Every night, there was a monster in the road outside my house. I knew this because I was an insomniac and one night, upon impulse, I peered through my bedroom window. And there, dog-shaped in the gutter, was what I assumed to be a monster. It seemed the obvious thing to assume.
From time to time, the head reared on its neck and then flopped down again, as if it couldn’t be bothered to frighten anyone, even me.
Or was it too frightened itself to move?
So, every night since then, during those inevitable hours of sleeplessness, having had my fill of real dreams, I staggered over to the tattered curtains and, through a keyhole-shaped slit, fastened my cooling eyes upon that pulsing mound.
Each night a smidgeon larger than on the night before.
#
“Are you awake?”
Someone was making a hell of a row upon my bedroom door. I had fallen into a fitful sleep, which I usually managed to do Just before dawn.
“No! Go away!”
And whoever it was did.
The previous night had been the seventeenth time I had watched the monster. It was strange that I could recall the exact number of sightings, but not make comparisons of size between the first and the last of them - if, Indeed, it were the last sighting. Like all of life, finalities only emerge in retrospect. Middles unmeasured. Beginnings often unanticipated and unrecognised.
That voice at the door began to haunt me. It was not familiar: a female one, but with undercurrents of masculine depth. Probably a passer-through. Squats are like that.
Eventually, I dragged my scrawny body from its pit. I frequently wish I could refer to myself without the use of the first person singular. I is so definitive. Makes escape impossible.
I needed breakfast. But the cupboard was noticeably bare. Whoever had disrupted my belated sleep had evidently filched a bellyful. And scarpered with it. With no bye or leave. In hindsight, the food must have been disappearing over a period and only today did I notice this since the cupboard was finally empty.
I needed a gulp of air. Tentatively, I opened the front door. Not even a tell-tale stain in the gutter where the monster had seeped its innards for most of the night.
The cleansing-cart came early to these parts during those most sleepful moments.
“Hey!”
On the other side of the road was that stranger who had earlier accosted my bedroom door. I waved cursorily. I had been brought up to acknowledge people. Politeness bred to the very bottom bone.
He or she was crossing the road, apparently to have a talk with me close-up.
“Yes?” I asked, in the hope of getting at least one word in edgewise.
“Big news! The place is going under the hammer today.” He or she pointed at the squat whence I had just emerged. This was not exactly big news as bad. It foreboded the end of an era.
“How do you know?” I need not have worried about the allowances made by the stranger for normal conversation. In fact, the only reply to my question was a tap to his or her nose.
I shrugged. I had heard such stories before. People often delight in bringing bad news, even if the news isn’t true. Then, I recalled the bellyfuls of grub pilfered from my larder-cupboard.
“Hey! Did you pinch my food?”
The stranger smiled.
MUCH LATER:
I have forcibly dragged the cuplrit to my kitchen and prodded my longest finger as far down its throat as I could. What lies on the linoleum makes me think that there will not be an eighteenth sighting of the monster.
Sleepless nights are sure to be a thing of the past thankfully.
(Published ‘Carnal Chameleon’ 1993)
