Monday 4th January, 2am - 5am.

In a cold, stark country-style kitchen, in a house surrounded by woods, a psychopath held a girl hostage. We knew she was in there, and standing outside, planning our strategy, my team of specialists knew they had to rescue her; she was of no personal significance but she was of such importance to someone powerful that she needed to be saved. My mind worked over the situation, and I couldn’t shake the sense that our rescue attempt was a bad idea, that there was something wrong with the girl and maybe both she and her captor were both part of a psychotic plan. A small, distant part of my mind was screaming at my body to stop walking, but the screams were muffled and did not register as I followed the team into the house. Our strategy was to entice the psychopath into everyday activities, act as though we were a group of friends merely spending an evening together. We were unarmed; I can’t recall why, but we didn’t have time to wait around for back-up. As we entered the house, it was clear he was expecting us. Glancing through a door on the other side of the room, he beckoned us into the kitchen, showing no surprise at our presence. I smelt food cooking – some sort of pie - and I noticed a saucepan being heated on the stove. We sat on the three chairs nearest the door we had entered, with the hostage girl sitting opposite me on the other side of the dining table. There was another door on the opposite wall in the left hand corner, leading outside. There was no garden though; the path from the door led directly to a forest area. The psychopath stood close behind the girl, casually holding a large knife in his hands. His eyes were cool, and as we sat there, I noticed that he very rarely blinked. My superior initiated the conversation, aiming to quickly establish a sense of familiarity, which would hopefully encourage the psychopath to let his guard down. Whilst he was talking, I discreetly surveyed our surroundings. Across the table from me the girl was quiet, looking at her hands which were gripping each other fiercely on top of the table in front of her. She was clearly agitated, but I was unsure if it was caused by being taken hostage or something else. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw a sign in the distance, angled away from me slightly. The wording was hard to make out, though I could tell that the first letter was a large M. I could sense it was important that I knew what was on that sign, and from time to time I looked back at it, hoping it would become apparent. The psychopath asked the girl to serve the food, which she did before sitting down to join us. All the while he stood with his back to the worktop, looking on as he played with the knife in his hands. My superior had lead the conversation to the futility of holding the girl hostage, when the psychopath calmly interrupted, ‘But I have to kill four people’. He then lifted himself away from the work top and walked through the door to the garden. My superior stood and watched his progress through the window. I saw him glance at the sign, and a look of horror came across his face. ‘Maidenhead’, he croaked, ‘Run! Everybody run! It’s Maidenhead!’ My heart pounded, and the once muffled screaming in my head escalated to a fearful shrieking. Grabbing the girl by the arm, we ran out of the house, through the bleak, dark woods, stumbling in our haste. We somehow got separated. I had the girl with me, but we were too slow and I could feel the psychopath close behind us. As I dodged through the endless wall of trees, I took a quick look up, wondering if we could climb and hide in one of them. I caught my foot on a half-buried branch, and fell to the floor. Hastily standing up, I felt a whoosh of air rush at my face before everything went dark.