I need to write this down in order to find peace. At 3 o'clock this morning, I couldn't sleep. I could hear a clinking, scraping sound – like a teacup on a saucer – from the cat's dish. Jerry must be midnight feasting. But no, he was on the bed in the usual basket fungus shape he assumes when sleeping. Maybe Kevin had got inside. Kevin is another cat in the neighbourhood. My former neighbour named him after a flatmate who would go into people's houses and eat all their food. I waved a torch. Kevin wasn't there, but the clinking noises continued, like an ominous picnic. Slowly I gathered myself up and stood. There's something about the sensation of my bare feet on carpet at night that fills me with dread, like swimming too far out to sea.
The scraping sound stopped, which wasn't good. At least the scraping indicated that the thing – probably a ghost, I had to accept – was busy. Silence meant it was plotting something.
Then a creature leaped on to my ankle. It was like a gymnast executing a perfect dismount from the high bars. It stood there, waving its headgear around lustily. I felt such fright it was as if my whole body came away from its skeleton. The creature – I could tell from its eyes that it was smart – must have sensed my displeasure because it leaped away, then it ran, clunking like a heavily armoured horse, or like a Goth wearing steel-capped boots, into a pile of pine cones in the fireplace.
It's now 4a.m. I've been poised for a while with a pair of rubber gloves and a lunchbox. I keep getting flashbacks – the ancient waggling of antennae – and my blood chills. There's a species of mountain-dwelling wētā that can be frozen solid and come back to life when it defrosts. I envy that wētā. I will never sleep again or be warm again.
