The Uninvited Guest

I have to share about the tale about what happened to me the other night.

On a perfectly ordinary November evening I left work as normal and walked to Victoria, making my way home.

I caught my usual train, sat together with the same familiar faces, and then disembarked at the same place I always did, along with my fellow London commuters.

The slow plod through the high street was as lacking in anything interesting as darkened hour long train journey I had just took had been, and not even the fox who lives in the wasteland at the end of my road made an appearance to mark today as being anything other than yet another bland Wednesday in the year 2006.

With a gentle sigh, I slipped the keys out of my pocket and began to fumble them into the front door, when without a sound it quickly slid its way open.

"Shhhhhh" came a hushed voice of my lodger from within, and with my curiosity peaked, I did as he suggested and very gingerly stepped inside, removing my thick woolen coat with more care than normal.

"We've got a visitor upstairs" he barely breathed, quieter than I've ever known him to be", and I don't want to disturb it".

For a second I thought that it was his baby girl who was asleep upstairs, before I realised that the day was all wrong and also he would never refer to her as an "it", thus it must be someone, or something, else.

At that point I began to get a slight stirring of the hairs on the back on my head, as straining in the dim light of my front room I could indeed hear something coming from up above.

"What is it?", I whispered, then realised all at once that I was nowhere near as proficient as he was at it, and determined to make an even greater effort to be quieter the next time I chose to spoke.

A tight lipped frown and a shrug of his shoulders was all that he gave in reply, but his message was clear. He didn't know.

Leigh and I had been childhood friends, and always been there as friends, right up through the years and all that it had thrown at us.

I had never known him to be scared or anything except his own cursed luck or intermittent poor health, but often growing up, we had sleepovers where we used to have semi-silent conversations while his parents slept in the next room.

And just like then, it was always me that had made the most noise and got us in trouble!

As we both stood in silence, I took time out to look at him and while he didn't seem to strike me as being scared right at this point, the fact that he wasn't tromping about in his large military ex-issue combat boots meant that something clearly was getting to him.

Slipping off my own shoes I decided to break the tableau and as quietly as I could crept nearer to the middle room, and thus to the foot of the staircase leading up.

From my new position I could now hear more of the feint sounds, though their source and meaning was still a mystery.

I would probably have stood there for an eternity without ever braving to go further, if it hadn't occurred to me that whatever was causing the noises was uninvited and also in my bedroom.

Even if I could have somehow managed to get to sleep curled up on the sofa, I would have needed to get into my room the next morning to get a fresh set of clothes for work.

But not only that, but as my bedroom door was not locked there was no reason to think that whatever it was would not simply come out whenever it felt like it, and this way, at least I got to face it on my terms.

But before I did, I wanted get just a little more information.

Turning back to Leigh I chose to speak again, this time in a whisper so soft that I doubt it would have disturbed the flight of even the small feather.
"How long has it been up there?"
"A couple of hours."
"Do you have any idea what its doing?"
"I sounds like its eating your carpet!"
"Ridiculous", I spoke, just a shade louder than I wanted.
"Shhhhhh" came the only reply with a face like thunder.
"Well how did it get in?", I managed, this time somewhere like as
quiet as before.
"I left the window open to let some fresh air in."
"So, how did it get up there in the first place?"
"It flew"
"It flew, preposterous" I cried, making possibly the loudest sound
that I had heard since before I got my keys out of my pocket and
attempted entry.
"Will .. you .. be .. quiet", his eyes glared at me, the meaning clear
even though I swear I never saw his lips moved.
"I'm not just going to just stand by idly while some uninvited critter comes and feeds his appetite with my carpet", I said with only a trace of effort in keeping my voice down. "I'm gonna tell that, what-ever-it-is, that my house isn't a free McDonalds for every hungry bugger with a taste for something in the blue and carpet range. I paid good money to get it underlaid"

He gave me a look of resigned defeat mixed with, its-your-funeral, and headed off silently into the back room and away from the stairs.

Thankfully my house is carpeted throughout, so I knew that if I remained quiet I could probably creep up the stairs and at least glance a peek under the door, before deciding if I really was going to be as brave or foolhardy, as I had made myself appear.

In careful, time practised pace, I proceeded up the stairs until finally I was within eye shot of the base of the door.

Because I have got multiple wires criss crossing my house, I have always found it advantageous to have larger than average gaps at the bottom of my doors, but now I was putting this gap to a new use.

Glimpsing beneath the door, I could see a form, sitting hunched over, and looking for all the world to see, like something out of the Wizard of Oz.

Sleek blue fur glistened in the half light, as the miniature beast that seemed to be of a close but different chain of evolution from our own, huddled up and continued to slowly chomp handfuls of carpet fragments.

Mounted midway on its back, I could see the things impossibly thin outstretched set of double winged appendages.

That's right, I could hardly believe my eyes, but what I was looking at was nothing short of a blue furry winged monkey, eating my carpet.

And I know that you wont believe me, but never-the-less it remained there, stationery and chewing, long enough for me to take out my camera phone and take a few shots.

So before you cast judgement on me, see for yourself and see if you too don't come to the same conclusion as I did!