He had been talking for some time but Susan couldn’t recall anything he said. She watched as his lips formed words but the voice that reached her ears was warbled and drawn out. The more she tried to make sense of the conversation, the more it seemed like a constant blur of vowels.

A sensation of pain crept up her arm and found its way to her brain. She turned her head to find the source of the pain impulse and as she did so, the room sloshed and wavered, like watching 20 foot ocean waves through a fish eye lens. She was hit with an overwhelming sensation of vertigo, causing her to flop from her chair and land face-first on the hardwood floor. Instead of feeling pain from the impact, she felt nothing as she slid into unconsciousness.

Jakob set his glass down and looked at her unmoving form for a minute before picking up the handset of the phone and punching in some numbers on the keypad. “I need a plumber. I have a broken pipe that needs fixed.”

“We’ll send someone right over,” came the curt, gruff reply.