Elsa asked if she could measure it. I’d just climaxed, lying on top of her, nose buried in her neck. My eyes must’ve been shut; I couldn’t figure out what she was after. Well can I, or not ? I didn’t budge. Woozy with pleasure, drowsy between her thighs, our sweat mingling. She kept at it. It’s not at its best right now, I said, you have to give it some time to recover. Then she pushed me off. I don’t like it when she rushes things after sex. I like the languor of satisfaction, the paralysis of fleeting pleasure. Go get me a ruler ! Taken aback, I said, Really ? Now ? She said she had a weird mole on her belly, did I have a ruler so she could measure it ? So that’s how it is, huh, we make love and next thing you know, you’re thinking about your blackheads ? She said she thought it’d gotten bigger, and she was afraid she had cancer. I thought that was ridiculous. Don’t tell me you’re going to start measuring every last mole on your body because you think you might have cancer ? With all the spots you have, you’ll be measuring the rest of your life ! Offended, she said she wasn’t about to measure them all, just the little one above her navel, and that yes, she’d rather err on the side of caution than die a stupid death. If I wanted to kick the bucket from carelessness, that was my call, not hers. I sighed. You live longer when you’re scared of dying ! And then I got up to go find her a ruler.

Don’t you have anything that goes smaller ? I looked at my wooden one-footer. She had it pressed flat to her stomach. Long and solid, it must’ve felt cold. There were black ink stains along its edges. I saw myself, a child again, struggling to draw a straight line, and wondered whether she was sullying the instrument or if it was tainting her. Her immaculate belly, sperm dribbling just below. She’d made me come then pressed my childhood ruler to her burning skin. She said, something that goes down to millimeters, maybe ? Her mole was pear-shaped. This just isn’t precise enough ! The mole stopped right between two lines. About 0.3 cm, I reckoned. Look, when it hits half a centimeter, you can get it checked out and worry about it then ! She gave me a dirty look. You really don’t have anything else ? She was getting on my nerves. Yup, that’s all there is ! What do you want now, calipers ? Here, turn this way a little, let me see. Did you know there’s things all over your ass that need measuring ? Now that’s just inconvenient. Want some help ? I grabbed the ruler; she gave me a shove, then rolled across the bed to dodge my grasp. Fine, be that way—I’ll measure something else ! Look, there’s a spot on the wall.

Red, right over the headboard. I’d never noticed it before. It looked like a drop of blood, maybe a smushed mosquito—who knows ?—had dried there. I measured it and yelled out, approximately one centimeter ! You’re right, this ruler really isn’t very precise. 0.8 cm, or 0.9 ? Boy, this is going to torture me all day ! Turning to Elsa, I saw all my fuss was making her laugh. She kicked off the sheets, presenting me with her naked body, and cried, C’mere, silly ! I threw myself on her and we rolled around, forgetting her mole and my stain for a while.

I can still remember, it was a Sunday morning, we even spent the rest of the day together. We walked along the Seine, had fries and Belgian beer at a bistro. Then we stopped by to see a friend, Nico, and hung out talking for a while, smoking pot. That evening I came home alone—Elsa doesn’t like sleeping over when she has work the next day.

I was just getting undressed when my gaze fell upon it by accident, or maybe, remembering the scene from that morning, I was unconsciously looking for it. It hadn’t moved or changed colors—which would’ve been even weirder—but I felt like it’d gotten bigger. I went over for a closer look. The red darkened almost to ochre around the edges, a detail I hadn’t noticed before. And it was shaped like an upside-down heart, or a nice rack—I hadn’t noticed that either. Where had it come from ? Half amused, half curious, I picked the ruler up off the floor. A little over one centimeter. With an instrument that only marked off every half-centimeter, it was hard to be more exact. What had I gotten that morning ? A bit less, I think, or… I couldn’t remember anymore, and anyway, what difference could it possibly have made ?

The next day, I found work more interesting than usual. Was it only afterwards that my worry began to grow ? Or did work interest me more because of my growing worry ?

As a reporter at the Globe, I was assigned an article on the French publication of a book by Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes. Predicting that humanity would go extinct in the 21st century due to climate change, The Collapse of Western Civilization decried our blindness. It pointed a finger at excessive scientific rigor. According to its authors, out of respect for the 95% confidence interval—the same one that deemed an assertion incorrect if there was more than a 5% margin of error—our scientists refused to take the disastrous consequences of global warming seriously. Loss of crops and livestock, famine, endless summers, wildfires, tornados, rising waters, massive population migrations, wars, massacres… Collapse. After reading these words, I sat there stunned. Were we headed straight for disaster due to an excess of scientific caution ? Could being scientifically rigorous amount to the same thing as watching danger draw near without lifting a finger ? Would raising awareness right away and drastically changing our way of life allow us to get out of this mess ?

