BACK IN 5 MINUTES
~AN EXPRESSION OF DEPRESSION VOLUME 1
Edited by
Lucie Barât and Fawn Neün
Designed by Chris Colston
LE
LITTLE EPISODES PUBLISHING
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BACK IN 5 MINUTES, an expression of depression volume 1
The right of the authors in this book to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
L. Barât and F. Neun are hereby identified as editors of this work in accordance with Section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Any dialogue or behaviour ascribed to the characters in these stories - those who are real people as well as the characters who are imagined - is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner
Little Episodes Ltd, No. 7005436
Ways of contacting people within Little Episodes can be found on
Smashwords Edition
Little Episodes Publishing
Copyright @ Little Episodes Publishing, 2010
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Little Episodes Publishing.
Edited by Lucie Barat and Fawn Neün
With thanks to Nick Ross and Antonia Hodgson at Little,
Brown Book Group and to all the contributors.
Depression, addiction and mental illness are common problems in the modern world, with one in four people likely to experience a mental health problem every year. Established in 2009, Little Episodes is a not-for-profit organization consisting of professional writers, artists, musicians and actors with three aims to its mission statement: the first, to destigmatise and raise awareness of depression, addiction and mental illness; the second, to promote the arts as a therapeutic tool by holding writing and art therapy workshops; and third, to provide a platform for both emerging and established writers/artists to find community and collaboration using the first goal as their theme.
The ‘expression of depression’ anthologies….
The idea came from a journal and pad of art therapy pictures recorded during a stint in rehab. The idea was to collate similar pieces from as many artists as possible to provide empathy for anyone going through a psychological experience of isolation and mental struggle.
This book is the first of a volume of six.
Crazy Days ~ an expression of depression is an eBook accessible via the website, with a combination of lyrics, poems, short stories, photographs and paintings from over 60 contributors.
We welcome any new material you’d like to share with us for future anthologies. We’d also love to see any new artwork and photography you might like to contribute for our website gallery. We’re always interested to hear of any performance/exhibition material you might like to contribute for our monthly nights.
www.littleepisodes.org
Little Episodes Team;
FOUNDER/ARTISTIC DIRECTOR - LUCIE BARÂT
Lucie thinks too much, drinks too much, and smokes profusely. She scribbles in grubby notebooks and sells poems and songs. She’s currently writing down thinly veiled personal experiences and touting it as a novel. Likes Marmite, wine, women and words ;)
CO FOUNDER/DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT – CHRIS COLSTON
After a chance meeting with Lucie, Chris co-founded Little Episodes in 2009 in an attempt to draw attention to the therapeutic possibilities of the arts. He now splits his time between London and the Southwest - painting, drawing and longing to return to the seaside.
CO FOUNDER/CHIEF EDITOR - FAWN NEÜN
Fawn is the Chief Editor and Hair-Puller of online arts and lit ‘Zine The Battered Suitcase. A recovering non-fiction and technical writer, she is currently wrestling with her third novel, denying the existence of the second and snorting the ashes of the first. She plays a brain in a jar of blue fluid on the internet.
EDITOR/INTERVIEWER – HUDSON HORNICK
Hudson began his love affair with the English language when, as a boy, he rejected it almost entirely. Now he pushes words around pages and occasionally shoots the odd photograph. He believes in all that is beautiful, and to him, this is courage in the face of consistency.
ART DIRECTOR – MAGGIE WARD
Maggie is the Assistant Chief Editor of The Battered Suitcase. Her creative life began at the age of five when she painted a mural on her grandparents’ wall. In retrospect, it would’ve been better to ask their permission first. By day, she edits TV documentaries for her sins, which are too numerable to mention. By night, she wrestles with words, dabbles in art, and fails to clear her inboxes. She’s fallen asleep on her keyboard so often, she should have ‘qwerty’ tattooed on her forehead.
EDITOR/COMPANY SECRETARY – ALICE BIGELOW
Alice Bigelow is an American-born Londoner, and makes a living as a freelance management consultant working in the community doing anything that’s vaguely legal and someone believes fits her skills. She has a background in community writing and publishing and is also involved in ‘The Battered Suitcase’. Alice came on board the Little Episodes project to help with the unsexy management side of things.
