There it was again. The scraping noise in the wall. Everyone had gone to bed. Not me. There I sat, in near-darkness on my bed of peat, my friends fast asleep below me. The light from the hallway cast a long, triangular beam of yellow onto the kitchen wall just around the corner. All I could see were shadows.
If I had a clock or a watch, I’d be able to tell you what time it was. But it was, literally, the middle of the night. Everywhere beyond the yellow slit was DARK.
The noise echoed around the kitchen which means it must have been loud. I am a snail after all and quite deaf.
All I know is, whatever it was, it was not walking around in the kitchen. If it had been walking, I would have felt the vibrations from its feet on the ground. They would have ricocheted all the way up the stool. They would have pulsed right into my tank.
I fell into an uneasy sleep. My foot felt cold inside its shell. And when morning came and I flung out an eye, there was no big, black blob hovering on the other side as before. Nothing steamed up the outside of the tank.
Whatever it is that scrapes in the wall in the night, I hope I never see it. There is only plastic between me and a certain death. There are only a few air vents keeping me in.
Do you know what’s in the wall? Do you know what scrapes at night? If you know where the big, black blob went, tell me, won’t you? I’m finding it hard to close my eyes.
Old Mac