I found the part about the lack of clarity in science especially fascinating. One line burned itself into my memory: “Western scientists have founded their intellectual culture on this premise: believing in something that doesn’t exist is worse than not believing in something that does.” This convention—how many lives, human and animal alike, had it cost us already ? How many phenomena had it kept us from perceiving ? I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the next few days. And what about me: how many times had I myself preferred not to see what was right in front of me, rather than question my vision of the world ?

The rest of the week proved monotonous, one day like the next. A series of uninteresting articles. Nighttime fatigue and morning boredom. Till Friday evening came around. I went over to Nico’s. As usual, his door was open. I found him slumped in his bedroom, shutters closed, empty cans of food and beer littering the carpet. Clothes strewn among cigarette butts and dirty dishes. The stink of feet and stale tobacco. Thanks for cleaning up, man. Ungluing his eyes from his PC, he gave me an amused glance. Shit, I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve opened the windows ! Veering from his mess, I walked over and pulled a chair out from the desk. What’s up ? Checking out stuff on schizophrenia. He showed me a list of thirty-odd movies, among them The Machinist, The Tenant, Shutter Island, Fight Club, Labyrinth (the Belgian movie, not the David Bowie), Take Shelter, Repulsion, The Shining, A Beautiful Mind, Lost Highway, Santa Sangre, Psycho. What is this, some obsession ? Straightening up, he explained that it was for a novel he was planning to write: you’d follow the parallel lives of two characters before realizing they were one and the same person. Kind of clichéd as plots go, no ? He sighed. That’s just it, he said. At first he’d thought it was an awesome idea, and now, the more he looked into it, the dumber it seemed.

How’d you come up with it ? He made no reply, looking for a video on YouTube. I asked again. Hey, how’d you get the idea ? Eyes riveted to the screen, he pursed his lips. I can still see his profile, the straight line of his nose, his three-day beard, his lips slightly plumped. After a minute, he sighed. If I tell you, you’ll make fun of me. I can’t remember how I managed to convince him, but I remember his expression. Somber, frowning slightly, he stared me straight in the eye. Then, in a tone I’d never heard him use before, he started telling me about his mother’s death. His loneliness. Repeated calls from his family. And, above all, his visions. She would appear to him, he explained. In dreams, at first. Then, more disconcertingly, in the distance, round a corner and down a dark street, behind a car, in a window. He started seeing her more and more often. Just for a second, he’d pick her figure out of a crowd, her shadowed silhouette backlit, her expression distorting her face… When he told his family, he found out he wasn’t the only one to see her on a regular basis. His dad said it was just a trick of the mind. Y’know, like when you’re obsessed with some girl, and you think you see her on every street corner.

So what’s that got to do with your schizophrenia novel ? At first, he’d set out to write a book about his mother, in the vein of Promise at Dawn or Book of My Mother, but he’d given up. Unless you were Romain Gary or Albert Cohen, those kinds of stories soon turned into pathetic navel-gazing. So he figured he’d write something lighter, less exclusively dedicated to his mother. That’s how he’d gotten the idea to tell his own story. He wanted his visions to have a life of their own, as real as the character of the narrator, who would generate them, move among them, and be influenced by them, all at once. In short, he wanted them to exist.

We spent the rest of the night smoking pot and watching YouTube videos. At one point, I don’t know why, I told him about Elsa. I wasn’t worried about her, I just couldn’t help it, I had to talk to someone. Oh, you know how she is, he reassured me, she gets all worked up over nothing ! I didn’t argue. Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Besides, I told her her thing probably couldn’t be that serious, but sometimes, I don’t know, I just worry about her.

My work at the paper was taking up more and more of my time. Or maybe I just felt that way ? At any rate, the more I found out about the threat of climate change, the harder I struggled with my growing worry, and accused myself of overdramatizing things. If the danger was imminent, people would know, right ? But still, I couldn’t shake my anxiety.

