A Bug's Life

I went to the late show at the cinema, Fear(s) of the Dark (Peur(s) du noir). Animation by various artists, often with striking graphic styles - black and white, pen and ink, occasional splash colour. I was tired, at the stage where you have to keep pinching yourself to stay awake, while my eyes and spongelike brain absorbed some half a dozen tales of fears come true, some interleaved to enhance the effect of troubled dreams. How did they get inside my head? I jolted myself to alertness to see a childhood nightmare drawn large on the screen: a huge dark blob of something nameless, swelling and growing and chasing the small girl along a corridor. In my dream it was paint, yellow like like mustard, and would corner me in a cellar till I woke.

And now that fear is back in my conscious mind, along with crowded images of insects, of jars holding things you don't want to look at too closely, of invasion, of a painstakingly penned bead of sweat running down a temple, giving a shiver where a draught catches its trail.

I'll prepare myself for a pleasant night's dreams though by looking at pictures of cute puppies! and kittens! And hamsters! A cute hamster, oh my god, growing to an enormous size, opening its slathering jaws to reveal a gaping maw, teeth, drooling, leaping for my belly and tearing in, devouring my entrails...

Ahem.