Care of Wooden Floors
“Heart skipping, with eyes fighting light, my thoughts sprang up like a field of starlings startled by a farmer’s gunshot, a thousand separate, autonomous specks that swirled into a single united black shape.
There had been a noise in the flat, loud enough to rouse me, but it had no characteristics in my mind, having occurred in the wastes at the edge of sleep. What had happened? And now there were more noises – shuffling footsteps in the hall outside, a thump with a rattle of bottles. The door ...to the bedroom now seemed atom-thin, and there was someone beyond it – more footsteps, a rough sigh like antique waxed raincoats being pushed aside in a long-closed closet.
I sprang out of bed, striking up a cloud of body odour and sweated alcohol, and prompting a wet slam of sick pain in the back of my head like the echo of the sudden noise that had woken me. A slam – the front door had slammed and someone had come into the flat. I was wearing boxer shorts, T-shirt and a sticky veneer of sweat; my trousers were lying near the foot of the bed, polio twisted.MoreLess
There had been a noise in the flat, loud enough to rouse me, but it had no characteristics in my mind, having occurred in the wastes at the edge of sleep. What had happened? And now there were more noises – shuffling footsteps in the hall outside, a thump with a rattle of bottles. The door ...to the bedroom now seemed atom-thin, and there was someone beyond it – more footsteps, a rough sigh like antique waxed raincoats being pushed aside in a long-closed closet.
I sprang out of bed, striking up a cloud of body odour and sweated alcohol, and prompting a wet slam of sick pain in the back of my head like the echo of the sudden noise that had woken me. A slam – the front door had slammed and someone had come into the flat. I was wearing boxer shorts, T-shirt and a sticky veneer of sweat; my trousers were lying near the foot of the bed, polio twisted.MoreLess
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