It was about a quarter past ten.

The bathroom window was pushed wide, the velvet night outside still warm, the sky still alight with the tattered remnants of cloud burnt and glowing from the August sunset; ethereal embers edging the darkening firmament, a firmament shaded from an intense ochre at the horizon to a midnight blue pricked with the ghostly sparkle of early stars directly overhead.

The last blackbird chinked in the holly; not the urgent alarm triggered by a silent cat stealing almost unnoticed through the long grass, head down, shoulders hunched, tail-tip twitching and hunting noiselessly, but the relaxing chink of ice in scotch.

It had been a fine day. A day of rewarding work outside which had left me pleasantly weary, a weariness made more pleasant still by a bellyful of food and several cool beers, the first two of which were now describing a satisfyingly glittering arc into the water closet as I leant indolently against the wall.

Weariness began to be replaced by the kind of tiredness that only a cool bed could satisfy as I ran the toothbrush under the tap and squeezed a little toothpaste onto the wet bristles.

I have seen The Lost World, and The Land That Time Forgot. I have watched all three of the Jurassic Park films, and marvelled at the recreation of long extinct giants which once ruled our world. I think I would be able to recognise a pterodactyl if one flew in through the open window.

So I stood ptransfixed, with ptoothpaste and spittle dribbling down my chin as something which was by any sane measure only marginally smaller than a pterodactyl crashed into the room.

I’m ashamed to say that I squeaked a toothpastey squeak, retreated as far as I could – which was about a foot, it being an economically-sized en-suite – and began to flap my arms about like a hapless girl in a cheap horror film when she is attacked by an infeasibly rubbery bat on a piece of string.

This thing – this goliath of mothdom – clattered towards my head like a Fokker Triplane piloted by the begoggled Beelzebub himself. I saw a look of such wicked malevolence that I cannot describe in every one of the hundreds of facets of its ghastly, mothy eyes.

What could I do?

I was trapped, panic-stricken and silently screaming. I was pinned against the wall, thrashing wildly, blindly, madly; striking out as it flapped around me, colliding with the side of my head, getting its feet tangled in my hair on purpose, and trying to fly into my ears.

My God! It had a plan!

It was trying to penetrate my head; to crawl into one of my cavities and lay eggs against my eardrum which would hatch into foul flesh-eating caterpillars that would burrow into my brain and regurgitate their putrefying bile into the back of my eyeballs.

I couldn’t turn the light off so that the glow of the streetlight would draw it out of the open window because of the arcane law which insists that a bathroom light switch which isn’t a pull must be on the outside of the room. I couldn’t open the door to reach for the switch for fear of letting it into the house lest it ate our clothes, killed my son as he slept, or carried my whimpering dogs away to its mountaintop lair.

And all the while it whirred and rattled and barged around me.

If I moved, it went for my ears. If I didn’t move, it went for my ears. If I breathed through my nose, I would inhale it up one of my nostrils.

If I opened my mouth it would surely fly in, seeking an alternative route to my ears…

I closed my eyes, wondering as I did if it were the last time I would ever see the bathroom ceiling.

Then the noise stopped.

I didn’t dare open my eyes in case it was perched on the wall right in front of my face, sharpening its feelers and staring at me, waiting for me to open my eyes.

Minutes passed. They felt like hours. I had to do something. I opened one eye, and then the other. I looked carefully around, and listened.

There was silence.

An absolute silence broken only by the flat thrum of an Impreza WRX accelerating out of the bends away to the west.

I peeled my sweating skin from the bathroom wall, and summoning all the courage I could muster, reached slowly out to the shower curtain to see if it was lurking there. I stopped. What if it was? What would I do? I had no weapons within reach other than the toothbrush I was holding, a brass radiator key, and an empty toilet roll middle.

Could I fashion something lethal from these? A shield with which to protect my vulnerable ears; a mighty mace with which I could strike my foe, and a razor-sharp blade with which I could cut out its black heart as it lay stunned on the floor?

I couldn’t. If it was there, I would have to wrestle it to the floor, and pummel it until its head was a bloody pulp before it could launch itself at me again.

Perhaps surprise was the key.

I needed to think fast, and act even quicker. Seize the initiative. Wrest the advantage. Do something unexpected. Turn defence into attack. Go on the offensive when the enemy least expected it.

I took three deep breaths to steady my nerves, and a Zen-like calm descended on me. Suddenly my plan crystallised itself with remarkable clarity, and summoning all the strength I could muster in one explosive movement, I leapt at the shower curtain.

There was a swish, followed by a crash as first the curtain and then the pole fell into the shower tray. For a few short seconds it was bedlam as I flailed around under the curtain, dislodging a large rectangular block of Wright’s Coal Tar soap, the corner of which caught me a painful blow on the top of the head. A shower curtain ring rolled slowly across the floor, hit the base of the toilet, and toppled over.

It was quiet.

There was no moth.

I could only assume it had flown out of the open window in search of easier prey.

I went to bed.

The next morning, as I sat attending to my toilet with the sunlight warming the wall opposite the window, I reflected on what an extraordinary night it had been. I smiled to myself, and picked up the newspaper from my knees.

There was a sudden fluttering noise, and something brushed against my testicles...

What a wimp! I'd simply have screamed for the wife to come and remove it.

It works every time.

Zitat

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Mothballs ?

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Excellent! Well done that man.

Quote: Crow wrote in post #8

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Back on form Pepe, have you got all the previous tales as well?

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