Note : This story is a diary excerpt, written in Quebec City on September 16, 1989.
I was living in a small apartment and working long hours in a cafe as a preparation cook.
(Last revision March 2 2008)
I just had a harrowing experience. It is very late at night or rather early
morning, around four, I'm still up because I worked until 3:15 at the café.
I ran home in the cold rain, I've still vestiges of the flu. I got here, thought
a bit, then I lay down on my back on my unmade bed, my hot running shoes
still on, to relax my weary body. I don't want to sleep yet, I feel fine and
I don't have to work tomorrow, it's Sunday. I lay there in the halflight cast
by the small bulb at the far end of the apartment.
Vaguely looking up and about the room I noticed there was a big bug or
spider walking rapidly across my bedroom wall near the ceiling, but I didn't
know what exactly because I didn't have my glasses on. That didn't bother
me - or maybe it's a moth fluttering along the wall.
But then I began to notice that this was an extremely large bug, well okay
if it's a great big moth but if it's a spider or something I should maybe know.
And walking so fast, apparently with a definite purpose. So I bounded out
of bed and found my glasses on the desk. I returned to examine the creature
from a nearer vantage point, but I wasn't that close because it was up
near the ceiling, and there wasn't enough light, I couldn't clearly discern
its bodily features.
But with an enormous arching backline - it must be a moth. As yet there is
no lamp in my bedroom, haven't been here long enough, so the best I could
do was to turn on the nearby bathroom light and to approach a candle.
Well I could see much better now but that didn't help entirely, as I still
couldn't identify the thing. Then I realized with an actual chill that this was
no moth nor any other kind of insect or animal that I'd ever seen or heard of.
It was pale and white, long, cylindrical, tube-shaped, like a caterpillar or fat
worm, but rather than lieing flat on the wall its body was greatly arched up
and away in the middle, and touching the wall only where the head and tail parts
presumably were. It had clumps of greyish hair, especially on its arched back.
It had long since frozen into a terrible stillness, since in fact the moment I
had jumped up from the bed.
I recalled the trajectory of its voyage across the wall, and its speed, and I
shuddered : it must walk by shifting its head and tail, like a slinky-toy or
something. At this point I began to think that this was seriously weird.
What the hell is it? I've never seen a creature remotely resembling it, and
I had to seriously wonder if it were from our planet. That's like in a movie
or a book but here it is happening in my actual bedroom, and I felt
startled.
I could see no other solution but to attempt an identification by inducing it
to move again, for instance by gingerly prodding it with the end of a pen (the
heat of the candle was of course out of the question). Furthermore I had no
way of knowing if it were gentle or violent. For maybe it can sting with a
horrible lash, like a scorpion or jellyfish.
But I really didn't want to touch the damn thing, it might leap or freak out,
or even worse, fall on my bed. I had the sudden urge to call up a friend and
ask his opinion or advice, but it was four in the morning.
But obviously I couldn't go to bed with the thing still hanging there. What if
it climbed in my bed while I was sleeping? So I gathered all the courage I could
muster and touched it with the pen.
Tock. Tock tock. It is hard, hollow-sounding, metallic. It must be some kind
of broken picture hanger or hook or something, they painted over it when they
painted the wall. The dust acccumulated on its surface is what I took to be
ghastly clumps of hair. Unless it has petrified itself in order to fool me or in
self-defense, but this conjecture seemed tenuous. There is also a hardened
little string of dried white paint hanging from an extremity that looks like a
sort of feeler mouth-tentacle, somewhat like that of a snail.
As for the movement, I don't quite get it. Combination of fatigue, the flu, and
not wearing my glasses I guess. But if the damn thing hadn't been running
across the wall so fast, there would have been little cause for concern in the
first place.