Issue One

The searching ear was met by the laboured drag of body weight along the floor. The slow shuffle stopped and started, gathering all its might to make its next move. Soon the shuffle grew surer, smoother—though no faster—punctuated by a pendulous, muffled slap. My body petrified, mind ticking through every possibility: Carmen, a thief, an injured moggy that had wriggled in the toilet window.

The shuffle stopped. The shadow of my bedroom door leered into the corner of the room, pissed. The shuffle hissed into life again, a steam train leaving the station. It edged around my bed. Soon I felt a tug at the bedsheet, a persistent tension as something hauled itself up onto the mattress. A draught wound itself around me as the thing burrowed in under the duvet, letting my hard-won warmth out into the night. My skin danced in anticipation of its touch, rippling and prickling across my muscles.

A downy digit ran itself up my spine. A snuffling started at the nape of my neck, nestling up into my hairline, taking a reviving breath. As it ventured around to my jaw, a cold pointed pressure leant into the small of my back. Its bristling fuzz was ferreting at my earlobe now, rooting around my tragus like a truffle pig. Still those fingers scrabbled up and down my vertebrae, as if counting a wad of derby day winnings.

I flinched as the flap of a satchel smacked my thigh, tendons flickering like a thoroughbred’s haunch. The sniffing moved to the tip of my chin. The wiry leg of a spectacle frame cut into my cheek like cheese wire. I could feel the hot breath that would have fogged their lenses, had they been there. The metallic menace of the prod at my pelvis seared right down to my toes. At last, that whisper came, as affable and western as cider and cheddar. Exactly how I’d imagined—knew—he’d sound after all these years.

“Well, ‘ello again.”