Full Professional CV’s can be found on www.littleepisodes.org
Also: Keara McDonagh, Alison Philcock, Kathrine Ware, Ruth Lilly, Michelle Misfit, Craig Hanlon-Smith and Emma Jones.
Mentored and guided by Antonia Hodgson and Nick Ross from Little, Brown Book Group.
Introduction
I would consider myself to have been lost. Perhaps I provoked myself with persistent existential angst, or perhaps I just struggled with life and finding my place in the world.
I have spent time on psychologists’ couches and I have resided in various institutions, and in the end, I believe I became ‘found’. On my journey, I read empathetic accounts of other people’s experiences. It helped to lift the ‘bell jar’ a little when I felt imprisoned in the battleground of my mind and when I felt most alone on the edges of society.
I wanted to create something that might provide light and understanding to other sufferers of depression, mental illness, or people just struggling. I also wanted to provide a platform for talented artists who have never had a ‘break’, as it’s well known that most artistic industries can be harsh on even the most happy of personalities. Plenty of talented people fall by the wayside simply because they don’t have the fight or the thick skin to keep playing the artistic lottery for a chance at success. The Little Episodes books have contributions from successful as well as unknown talent.
Most of all, I wanted to help de-stigmatise depression and promote compassion and understanding rather than fear and embarrassment. I also wanted to dispel the notion that depression is in any way cool. I wanted to express the belief that romantic dead poets and the image of sultry, tragic heroines are just a dangerous mirage. If you flirt with a glamorised dark side, you could fall through, and contrary to popular belief; you will not discover a font of creative inspiration, but quite the opposite; a dull, flat hell land.
LUCIE BARÂT – 2009
SADIE FROST– 2009
Table of Contents
I’ve Got Crafting in My Blood ~ CLINT CATALYST
Switchblade Lovers ~ LUCIE BARÂT
Girl With Brown Hair ~ PHIBBY VENABLE
Waiting for the healer of all wounds to heal all wounds. ~ LUCIE BARÂT
Drowning ~ VICTORIA HINAULT
Invasion ~ C.A. MASTERSON
The Bridge ~ HUDSON HORNICK
Playing in Key ~ NATHALIE BOISARD-BEUDIN
What have I done ~ MEGHAN LAMB
The Doctor Says I Can Up My Dosage ~ AUSTEN ROYE
Bengal Tiger Boy ~ HEATHER FOWLER
Bridge Scene ~ RAINER WISEMAN AND MARK UNDERWOOD
Sindy ~ LORRAINE JENKINS
Poem ~ MARTA OWCZAREK
The Spirit Level ~ SARAH HILARY
Leave No Soldier Behind ~ CIARA BURKE
Fuel ~ ROBERT FRASER POWELL
I take my clothes off to keep out the cold ~ LUCIE BARÂT
Midnight Demons ~ GLANDA WIDGER
On or Off ~ ANNA SYKORA
For Oscar, My Lover ~ M. R. WALLIS
Letter to Hong Kong ~ J.P. DEVLIN
Satan ~ AIDEN CAGNEY
Baby Talk ~ A. BETH BROWN
Fuck my Twisted Heart ~ LUCIE BARÂT
Descent Into Wellness ~ CHRIS MILLER
Low ~ ALICE TEMPLE
Seek and Find ~ MOLLY JONES
Being Lonely ~ RON EDWARDS
Tattoo ~ HUDSON HORNICK
A Moment with Gramma ~ MARK BURCHARD
Songlines excerpt ~ FAWN NEÜN
The Flickering Light ~ GARTH ERICKSON
Confessions of a lesbian housewife…. ~ LUCIE BARÂT
Chemical ~ RICHARD GODWIN
Girl Afraid ~ KIM HOFF
The Beginning of Sadness ~ ERIC BENNETT
Flow Down Bourbon Street Nights ~BILL JACKSON
Panic Attack ~ DAN PROVOST
I’ve Got Crafting in My Blood
Along with the blue eyes, bad eyesight and stubborn temperament, I figure it’s some recessive allele I inherited from my parents.
