Murder in the Dark

"Remember that tail," I told myself. I was on my way down the mailroom, and Stella, she was sleeping on the floor, with her tail stuck out in the hallway. I thought it was a shoelace at first, but then I remembered I don't have any shoes with laces. "Remember that tail," I muttered. "No running over it, now." Then there was a telephone bill, a great big telephone bill, and I didn't remember the tail at all, and poor, poor Stella! I ran my rat down with my wheelchair. Right over the tail, I went--squash!--and "Skeeeeeeee!" shruck my rat, and then she bit my chair, which was banged-up enough to begin with. I scooped her right up (you know, in case she wanted to bite me too), but she was too busy licking her wounded tail to bother with revenge. Poor, poor Stella. That had to hurt.

She got her own back later, of course. Wouldn't go in her cage. I was chasing her around, but it was like Frankenstein chasing a rabbit: lurchy, and not terribly effective. Stella was running round and round in circles, and I was stumbling about in the middle of the room, trying to figure out where she'd gone. By the end of it all, I was exhausted, and Stella was smug. Smug, and full of rice crackers. My bag of rice crackers, and all, occupied and contaminated by rats. Got right in there, she did, and dug around for a while, so as to touch every single cracker. She needn't have bothered. I wouldn't eat from a beratted bag anyway, whether the rat'd had its nose in or its whole dirty self. She'd ruined my snacking the minute she got in the first paw.

Augh. I'm so tired, so damnably tired. It's difficult to concentrate when I'm this tired. I think this would be as good a time as any to sort through all those little pieces of paper.

THINGS I WROTE ON LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER WHILE UNDER THE WEATHER, AND (POSSIBLY INACCURATE) INTERPRETATIONS THEREOF

1. Murder in the Dark

Murder in the Dark--that was a game, I'm certain of it. We used to play it at Christmastime, and at various other family gatherings, me and my sister and these two boys from a neighbouring town. (These were the same boys as were involved in the shopping-mall swastika incident*, if my memory serves me correctly.) It was played like this: one of us was the murderer, and another was the victim. Everyone else was a detective. The detectives would go upstairs--we played in the basement, see, where there were lots of boxes to hide behind--the detectives would go upstairs, and the victim would lie down on the floor. Because he was dead, sort of thing. The murderer, meanwhile, would turn out the lights and hide.

Shortly thereafter, the detectives would come down, and start looking around for the murderer. At this point, the victim would get stepped on several times, ostensibly because it was dark, but really because it's fun stepping on people. When the murderer was discovered, the detectives would try and arrest him, and he'd try and bust loose. A brief but destructive fight would ensue. Once, while playing Murder in the Dark, one of the detectives took it upon himself--

--oh, all right. Herself. It was me. Satisfied?

--took it upon herself to paint the hapless detective (my sister) red. Mother was not amused.

Fun times, those. There were honeycakes and computer games and Christmas carols sung in German. Gifts were exchanged and stories were swapped. Seems so long ago now. I mean, Murder in the Dark started before my sister was even born, and she's seventeen now. We didn't want her to play, when she got old enough, because she was small and fragile and always got herself hurt. That was why we--why I painted her, to get her to go away. Sneaky wee fuck, I was.

Ah, Murder in the Dark. I was so lively, back then. What I wouldn't give....

Anyway. Getting sentimental. Can't have that. Onward!

2. Bleeperfucker!

This one's quite simple, really, but at the same time, utterly confounding. On the telly, see, when somebody says "Motherfucker!", they bleep out the "mother" bit, but not the "fucker". Bizarre, that. You'd think they'd bleep the obscene part, and leave the mother alone. Just to compound the silliness, the closed captions aren't censored at all.

3. Urticate

One of my favourite words. Unfortunately, opportunities to use it are scarce at best. What does it mean? To inflict weals, bumps, or similar itchy skin edemas, especially by exposure to an irritant such as urtica dioica (stingy nettles). Usage: (upon falling into a bed of stingy nettles, for instance)--"Oh, no! I've been urticated!"

4. Host on floor

I can only surmise that this is an allusion to my days in church school. Students were often compelled to attend Mass or Eucharist services, according to denomination. These services, as one might expect, involved the whole cannibalism bit, with the body of Christ and the blood of Christ (and, when a certain fast-balding priest officiated, the hair of Christ as well. Faugh).

At one such service, there was a bit of an accident, and the host was...well, dropped, to the great horror of everyone involved. Even my parents were shocked when I told them about it.

"On the floor?" said my father. "What the devil was he doing?"

"Most peculiar," said my mother.

"Right," said me, shifting from one foot to the other. I had a guilty conscience, see. It was all my fault. I was always trying to screw things up for school staff back then. There was the time I pretended to sneeze over a tray of india ink so it blew all over Mrs. M's trousers, and the time I went from classroom to classroom stealing all the pencils, and the time me and Kate wrote "Satan!" in the religion texts. And the host, that was me, too. Everyone was crowding in close, trying to get a bit and get gone. Me, I saw a golden opportunity. I got in close and jogged the priest's arm a little, and hoof!--wafers filled the air. Consecrated wafers. I'd forgotten about that part. I mean, it's not as if I believe in transubstantiation, or anything like that, but the priest might've done. What a thing to do, anyhow. Nobody knew it was me. I'd probably have been expelled, if they did. The priest was down on his knees, desperately trying to sweep up the wafers, and everyone else was stepping on them, whether accidentally or by design, I couldn't say. At assembly the next morning, a note was made of it, a stern note, by the headmaster himself: crowding during holy services was thenceforth forbidden.

(Is that only four notes I've been through? I wrote dozens. I'm so tired, though, and I didn't think it'd take this long. I'll have to carry on later.)

* Link temporarily offline, due to file-system restructuring. Will be back soon.