I remember my research on the role of global warming in the emergence and proliferation of infectious diseases definitely left its mark. While writing about the tiger mosquito, I’d have visions of it riding floodwaters to spread chikungunya and dengue fever across the globe. Detailing the behaviors of the dog tick, I’d see it thrill to the rise in temperature, attacking humans and transmitting Lyme disease or Mediterranean spotted fever. Reporting on the advent of Pithovirus, I pictured other, even larger viruses escaping the melted permafrost to conquer the world and kill people by the thousand. Plagued by these images, I suddenly wondered if humankind would survive such invasions. What weapons would we use against these creatures invisible to the naked eye ? Would even more arise to swell their ranks ? What forms would they take ? When would we start worrying ? Wasn’t it already too late ? What other dangers loomed ? Were we even able to perceive them, or did we prefer our placid blindness to taking immediate action ? And in the end, wasn’t it all just a matter of perceiving and realizing the danger ?

It had gotten bigger. An abrupt assessment, colder than the ruler I was pressing to her skin. By how much ? Lying on my bed, looking serene yet stiff, Elsa stared at the ceiling. As soon as she got there, she’d asked me to measure; she’d brought a ruler marked off in millimeters. Don’t go getting any ideas, she said as she took off her dress. At any other time it would’ve been funny. Bending over her navel, ruler in hand, I measured her mole. Actually it’s hard to tell, it’s almost 0.5 cm, I think you got 0.3 last time, but given how inexact my ruler was, maybe it hasn’t even grown at all. Plus, you’re lying down now, so your stomach skin is stretched out, and it looks bigger, I— She cut me off. Don’t bullshit me, Phil, I’ve been measuring it all week, and I’m telling you, it’s bigger. I needed you to see, not for you to try and comfort me with lies. That wasn’t what you said when you showed up, I wanted to snap back, but her tone brooked no objection.

To avoid conflict, I slipped away to make some tea. From the kitchen I could heard her muttering, Tea ? Really ? You think this is a good time ? When I came back, she was dressed. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, pouting. I set the mug down on the nightstand and sat down facing her. She held herself straight, chest thrust slightly forward. Hair swept up in a bun trailing a few stray locks. There was something childlike about her. Her dress was too big for her, straps loose on her shoulders. One of them had slipped, revealing lighter skin beneath the red fabric. Why red ? A note of tragedy between my white walls. She leaned back and looked at me. I found her somber. Brow knit in the slightest of frowns, lips tight. Don’t be like that, don’t make a big deal about it, what if all this is nothing… I trailed off, not knowing what to add. After a long silence, she suggested we go for a walk.

Outside, it was hot and humid. Walking helped; we started talking again. About this and that, politics, music, movies, books. There were also long moments of silence in which, like a cloud, the vision of her mole came back to haunt us. I took my time before daring to broach the subject. Elsa, there’s something I don’t get… why this anxiety all of a sudden ? I mean, ten days ago it wasn’t even a thing, and now… No, decidedly words were not helping. We’d each ordered a glass of red and were sitting on a café terrace. We could hear children playing, a dog barking in the distance. She sighed. Look, this is hard, but… ever since my grandparents died, we’ve been obsessed with cancer in my family, and then eight years ago my uncle died of cancer too. He had a melanoma on his scalp, and when they noticed, it was too late. My parents always told me to keep a close eye on myself. Until now, I’d never taken them seriously, I guess I thought it was kind of dumb, always checking your body, creating problems for yourself, it drives you nuts ! Then, the other day, I was channel surfing when I came across this show on cancer, there were lots of people talking who’d seen it up close, and… I think it brought back some bad memories. I got scared. So I remembered this weird mole I had on my belly and… well, that’s it. Sorry to bother you with all this, maybe it really is nothing, but I just needed to talk about it, see, feel a little less alone while waiting to see a dermatologist. Besides, you know how it is: you measure something once, then again just to check, and next thing you know you’re making things up in your head, it starts itching, like when you know someone who has lice—just the thought of having them makes you start scratching…

Back home, I noticed she’d left her tea untouched and her ruler on my bed. We’d stepped out in a hurry. Then, after our outing, she hadn’t wanted me to walk her home. Clearly I just didn’t get her—wasn’t she in need of comforting ?

Frustrated by not being able to sleep next to her, and hurt by her rejection, I had a hard time falling asleep. I kept having this one dream. I’d be examining her with a microscope. Her beauty mark was getting bigger: first the bottom, it was packing on weight in the trunk, and then the torso dwindled to a point, and it began to swell, bloating more and more until it burst, spraying blood all over my room.