They weren’t always Crafters though, mom and dad. I can picture home improvement projects from early childhood—mortar, bricks, being impressed ma could hammer a nail in a single shot: stuff of that ilk. But the wood glue, trips to Hobby Lobby? The assembly line of life-size Santa and reindeer combo packs that propped up like picture frames? Late, late bloomers in that tournament. As in: early 40s? Must’ve been. I was in the 8th grade, a teenager who needed my “own space”; mom was an elementary school Science teacher, dad the Sixth Grade Centre’s principal, and this extracurricular hobby of theirs quickly outgrew our living quarters.
To accommodate, they built a work shed in the back yard—whereas I had recently discovered the Goth scene and preferred staying locked up in my room, listening to mix tapes of Skinny Puppy, Dead Can Dance and Screaming For Emily, studying the aesthetics of ‘fallen angels,’ glorious androgynous creatures lain to rest among the black & white pages of saddle-stitched fanzines. Among other things, I’d turned my appearance into a grand and commanding work-in-progress. The goal? To be as shadowy and sharp-edged as possible, every nuance of my feelings communicated through the spikes in my hair and tintinnabulations of silver ankh jewellery.
So when the folks enlisted me to sit in their vendor’s booth at the Craighead County Craft Fair, surrounded by cutesy carved kittens and variations of “The Razorbeak Inn”—a birdhouse constructed with discarded license plates as its roof?
Well, it salted my game, to say the least.
Still, counting change back to the Bubble-Letter Enthusiasts presented some down time, in which I was able to do a bit of my own handiwork. I tugged a duffel bag filled to bursting with fancy writing implements, double-ended drafting markers and glitter nail polish: all tools I used to meticulously decorate envelopes for my correspondence with the outside world. My beloved pen pals—such kindred souls in the No One Else Could Understand school of histrionics. It may have been a good fifteen years before the advent of internet giants like Facebook and MySpace, but showmanship still stood for something. The more infamous a pen “fiend” was in this U.S.P.S.-driven popularity contest, the more scrupulous detail was dedicated to a missive’s presentation. I’d spend hour after hour on the complete package: smother it in bat-shaped stickers, obscure symbols hand-carved out of potatoes—slippery little short-lived versions of rubber stamps I smeared watercolours onto in a grand race against time.
I can’t think of a time I wasn’t playing it, that lead-pedalled, 80 mph take on life. A race in which I was driven towards that ‘next destination’ I wasn’t quite sure of, except for the maddening sense of urgency that I had to make it there…and faster: headlights blazing at 3 AM like torches on a witch hunt or blazing in the afternoon heat—freeway tar glistening, hot enough to sizzle bacon.
Two decades it was like that, not so much “living” as bingeing. Sun-bleached billboards, the electric green paint of road exit signs, landmarks, people’s faces: all reduced to a series of flashes. Isolated images in warped frames, loose film strips lacking a narrative.
Now that I’m attempting to splice them together, I’ve had a serious attitude transplant about the ol’ nifty-crafty kinfolks. They’ve mellowed their take on me, as well, after enduring the descent into black eyeliner and bad behaviour they assumed was Just A Phase I’d outgrow as quickly as a shoe size during those voice-cracking, acne-ridden, tempestuous teenage years. Instead, 13 turned into 16, when I taught myself how to construct fake IDs for clandestine excursions to the other side of the Mississippi. A bridge, a state line, and Memphis: then it was through the doors of nightclubs—back when the term ‘alternative’ still meant something—and over-the-shoulder with my Southern Baptist upbringing. I’d read Edie: An American Biography, damn it, and my scrawny arms ached to embrace glamour and depravity, full-on.
Same as when subjected to the PAST—and by that, I mean the Physical Ability and Stamina Test—I did the best I could with what I had. Granted, there is no scale, no barometer by which exquisite debauchery is determined in contrast to the moderate, but with certainty I can tell you this: Memphis is not Manhattan.
I was already well aware there’s a limit to how far a person can take things in Small Town, Arkansas—both metaphorically and literally—so at the very least? The almost of Memphis inspired me to up the ante. To aim higher for new highs, or new lows; that morality shit’s subjective. Graceland was fine for the geriatrics, but Disgraceland—Hollywood’s infamous crash pad of punk rock royalty I’d read about in Spin? The images accompanying the article were retinal candy; the text a source of obscene fascination. It turned out to be one of many reasons I began spending less time “busying myself” with primping, crimpers and straightening irons, and more time researching scholarships.
