Strange Sleep
We have strange neighbours.
(Our neighbours have strange neighbours too, I admit.)
However...a few nights ago I was finally making it to bed at about 12:45.
All was still. I crept through the house, breaking the silence only to knock over all the crockery in the draining board and tread on Ziggy, strategically positioned in the kitchen doorway to detect any unforeseen events of food preparation.
I threw open all my bedroom windows and settled down with a book.
All was still again.
Then, an odd noise. A 'chufting', if you will. Chuft, chuft. I put down my book. Chuft, chuft. Like all noises heard from my bedroom, it sounded like it was coming from our back garden. Chuft, chuft. And then it struck me. It was digging. Someone was digging - a grave? - in our back garden.
Why would anyone be digging at 1 in the morning unless for deviant purposes? My heart catching in my throat, I flicked off my reading light and squinted through the window. Darkness...and breathing. I could hear someone breathing. I held my breath and waited. The breathing continued.
It wasn't me, then.
So, let's recap - someone was digging a grave in my back garden at 1 in the morning and I could hear them breathing.
Terrified, I rolled out of bed and snuck back through the house. I wondered if I should wake Ginette. Could I sick the cat on them? Like something out of a dodgy horror film, I saw my hand grasp the handle of the back door and turn it slowly, slowly. The catch caught, the sound ricocheting around my head in the silence like a gunshot. I stopped to listen. Chuft, chuft. I pushed the door open and stole into the back garden, trying not to gasp as the icy dew bit into my feet.
The digging was not happening in my back garden, the digging was happening in the garden of the house diagonally opposite to ours.
The digger was bathed in floodlit glory.
The digger was not digging a grave.
Let me ask you a question. What kind of insane bastard digs
fencepost holes at 1 o'clock on a Monday morning?
The sad prologue to this story is that, having finally managed to get to sleep, I was woken at 6 the same morning from yet another dream of running away from my assassins by the sound of a circular saw cutting...fenceposts.
There is a word I could use, but I won't.
2 Comments:
hmmm - I suspect that the fence is actually a "little" bit in their neighbours yard now. putting a fence up at 1am is a great way to increase the size of your yard - not that I know anything about this, mind you.
good story - for a while I thought it was going to be a possum on heat.
As always, you are my hero.
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