Me: Woken from sleep to the sound of mosquitos. Black nightie, hot summer night, window open.
Beanie: Pastel acrylic knit, large pom pom, mosquito killer.
Five mosquitos: Furtive, agile, bastards.
Leaping from end to end of the room, jumping on and off the bed, colliding with furniture, I repeatedly throw (and sometimes catch) beanie at my assailants. It is hot and I am groggy from sleep but will power, principle and pride prevail:
the mosquitos must die.
The work is tiring. They escape the soft thud of beanie-on-ceiling but I am tenacious. Spurred on by the momentum of three kills, I am determined to hunt down every last one. But I feel my night time exfoliánt/hydratánt sliding from my face. The place between my breasts is slippery with perspiration and the polyester of my nightie clings to me.
I begin to wonder if I am going mad. What must my housemates think of this incessant soft-thudding? What if there is no end to these malevolent monsters?
I confuse tiny spots of muck on the walls and ceiling with these little fuckers. They are just waiting for me to give up. Or, hiding, let me think I've won. Waiting, for me to put trusty beanie down, turn off the light and drift into treacherous sleep.
Then I realise that the muckspots are my trophies, my ginger scalps. The insides of them exploded out, smeared across the room for all posterity.
I am elated.
There is one left and I will sleep upon a mattress stuffed with their sickening little corpses before I share a room with even one.
This one, in its capacity, is clearly the smartest. It has watched me decimate its population. Vengeance, where possible, is granted. Conserving its energy, it ducks beanie and repositions itself quickly, vanishing into static invisibility. It leaves no time for me to catch and strike again. I must stop, search, try again. My emotion starts to overwhelm. Indelible contempt is mixed with something like respect. My adversary is trying to tire me out.
The mosquito must die.
This final battle charges the room with our respective feelings of urgency and desperation. There is no corner of the room that its vile legs or beanie have not touched.
The fatal blow is delivered in the north east corner of the room. I stare hard at the grey smudge that life fell from. For a moment it is impossible to differentiate between the enemy and another victory-spot. And then it is not.
I pause to reflect. A surge of meaning courses through me and I sit down to write. As I do I see, unfathomably, on the wall behind the place where beanie rests, a big, fat bloodsucker. Some shocking delusion passes over me, allowing me to continue to write with bewildering assurance that the outcome of tonight's events is one I will come to reconcile myself with.
As I come to the part of my writing that recounts that legendary blow, I sit at the edge of my bed, my arse in the place my head would be if I were sleeping.
I look up for one tender and glorious moment at the wall to my right and stare into the grey evil that seeks to destroy me. I feel like Gaius Caesar staring down the defeated king of Gaul.
An awkward palm lunges forward with a slap that will wake the people sleeping in the next room.
I will sleep well tonight.