Eventually I turned on the light. Bouncing off the white walls, it blinded me. Squinting, eyes still puffy from sleep, I felt around for the bottle of water on the nightstand. My fingers came across something hard and flat. Not expecting to run into the ruler, it took me a minute to figure out what it was.

Elsa’s plexiglass ruler. My sight back now, I grabbed it without thinking and stuck it on the red stain just above me. 2.6 cm. How big had it been last time ? 1.2 cm, I think… Fuck, had it gained a whole 1.4 cm in six days ? ! I remained glued to the bed, ruler in hand, staring at it wild-eyed.

Once over my initial surprise, I started taking all sorts of measurements. Diagonal, 2.9 cm; horizontal, 3.0 cm; vertical left 2.6 cm; vertical right 2.5 cm; vertical median 2.9 cm… But nothing, nothing came up 1.2 cm ! Had I been that inexact ? Or forgotten the exact figure from previous measurements ? Maybe: the first time I’d been joking around, and the second time high… Maybe I’d measured the width of the tip ? I wasn’t sure of anything anymore… and by refusing to take this too seriously, I kept myself from actually thinking about it. Yet think about it I did, idly, not making the mental effort to recall how I’d taken the earlier measurements, just making fun of it. Who was I to tease Elsa about her mole ?

The next morning, things were no better. I woke late, with difficulty. The stain floated through my dreams. The stain ! It tore me from bed. A bit nervously, clumsily no doubt, I set to measuring it again. Between 2.6 cm and 3.1 cm, depending on where I put the ruler. How to be more precise ? To ensure my appraisals were correct ? I was assailed by the same doubts as the night before. Had I forgotten my previous measurements ? After some hesitation, I resolved to write them down. I drew up a cross-reference table, five columns for five dimensions: diagonal, horizontal, vertical left, vertical right, and vertical median. One line per day. For Day One, I put down 3.0 cm, 3.1 cm, 2.7 cm, 2.6 cm, and 3.0 cm. Oddly enough, this soothed me. Now I had something to hold on to.

These figures took on more importance than I’d anticipated. Each morning’s discoveries upended my habits. I no longer got up without feeling apprehensive about measurements, fearing they’d changed, wondering if I was doing them right, shivering with anxiety, shuddering with uncertainty, and finally adding a careful line to my schoolboy table. After the fifth day, there was no more room for doubt. The stain was growing, with more than distressing regularity, two millimeters a day. I say it now and I repeat: two millimeters a day, no more, no less. Though I’d had my doubts about its edges (should I include the ochre fringe around it ?), questioned the accuracy of my instrument (a ruler graded down to the millimeter, I swear !), suspected the mental state of the measurer (was I even awake ?), the light in the room (curtains drawn, lamp turned on), and even my own eyesight (was I getting farsighted ?)—in short, ascribing my data to willful bias—none of that made any difference. Whether I wanted it to or not, the stain kept growing, getting bigger and bigger, devouring my hours, tormenting me, and swallowing my whole week one night at a time.

My relationship with time had definitively changed. I no longer thought of days by date or even name but by their measurements. There was no such thing as Wednesday anymore, just Day 4 of a cycle. And so my progress through the week was reduced to the millimeters of excrescence of a red stain on a white wall. All I kept wondering was, would it grow tomorrow ? And the day after ? Would it ever slow down ? Speed up ? Stop someday ? When had it begun ? Had it always been like this ? That question, especially, obsessed me. What if there were stains swelling up all over the world ? Not just here, on my wall, but also the other end of the earth ? Who would know ? Was I the only one who’d noticed ?

On Day 4, I speculated about a constantly expanding universe. I’d heard about the phenomenon before, so I began thinking about my stain as one of its many consequences. What if everything was getting bigger without our realizing it ? Not just that stain, but the whole rest of the world ? That wall, that chair, that table, that house over there, those cars in the street, those people passing by, and us too, everything, I mean absolutely everything ? There was just one hitch. If everything was expanding, then measuring instruments would also be expanding, and no growth would be measurable. Unless not all things expanded at the same rate ? But in that case was the stain actually getting bigger, or was the ruler, expanding more slowly, seeming to shrink in comparison ? Wasn’t all shrinkage, in the end, relative to some reference point ? That was how I came to see, in that stain, evidence the world was shrinking. Every millimeter it gained now seemed to me a millimeter lost, not only by my white wall, but the planet as a whole.

