A Case Of Displacement
Oh no, that feeling again. That head-spinning, nothing seems quite as it should be I can't focus feeling that was so often a feature of Saturday mornings. Except this morning was a Thursday morning.
I dragged myself out of bed and stood up. Big mistake, but once I was up I knew there was nothing for it but to shoulder on and try and get through the moaning. I had a lot of things to do.
How did this happen to me? What happened last night? Nothing, as far as I can remember. I went to bed early with a cap of cocoa and a crossword. I was asleep by half-past ten.
So why did I feel like death now?
There was a pain in my face and my eyes hurt. I limped to the bathroom and looked at my refraction in the mirror. I looked like a copse.
Oh my Cod.
I had to look again, to make sure. I was positive that someone who felt as bad as I did should be looking like a dead body, but I definitely, without question, looked like a copse. There was foliage around my head, and a small clump of trees, larch and poplar mainly, growing from my nose. There was no getting away from it.
It was happening again. I got that stinking feeling in my stomach. The sort of heady, hopeless sensation you get when you know that everything is about to get horribly, horribly wring.
I knew what it meant straight away. Of course I did. It meant that you weren't dead after all. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I'd loved you, and you'd hurt me. You'd hurt me more than you'd ever know, more than I'd ever thought possible. I wasn't over it even now, four ears later. I doubted I would ever recover property.
Four ears ago. So long already?
It had never promised to be one of those simple cases that were bread and batter to others in my procession. Then again, if it had been a simple case, they would have gone to someone else, wouldn't they?
I was hooked on you from the start. Glamorous, brilliant, they said, but crazed, out for revenge. Clearly, we had a lot in common.
I'd never been on the tail of a mad philologist before, but then, who had? Anyway, I was the specialist in the weird cases, it was my jab, it was why they came to me.