Yes, scholarships. The way I saw it, each attempt at those stodgy pats on the pocketbook was my own little way of taking a jab at civilised conventions. Sure, I was ‘working within the system as a means to work the system,’ except in my case it wasn’t some lame attempt at rationalisation. There’s a reason the phrase is hackneyed. Think former radicals, comfortable six-figure incomes, the type of grandiose statements espoused at dinner parties. Oh no no no, it wasn’t an apology.
It was a form of revenge.
Though the logic may sound as fucked as Annabel Chong, what it comes down to is this: As much as I craved the adrenaline rush of “pulling one over,” secretly I yearned to do well. Not because I whacked-off to thoughts of popularity! and being the president of Student Council, but rather to prove something to myself. And in order to prove something to myself, I had to prove something to Them…but now I’m jumping ahead.
Speaking in academic terms, one might say that I am “diametrically opposed to the American school system’s pervasive trend that competition is ‘bad.’” Out in the real world—where everyone from the cashier at McDonald’s to a suit on Wall Street is subjected to competition—I’d be a bit more succinct: What. A. Crock. Of. Shit.
In an essay by Alfie Kohn, an alleged Leading Figure In Progressive Education, he states: “Researchers have found that competitive structures reduce generosity, empathy, sensitivity to others’ needs, accuracy of communication, and trust.”
Oh really.
Because in my case—an effeminate boy in a hateful, homophobic small town? If there’s anything my educational experience lacked, it was “sensitivity to [my] needs.” Ditto on “generosity, empathy” and those other utopian catch phrases.
Competition was all I had, was my only means to prove I wasn’t worthless. Wasn’t the things they called me. Heathen. Faggot. AIDS-face. An embarrassment. The type of person who shouldn’t exist.
Success for the sake of an F-You. Part of me wants to believe this is some great epiphany I’ve had after all the years of head-shrinking and SoCal “spirituality,” though deep down, I knew it then. The truth clung to my cheeks and hung heavy as a gust of humidity.
Besides, the sight of me hunched-over at the kitchen table—studying the stilted language and variegations of paper textures among the applications, fanned out like a deck of Tarot cards—seemed like one of the few things I did that made the folks happy.
I could see it in dad’s face when he scuffled across the linoleum during a break from Craft-land, could see the flash of approval in his cornflower blue eyes. Warm wood smells accompanied him: sometimes chewed-up bits of maple, sometimes the guts of plywood that clung to his denim overalls. Sawdust.
I could smell it in Elizabeth Arden’s bold perfume notes when mom’s face smoothened and she leaned in to kiss my cheek, rub my back. I filled my lungs with their approval.
It was nice, being able to breathe. A welcome respite from all that foreshadowing: the asbestos-white cloud of hair products hanging heavy in my room. Who knew someday I’d end up telling this story beneath the asphalt-coloured skies of Los Angeles? Then again, who knew so much colour could come from staring into the neutrals: beige, khaki, cantaloupe, cream, off-white, pure-white, bright-white.
So blandular, the hues—yet it was one of those packets that transported me to Germany three weeks after high school graduation. Several essay questions, a personal interview; then I lucked into a student exchange program I’ll refer to here as The Namen Night Gesägt Project.
Aside from its six-days-per-week intensive language immersion, the NNGP provided a myriad of opportunities. A chance to try my hand at studio crafts: a course in jewelry-making, an internship in Commercial Art…then there were the kind that I, as an aspiring degenerate, simply couldn’t resist.
Among them, my stipend fuelled an off-the-intended-curriculum tour throughout seedy nightcrawler haunts of West Germany to Berlin, where I ricocheted a season later for its abbreviation. The word “West” was being erased; the Wall was coming down, and I was there: pick-axe in hand, chipping away at the graffitied concrete. An active verb in history’s re-write.
Deutsche Bahn, the German railway system, was its own burst of emotion. Such great fun, the Intercity Express—streaming from City Centre to City Centre at 300 kilometres an hour. And so convenient! Just a block away from school, it proved to be quite the distraction: especially for the spontaneous “Let’s Jump On The Next Train And See Where It Takes Us” toss-up, by which my friend Jaysin and I explored Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich… One morning, we had every intention of going to class—he with a backpack slung over his shoulder; me with my makeshift briefcase in hand—though somehow ended up in Athens, Greece.