On Day 5, a call from Elsa—telling me she’d finally gotten an appointment with a dermatologist—led me to make a second connection: between my stain and the melanoma. Oddly enough, my first reaction, chronologically speaking, had evaporated before my alarm at the red stain’s growth. Why hadn’t I started measuring it at the same time Elsa had started measuring her beauty spot ? Why hadn’t I started looking, earlier, into how skin cancer spread ? With a few clicks online, I learned that the progression of cancerous cells from the epidermis to the hypodermis brought about a cancer’s transition from localized to metastatic. In other words, if the melanoma was excised right from the surface, it wouldn’t spread. But if it had reached the dermis, the hypodermis, and then the basal layer, it would give rise to an invasive cancer capable of traveling through the circulatory and lymphatic systems—in other words, setting out to conquer the entire body.

Awakening. Panicked discovery. What would happen to Elsa ? Did she even know ? And here I’d been trying to comfort her… I had to act now ! Trembling in front of my computer, I couldn’t make up my mind to call her. It was absurd; I’d just had her on the line. When was her appointment again ? What if it was too late ? I tried not to think about it. What if my stain followed the same progression, getting bigger not only on the surface but also inside the wall ? And if, little by little, brick by brick, room by room, floor by floor, it spread through my entire building ? The street ? The neighborhood ? The city ? The country ? The world ? Was there still enough time to scrape the paint off and keep it from proliferating ?

I did nothing. This was insane; it was just some dumb little stain. For a moment, reading the article and especially thinking about Elsa, I’d lost my head. There was no danger, just a delirium of hypotheses, an extravagance of logic, nothing more. Calming down again, I forgot the stain until the next morning.

On Day 6, I dropped by to see Nico. It was a Friday. Keeping up its rate of two millimeters a day, my stain had grown twelve millimeters since Sunday.

How’re things ? I found him on his bed, reading. He’d done a little tidying up—there were fewer objects littering the floor—and opened a window. At the sight of me, he sat up. What things ? Oh, you know, that story about schizophrenia… He smiled. I’ve been pretty blocked the last few days. How about you ? How’s work ? Thinking back to my articles, I realized for the first time that my worries about global warming had seemingly shifted over to the red stain. True that, usually all you tell me about is newspaper stuff, the environment and everything, but it’s gotta be going on three weeks now that you haven’t. You bored or something ? Since I gave no answer, he changed the subject. The rest of the evening escapes my memory, up till dinner.

The water was boiling, the table set; I was sitting down, Nico standing, his back to the stove, when I saw it. Tiny, just below the hood, no more than a centimeter. How had I managed to spot it ? At any rate, I must’ve been staring at it weirdly because Nico got worried. Yo ! Earth to Phil ! You OK ? What are you staring at like that ? Without hesitating, I said, that red stain up there—haven’t you ever noticed it before ? He turned toward the hood. Where ? What stain ? What are you talking about ? I finally got up to point it out. This one, see ? He nodded. You mean that splatter of tomato sauce ? What are you, obsessed now ?

It was just an excuse. The truth was I absolutely needed to confide in him. The beauty spot, the red stain, how everything had started, how it kept getting bigger every day… I talked, and the words grew heavy in my mouth. Was it Nico’s reaction, or putting my theories into words that made me realize, little by little, how absurd the situation was and that, quite likely, I was crazy ? At any rate, the more I talked, the more ridiculous I felt. Nico’s silence in response to my words finally put me ill at ease. I needed advice. Say something ! Frowning, he got up. Pasta’s ready !

Only when we were seated again did he give me his opinion. Y’know, Phil, I think you need a vacation. Elsa, work, sleep, that’s just fine for a while, but… I dunno. Get out ! See the world ! Or do what I do, slack off a little ! Jesus ! Taken aback, I stared at the bottom of my plate. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Finally I asked, right, but so what do you make of my stain ? He gave me a stern look. I wanted to protest: but you told me about— But he got there first. I know what you’re going to say, that story about my mother and everything, but that’s got nothing to do with anything. I’m in mourning. You’re overworked and stressed out.

I saw there was nothing more I could say. It was absurd. Wasn’t there anything he could tell me, instead of giving me a lecture ? Had I scoffed at him when he told me about his fantasies ?

On Day 8, it stopped growing. Table and ruler in hand, I stood there, gaping. It was Sunday and, since Friday, it hadn’t gained a millimeter. Surprised at first, I then took to measuring it several times a day. In vain. It no longer changed. Or in a perceptible way, at any rate.

