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A ‘Wake Up, Little Susie’ Adventure

It’s 2.32am on the disposable digital watch I wear because anything more valuable might get trashed in a fight. The middle of the night (midnight’s such a misnomer): dark, silent and cold. As usual, I have no idea where I am, or why I’m here. Just that feeling in my belly, like I’ve eaten too much fruit and it’s starting to ferment; and the noise in my head, like a mobile phone signal heckling my stereo.

I stand still, resting a hand on slimy bark. The pines around me grow so close together their lower branches are mostly bare, spindly quills: their needles and cones much higher than I could ever reach – but at less than five feet tall, that could place them on the top shelf in the supermarket. My name is Susie Chernobyl and this is the night I wake up in the woods.

Once, when I put my faith in doctors, they gave my condition names. A rare combination of narcolepsy, dissociative fugue, and somnambulism; so rare even the experts had only read about it in dusty old cracked-spine textbooks. It’s a terrible moment when you finally acknowledge it, but doctors know nothing.

I give it a few moments for my eyes to adjust, listening through the night noise of the woods for a clue to why I’m here. There’s always a reason. Above me, an exasperated wind nags at the higher branches. There could be moonlight up there, but it won’t ever trouble the soggy mattress at my feet. Beneath the wind, I can make out the syncopation of old raindrops, fingertipping their way down through the branches, drip drip-drip DRIP drip drip-DRIP drip…

As the darkness opens, I can see two, three trees ahead of me now – though still I don’t move. I might be warmer if I did, but not yet. I huddle into myself and shiver without noise. Sometimes when it’s really cold, I’ll express it vocally, but I’ve never been a ‘brrr!’ person – more a ‘hoo-ah!’ - like Al Pacino in the blind dancing film. (He’d have to be blind to dance with me. Even then, I wouldn’t wager my chances.) But there’s no risk of a ‘hoo-ah’ tonight, not until I know what I’m up against.

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