That excursion—our most epic—turned out to be the last we’d take.
See, Interpol (as in: The Real Deal, not the musicians sporting well-tailored suits and asymmetrical haircuts) found five hits of acid in a parcel addressed to my ‘given’ name. You know, the one on my passport? The one my host family knew me by. Incidentally, the only one I couldn’t shrug my shoulders, feign innocence with an up-turned “’Bananafishbones’? What is that... a person?”
Oh yeah. Remember those pen pals I mentioned earlier? The incriminating evidence was a birthday gift from one I’d been in contact with for years—yet the dumb-ass didn’t acknowledge me by nom de plume. I mean, it’s not like it would’ve taken much thought; I had more pseudonyms to pick and choose from than my Manic Panicv pantheon of hair colours.
Then there was the package’s façade. Hell, with all the glitter and iridescent stickers strewn about the grocery-store brown paper, it looked like Lisa Frank vomited a holographic message of “Hey Border Patrol! C’mon—The good stuff’s over here!”
After politely demanding I evacuate, I was spat out again in the American South, where I had a quaint liberal arts collegiate moment—including two forced hospitalisations, if that’s any indication how well I wasn’t coping with the environment—before I packed up a U-Haul and hauled ass to San Francisco for a four year stint that proved fraught with more ambulatory madness and aberrant behaviour than my modest Dry County upbringing could have predicted. And for that, I am thankful.
Because you know what? In my own cracked-out dysfunctional way, crafting is what kept me connected with the parental units. In 1990, dad was hammering wood beams for the bathroom expansion mom and he planned back in Jonesboro, while on another continent, I used safety pins to Franken-stitch the slaughtered remains of dress slacks into a patch-worked grid for something close to a dress: an industrial-themed boy skirt I planned as my next ‘look’ for the club.
In the mid-90s, dad retired early to better hone the skills of his wood-crafting arsenal. By the time he lassoed mom into his crusade, the man could wield a jig-saw with a black belt ease…and so began the expansion of their empire into the South-East circuit of seasonal shows: War Eagle and the like. Me? Well, I retired early from my position as a respectable human being in order to ditch graduate studies and isolate back in my unending art project of an apartment in the Upper Haight, hot-gluing shards of broken glass and chicken wire onto headpieces, fashioning necklaces out of fishnet and racoon penis bones, and shellacking pig skulls for my own sinister take on a cod piece.
By the late ‘90s, I was struggling to get off all those “enlightening” and “uninhibiting” substances to which I’d become enslaved—so my interests in handiwork changed, along with the artistic medium. After tossing out the rigs (yet again), I couldn’t exactly work on the sculpture I envisioned with syringes suggestive of a rib cage—nor did it make things easier for my self-portrait series rendered in rusty hues of haemoglobin. Besides, the novelty of painting with blood tends to fade if a person no longer has to schedule his day around finding a vein. Once the drug addiction I’d been hiding behind fear-fuelled denial at eardrum-splitting decibels was not just out like a hot secret, but more like a Winnebago that broke down blocking their driveway, my compassionate folks took me in for an 18 day—and night: they were memorable, every one of them—carnival side-show detox.
Mom and dad’s undertaking at the time? Installing their own hardwood floors, piece by piece. I might have assisted with two or three of the hundreds, but an invaluable contraption the ‘rents provided me was a rivet gun and pile of discarded inner tubes, from which I fashioned my own recycled rubber backpacks and “murses” as a rehabilitative activity. I had fun with that fetish-craft fusion for several years into my nascent sobriety, until I excused the gadget from service upon completion of my wedding present for one of the kinkiest couples around: Margaret Cho and The Reverend Al Ridenour.
Short of the long? My relationship with my parents is better than ever. There’s over 2,000 miles between us, but we play telephone on a regular basis. Earlier today, mom confessed she’s trying to get over a cold so they can travel cross-state for a big craft event this weekend, while I talked about geeking somethin’ heavy on label-and-cover decorations for my theme-based CD mixes.
