My first thought was: it’s a burglar.
Not again. You see, we were burgled in my old house, in London, one week into living there. In the middle of the night, while we slept. Perversely at the time, when I heard the tail end of something stumbling down the stairs, I thought: it’s a badger. Only when I finally roused myself and wandered into my front room to find it bare of television and playstation, did I realise what had really happened.
And ever since then I’ve never suspected badgers of anything.
So when a noise woke me last night, I feared the worst. But this guy was casual, or sinister, depending on how you see it. He was whistling, like Peter Lorre in M. Who could be so sadistic? I turned my head slowly to take in the time on my phone and only then did I realise that it wasn’t a thief. It was my nose. My nose was whistling. I’d awoken to find fearsome vines of mucus had wrapped their way around my ear, nose and throat tract and were stealthily squeezing me to death.
At first I marvelled at the compact jungle scene that my own head had wrought, using the only materials at its disposal; the wind whistling through the nasal passages, the large smooth pebbles that a supplicant had left as gifts to an unknown god in the pit of my throat and that incessant tribal pounding drum pulse – from – where was that? My sinuses?
For a few moments, I was awestruck. Then I realised that what I was feeling was pain, then I tried to convince myself that pain was just another sensation and I should observe it and let it pass, then I gave up and had a little cry.
What a compact drama for 3.13 in the morning. And what a depressing series of tags I will enter for this posting.
Stefanie Moore 