Under the alias “Cyrus,” Mitchell meets Jane in a dark, isolated park. She thinks he’s just a fellow photography enthusiast; he plays the part well—friendly, knowledgeable, disarming. They talk gear, storms and stories, sharing laughter and flirtation as they walk towards the mangroves to photograph lightning over the bay.
The darkness helps him. In poor light, faces become suggestions and strangers can be whoever they claim to be. Mitchell knows which questions to ask and when to let Jane speak. He understands cameras, lenses and exposure well enough to make Cyrus convincing. Calculation resembles calm.
Jane relaxes as they leave the car park behind. Ahead lies wet sand, tangled roots and a strip of beach exposed to the weather. Thunder travels across the bay in long, low rolls. Each flash briefly reveals the path before plunging it back into blackness.
Jane isn’t who she claimed to be. She’s married, a mother, using photography as a cover for something more—just like Mitchell. Her name may be false. Her enthusiasm is not. She wants the secrecy, the risk and the freedom of stepping outside the life waiting at home. The camera gives her an innocent reason to be here after dark.
It gives Mitchell one too.
Jane believes they share the same harmless deception: two adults pretending to chase a storm while quietly chasing each other. She cannot know that “Cyrus” is more than a convenient name. It is the mask Mitchell Felding wears when he wants access to women who would never knowingly walk beside him.
She mentions her family in careful pieces. A husband appears only when concealment becomes impossible. Children follow. Mitchell smiles, but every admission feeds the resentment beneath his charm. To him, her dishonesty is proof. She has altered the rules and expects him to accept the version of truth that suits her.
Yet he has done exactly the same.
That contradiction does not restrain him. It sharpens him.
Photography remains the excuse that brought them together. Mitchell discusses shutter speeds and chooses a place where the mangroves open onto the beach. Jane watches him with growing interest. Expertise is attractive. So is certainty. She sees a man who knows how to read a storm and assumes that means she is safe with him.
Another bolt divides the sky. For an instant, everything is exposed—the water, the boardwalk, the tripod, their bodies standing too close. Then darkness closes over them again.
Their banter turns suggestive. Jane tests him with a look, a joke and a touch that lasts longer than necessary. Mitchell responds carefully, letting her believe she is setting the pace. When they reach the beach, intimacy ignites. Jane takes the lead, feeding his ego and desire. Beneath his arousal, however, rage simmers—fuelled by years of contradiction, rejection and lies from women like Jane, and especially from his wife.
The ordinary mask never slips all at once. That is what makes him dangerous. His normality is camouflage, the same unsettling principle behind why the most normal men make the best monsters. Jane is still responding to Cyrus even as Mitchell begins to disappear inside him.
As lightning wakes the Beast, Mitchell’s desire changes shape. What began as seduction becomes judgement. What looked like mutual risk becomes punishment. He chokes Jane, not for pleasure but for control, dominance and the satisfaction of watching confidence become confusion.
Her fear finally appears—and he savours it.
Until that moment, she has treated danger as part of the thrill. Now she understands that the man beside her was never the man she came to meet. There is no shared secret between them, no pact and no safe return to their separate homes. Her deception was an escape from ordinary life. His was the path to this exact place.
He finishes at the moment her life ends.
No one is there to stop him. The storm masks the violence, thunder swallowing what the wind does not carry away. Her body is left on display—bent, exposed, discarded beneath a sky that continues flashing as though recording the scene in merciless still frames.
Mitchell retrieves her SIM card. It is evidence removed, memory stolen and a grim trophy intended for the bracelet on his wife’s teddy bear. The tiny object reduces Jane’s hidden life to something he can pocket and take home.
Another star for Sam.
Excerpt from SEETHINGS 2—available for download now!
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SEETHINGS II follows the return of the Storm Killer as a body on a secluded beach in Moreton Bay, igniting fear and denial. While police dismiss the link, the media doesn’t. Mitchell Felding forms a dangerous bond with a man who understands his darkest impulses. When Natasha enters his life, carrying love letters from her murdered mother, intimacy deepens, and truth closes in. Some futures are inherited. Some have escaped.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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