Darkness wraps around me, soft as cobwebs. I’m weightless. Floating. Through the black, I see a faint shimmer—like the sheen on an apple’s skin. The last Pink Lady, glowing, perfect, untouched. I reach for it, fingers brushing silk. From its core, a golden spider crawls out, weaving a thread that glows like morning sunlight. It winds around my wrist, pulling me upward—out of the fever, out of the noise, out of myself. The supermarket beeps return, soft and steady. Beep. Beep. Beep. Each one is slower than the last. Each one, a little further away. I try to speak—to tell Mat I’m fine, to tell Phoebe not to worry—but the words never make it out. Only a breath. Only light. The spider’s thread tightens, tugging me toward something vast and soundless. Below me, the world fades to a wash of pink—the colour of apples, of skin, of endings. And for one impossible moment, I think I hear them calling my name. Then the thread snaps— and everything goes still.