On Day 9, beginning to think it was all a bad dream, I ruled in favor of Nico.

On the night of Day 10, Elsa rang at my door and lifted up her tank top. Three stitches, and the little black pear-shaped spot had disappeared. I knelt before her to press my lips to the spot. The saccharine taste of her skin. A shiver of flesh. Resurgence of love in the face of death.

The alarm rang. There she was, next to me, at peace. I gazed at her for a moment. Her long hair, in waves on her bare shoulders. The little fist of her right hand clenched by her face. The shadows of rings under her eyes. Asleep, she no longer had that defiant air I thought of as her. A defiance that made me uneasy, that I sometimes found charming, that I admired and hated all at once. Her profile, still and regular, seemed painted on the white sheets. I watched the line of her forehead subside into the start of her nose. A long nose, curving toward her parted lips. I saw them thin in a smile and tighten in love.

Elsa stirred, and the line of her back bowed. She wore my sheet like a skirt too long for her. Her buttocks were sculpted in soft relief. Moving close to kiss them, I saw two spots near her coccyx. Printed on the white cloth, they were red and had the same ochre fringe as the one I’d measured so many times on my wall.

Neither of us were bleeding. We inspected our bodies before showering. Not a trace of a scratch. Where were they from, then ? There were five of them in all. Five, dotting my bed with their shameful redness. A mystery. Elsa helped me change the sheets. And we left for work in a hurry.

The incident obsessed me all day. I thought back to what Elsa had told me a week ago: the feeling of being invaded by moles, of having them all over your arms, legs, back, body. Was I a victim of the same phenomenon ? At the paper, I counted four new stains. One on my desk, one on my coworker Celine’s chair, and two on the toilet bowl. Back home, I discovered eight more, all on the walls of my room. That made for a total of seventeen. Not counting the first one, which I measured again. After checking to see it hadn’t grown since the last time, I added another column to my table: Number of Stains. From Day 1to Day 10, I put down “1”. For Day 11, I wrote “17”.

On Day 12, I counted ten at work, twenty-two in my bedroom, one in my kitchen, three in my bathroom. For a total of thirty-six stains. The more I saw, the more I counted. Or was it the other way around ? I didn’t know what to think anymore, and didn’t dare believe in an invasion. How many would it take for me to be sure ?

On Day 13, I found forty-four new stains in my apartment—ten in the hallway of my building—as well as thirty more at work. That was when I had an idea. I asked Celine for a pen, and pointed out that her desk was stained. She seemed surprised. Yeah ? So what ?

Just like Elsa and Nico, she could see them ! So the red stains were actually there, real, everyone could see them, was aware of them, and yet no one seemed to care about them except me. Doesn’t the fact of being the only one who pays any attention to something mean you’re hallucinating ? At the same time, who could bother to care about the presence of such tiny stains ? As an environmental journalist, I should know… Who worried about thousands of tons of ice melting every year at the far corners of the planet, so long as it didn’t make the waters of the nearest river rise more than a few centimeters a year ? Swallowing my figures and my worry, I reflected that, honestly, those little red stains couldn’t interest anyone but a journalist obsessed with the proliferation of viruses loosed by global warming.

Back home, I calculated that all in all, I’d discovered one hundred twenty-nine red stains in the space of three days—and that was not counting the ones in the street or at Nico’s. Was that a large enough number to sound the alarm ? Would Elsa take me seriously if I told her ? Can a number serve as evidence ? The thought made me smile. Wasn’t I the first to claim that higher crime rates didn’t necessarily mean more crime ? My sheet of calculations in hand, I wondered how I could prove that new stains had appeared when I’d never bothered to count them before. I would’ve needed a photo of my walls before they were ever stained… Really, I had no proof. And yet, I was sure we’d been invaded.

On the morning of Day 14, lulled by a pitter-patter from outside, I snuggled up against Elsa, she buried her face in my neck, and I opened my eyes. Then, waking with a start to the sight of my room, I shook her. Elsa ! Elsa ! She mumbled something and turned over. I leapt up and insisted. Elsa, look ! Rolling over in the sheets, she stared at me with alarm. What is your problem ? On my feet, irritated at her blindness, I shouted, the walls, they’re all red ! She scowled. But they’ve always been red, haven’t they ? Then she went back to sleep. My arms fell to my sides. What to do ? Whom to warn ? I staggered to the window, drew the curtains back to gaze upon my city, our city, engulfed in a deluge of blood. So this was rain now ?