The sick-room blind, made of paper twilled and sun-stained with age, was daytime lowered for at least five of the last seven years, because the family house suffered so many deaths - most at the height of summer fevers. When it was Hubert’s dubious turn to sleep here, the blind’s roller became faulty and it developed a habit of springing up with an outlandish clatter. His mother repositioned it each day upon bringing his lightly boiled egg and thin bread soldiers - only for it to twizzle violently in the middle of the night like a lost demon flapping. Hubert thought, in his delirium, that the sick-room window must be the only eye in the world which possessed an eyelid in the inside of its eyeball. At the fever’s height, he believed it was night when it was noon. During a sense of remission, he stood at the open window, admiring the way the orchard garden had been landscaped since the onset of his illness. It was Spring, and today, the first time for some months, he could not feel the testing tentacles of death upon his soul. He turned to his nurse and said, “It’s strange how time flies.” She smiled sweetly, took Hubert’s hand within hers and became a beautiful angel - who glided through the window, tugging him as if he were a paper kite. But Hubert’s tatters could not fly because his mother had placed copper pennies on his eyes.
(Published 'Dreams & Nightmares' 1993)