Sure, the folks and I have varying opinions on capitol punishment and premarital sex; however, it no longer seems as if I brought the San Andreas fault line along with me when I visit during the holidays. I just plop down in one of their well-worn La-Z-Boys, busying myself with whatever nifty-crafty doodad I’m frittering around with at the moment—today, it’s a plaid thrift store jacket I’m sprucing up with creepy bug-shaped embroidery—while dad saws the spruce that mom sits and paints.
Crafting is an age-old hobby, yet this is the vernacular in our modern take on ‘family,’ our common language.
Besides, with the life I’ve lived, this choice of knitting needles over hypodermics is so sick and fantastic; it seems like one of the most rebellious things I could do.
Switchblade Lovers
She had a little death around the eyes,
And a lot of make-up to disguise the fact,
It had begun to seep within,
She had to take a blade to skin,
To gouge a slit and let it drain,
Just as her lover hit up another vein,
He only tries to do the same.
We’re only trying to do the same.
CHORUS:
A little death around the eyes,
And a lot of shame in their disguise-
The Switch blade Lovers...
Star-crossed through the darkness,
That dwells within them.
He’ll sink a gin to leak the sins,
His birth bestowed on him.
She’ll dry her eyes and re-apply,
The mask that keeps her hidden;
The fact she’s living out of rhythm.
They get up to pull each other down again.
The day creeps on and then they drown again.
In each other they’ve swung ‘round the bend.
CHORUS
Sometimes she finds that she and life,
Just aren’t suited as a pair that’s right.
He’s lost the fight with the crutch that keeps him numb,
Remembers the days when he was gonna give ‘em some.
Waiting for it to come ‘round again,
But there aren’t enough chances to lend, no
There aren’t enough chances to lend,
There aren’t enough chances to lend, no!
Girl With Brown Hair
During my internship at the mental hospital,
a young woman greeted me, day after day,
to ask if she was pretty and if I loved her.
I said, yes. yes.
because she was pretty and because
I wanted to please her, and affection
is not that difficult to distribute, especially
if you have been given plenty of it.
So each day she abducted my attention
and wondered if I might be her sister
and did I have a boyfriend or a baby?
and would I be her friend, would i be her friend,
Would I Be Her Friend?!!
I said yes, yes, yes.
and she said, here..
and handed me a comb
so i combed her hair.
I touched her hair and she grew still.
sometimes she would reach up
and touch my fingers on the comb
and follow the strokes down
sometimes she would hold her head
all the way back so that she could stare
into my face
and always, do you love me, in that voice
of childlike desperation,
as she searched for someone I might be,
or may have been, long ago.
her hair was beautiful and brown.
Before I left there, she pulled the plaster
from a high, barred window
and used it as a knife
so the aides hurried and took her to isolation,
the last place she had meant to be,
as though isolation would cure
that terrible need.
I wish someone had combed her hair
all of her life. She had such pretty hair.
Shiny, and very, very brown.
Waiting for the healer of all wounds to heal all wounds.
Life report…
My finger tips are pungent; lingering fish juice
From the tinned tuna I fed to my cats.
Another treat. because someone
Should be treated.
Perhaps I have a displaced treating disorder,
Like Munchausen by pet proxy.
I just sniff my finger tips and grimace.
The weather’s limped from a lazy sun
To a cloudy disapproval as the day’s worn on.
And my daze has worn off.
Clarity stabs like…. a clichéd metaphor.
The TV is no help. Daytime TV
Is a dangerous game, is a dangerous maze of chirpy game
Shows and budget saccharine.
I’ve done some washing,
Done some domestic penance. Only
The fabric softener had run out and
The clothes smell of boiled broccoli.
I didn’t go shopping for more because,
There are other days ahead for softener purchasing
And I did the washing.
I did survive and my lungs blew in and out.
VICTORIA HINAULT
I would dream of drowning regularly, it was like a reoccurring theme. I had nearly drowned once, the ocean had tried to take me but I was saved, my lungs ejected the water that had filled them in an abrupt rush as I rolled to the side coughing. That night I dreamt of it, but I dreamt I was drowning in whiskey. The smell from the bottle at the side of my bed saw that it found its way into my life even as I slept.
An obnoxious high-pitched noise wormed its way through the damp air of my dark bedroom and into the back of my head, sending reverberations of horror through me. Arm outstretched, I blindly thumped until the noise stopped, feeling a mixture of comfort from my bed and terror of the day ahead.