Walking from the driveway near the garage where I had parked my car, I was confused to find the dogs barking outside the house. Approaching the front door, I remembered that my purse was not with me. Had I left it in the car? Outside the car? On the verandah hanging on the metal railing with my sweater? Why was I so confused? Was I drunk? Something was amiss. The dogs kept barking.

I turned back to recover my purse and walked towards the back door, adjacent to the garage. It was ajar. Strange. The moment I stepped onto the threshold and glimpsed the familiar surroundings – the laundry room sink, the dishwasher, the washing machine – I was stirred by the unfamiliar. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another eye, in the crack between door and hinge. An arm reached around the door, somehow behind me, to encircle my neck. I could not escape or move. I could sense, but not see, the knife at my throat. It was over, I did not need to see the script predictably unfold as I had been warned it would so many times before.

I awake with the covers pulled around my neck. The old, wooden bed creaks as I reach around to remove them. Drawing the bedding firmly around me again I relax cocooned in its familiar comfort. Soon I sleep again. My mother tells me that as a baby I could sleep through even the fiercest of Southern African thunderstorms. All I remember of sleeping in Joburg was jumping, legs curled up, into bed and squeezing my eyes shut so hard that darkness disappeared and all I could see were blinding circles of blinking white light, like the headlights of a car. I was always terrified that something would come up from under the bed and grab my ankles.