It Lives...Sort Of.

Caro, a te mi raccomando, tu mi salva per pietà!

--Rossini, Il Barbiere di Siviglia

It's been ages since last I wrote. Wonder if I still remember how? I was going to say something extra-interesting, in case this turned out to be Ratty's Last Epistle to the Internet, sort of thing. I scribbled things down on little pieces of paper, things like "wakey-wakey; hands off snakey" and "walking in jungle; no bugs in hair", which were meant to remind me of other things--things, I expect, which might've been worth reading about. But then I thought about it, and, really, there's nothing I could say with my last breath that's not already been said. Besides, I'm feeling better now. No need for farewells, Web-borne or otherwise. I got up and wandered around the place yesterday, and the day before that. There was a day last week, too, when I went out for some milk, except then, a car almost hit me. I was on my way across the street when the light changed, and this car, it started nosing closer and closer, over the pedestrian crossing line. Its bumper nudged into my walking stick. I, fearing for my life (or, at the very least, for my toes), began to run as best I could. I ran out of the road, and onto the sidewalk. I could've stopped then, I suppose, but my heart was pounding, so I ran another half-block for good measure. In case that car was still chasing me, see.

After all that, they only had skim milk at the shop--well, skim and one percent, which is indistinguishable from skim. I wanted two percent, and all. I'd come all that way, though. I couldn't go home empty-handed. I settled for chocolate, and then I got home and remembered I'd wanted it for cereal. You can't use chocolate for cereal. Everybody knows you can't--

--and imagine these were my last words, eh? Socar to World: "You can't put chocolate milk in your Wheaties. It's just not on."

Anyhow, there I was with my useless milk and my bumperscratched walking stick, and my shoe all wet from stepping in a puddle. Being out of breath from all the running, I decided to lie down for just a moment. I kicked my shoes into the corner and peeled off my socks. I replaced my overcoat with my mouldy* ol' housecoat. I turned off the lights, turned up the fire, and folded myself into the couch.

"I'll just rest my eyes a minute," I told Stella, who was trying to squeeze through the bars of her cage nose-first. "Just a minute, and then I'll let you out. Feed you, too. Oh, yeah. Picked you up some nuts. Pine nuts and pecans, just like you always.... Mmf.... Mother's pecan pie...it was always a little mushy, but the crust, just where the sugar would caramelize...ohhhh...."

So I shut my eyes for an instant, and in that instant, the sun went down. Funny, that, how it's morning one moment and night the next. I ought to write to the Weather Bureau, or whoever's in charge of that sort of thing. Highly irregular, what.

"It's dark," I said, this time to no-one in particular. Stella had apparently had a fight with an apple, and was now asleep amid the browning remains.

"--Mengele was particularly interested in twins," said the TV. While I was sleeping--er, resting my eyes, that is--the History Channel had launched into one of its interminable Auschwitz specials***. I reached for the remote, but it wasn't in its accustomed place under the couch. It wasn't in its alternate roost, either, between the cushions. Oh, no. Damn thing was perched atop the TV, four feet away and, as it turned out, completely out of reach. All the strength had gone out of my arms and legs (thanks to Mr. Horrible Driver on Davie Street, no doubt), and while I could fidget and wriggle and hide my head under the pillows, I could not extricate myself from the couch. I was trapped. Hitler had me captive at last--all those dreams where he chased me to no avail, only to have him catch me in the waking world! Who'd've thunk?

Before I get on with the end of this woeful tale, I've got to stop and complain about Hitler--I mean, History Television. I mean, I'm all for learning from past mistakes, and understanding history to avoid repeating it, and all that sort of thing, but just how much does one have to know about Nazi death-camps before coming to the conclusion that they weren't so good? Does one need to hear, as Stephen King once wrote, the gooshy bits? It's not just the Nazis, either. After the tsunami, bloody hell--did you see? Feeding frenzy, that was. Ghoulish. Wherever there was a broken body to be found, there was a camera to linger upon it, lovingly recording every protruding bone, every feasting horsefly. Take these for my last words, my will and testament and so forth: when I'm dead, don't let my body be the subject of some grisly News at Nite wank. I mean, Christ, guys, there are more tasteful ways of nailing a Pulitzer, or an Emmy, or whatever it is you telly types compete for. Divesting the dead of their last scrap of dignity, broadcasting them in their nakedness and their corruption...what's the big idea?

Ahem. Right. Where was I? Oh, yeh. Laid out on the couch being entertained by six million dead Jews.

"Aaaaaaaarrrrgh," I croaked, getting as much passion in there as I could. A fussy banging came from upstairs: bam-bam-bam. Was it related to my raw-throated cry, I wondered, or just a coincidence? There was one way to find out:

"AaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAARRGH!"

Bang-bang-bang!

Result! I gathered my breath for yet another aaargh (I don't know why--a sudden urge to spread the misery, perhaps?), but then the banging set up anew, and didn't stop. Coincidence, then. Hitler below, and banging above. Bloody perfect; and then Stella got up and started shredding paper in the rowdiest fashion imaginable. It was a nightmare, I tell you, a nightmare. It lasted forever and ever. It was--it was a two-hour special, the Auschwitz thing, and I woke up near the beginning. The banging seemed to be an extended performance deal, too. They must've had one of those IKEA desks up there, the ones that come with ten thousand parts and two paragraphs of instructions. Words haven't been invented to describe my pain. It was horrogulous, I say, and groufaughy. It was plenidespicary. No--it's no good. It was AAAARRRRRRRRGH, with a raw throat and a picture of Dr. Mengele skinning someone alive. It was beyond words. It was--

[insert your worst nightmare here]

--that, with vomit on top.

Then, I slept for another few hours, and tried to get some work done, and fell off my chair, and slept, and played Katamari Damacy, and slept, and watched a dozen deadlines crashing closer, and slept, and aarghed, and slept, and here I am, back in the land of the living.

So I've been ill, but now I'm better, the upshot of which is that I've got all these things written down on little pieces of paper. "Wakey-wakey; hands off snakey," indeed! Ah, if I only remembered what they signified! I'll try and make sense of them tomorrow, perhaps. They seemed terribly important at the time. It'd be a shame to let them go to waste. Sort of like the mould-fabric dressing-gown, really: having no legitimate place in the order of things, but, in the spirit of "Waste Not Want Not" and not taking food out of the mouths of starving children, and so forth, finding themselves pressed into service anyway.

* It's not really mouldy. It just feels like mould, or that extra-deep, extra-green moss you get in the deepest parts of the forest. So soft you think it's going to crumble, sort of thing, and a little dampish. Mother sent it. (To be fair, as gifts from Mother go, it isn't half bad. It's streets ahead of the giant trousers and the used swimsuit. However, the pre-war** cutlery was more entertaining.)

** World War II, that is, not the war in Iraq, or even the Vietnam War.

*** Do they never show anything else? Hitler's Henchmen; Portrait in Evil; Auschwitz: Every Last Gruesome Fact****; why, God, why?

**** I didn't actually catch the title, but it was probably something to that effect.