‘It was only a minor accident. Why can’t I seem to pull myself together? I must divert my mind,’ Norah thought, as she ascended the stairs of the apartment where she had a place to stay. Half past ten her phone displayed. The naked stray dogs in the neck of the woods had begun to fight each other. Those that were not engaged in fracas howled. ‘Bitch and food aside, what would they fight for?’ she wondered.

The full moon was magnificent to behold against a sapphire sky, but Norah had other fish to fry. Melancholically, she unlocked the main door and stood still, espying her silhouette that appeared on the wall of the foreroom. She did not want to turn the light on, for she found her shadow appealing. The attraction, however, was brief, akin to the novelty of a romantic relationship.

Norah lit the room and dug her feet out of the shoes that were unwilling to let go of them, or was she unwilling to see her feet bare? Inclined to break down upon finding all the room doors locked, she resolved to change the course of her thoughts. She told herself that it was unwise to weep over the thought of living unaccompanied, for such arrangements were now commonplace. ‘I shan’t complain or feel glum about living solo,’ she chose to think.

Norah had an intense aversion for lizards. There was a secret passage through which they entered her house. Only yesterday, she chased four lizards away, one after another. That one now lay lounging on her escritoire, in the study room, stopped her in her tracks.

‘Is this not an everyday affair now? I keep the windows shut and the doors fastened; even so, they creep into my house. Egg shells, peacock feather, onions—have I not tried them all? But how unbending can they be! If only I knew their secret passage,’ blurted she. The sight of a lizard indoors always ruined her state of mind. Her interim goal was to dispel the scaly brown reptile before fixing her dinner.

For someone who would meticulously clean every nook and corner of the house before leaving for work, it was distressing and disappointing to find such a pest as a lizard in her living space. Norah plugged the ultrasonic lizard repeller to the wall socket, aware of its inefficacy.

She despised the defiant attitude of the lizard, whose shrewdness defeated her phonetic attempts to expel it from the house. Though she was hungry, she could not prepare her dinner until she was rid of it. She stood staring at the lizard, detesting what she was seeing. Perhaps, the lizard was uncomfortable to find the gaze of a beast fixed at it. It hopped to the floor impelling Norah to jolt backwards timorously. She sprinted across the foreroom to fetch the long blue parasol—her weapon against incoming lizards. What if the little reptile adhered to her foot? She decided to wear socks before commencing what would be a combat between two species.

Her heart surged with urgency as she knocked the pointed end of the parasol on the red-marbled floor, an inch behind the nervy reptile. She, who was as tense as the tiny lizard, wanted to direct it towards the target, the main door. However, to her further annoyance, it retreated back into the study. If she did not succeed in her endeavour, she thought, she would have to sleep on an empty stomach. She tapped more vigorously this time. The lizard cooperated by leaving the dimly lit room at once. The door of the study was promptly shut.

She reckoned that the main doorway would not be too far if the lizard followed her direction; if the creature, however, swerved from the path that she so resolutely showed it, she would be utterly dejected, because the deviation only led to the kitchenette, where a petite reptile such as the lizard could find one too many hidey-holes. Norah remembered the previous night when, after she succeeded in ejecting two lizards that were found in the kitchen sink, two more appeared, out of nowhere. Last night, she was discouraged from cooking.

It had been more than an hour since the taxi driver dropped her home from her place of work. She was irate that the lizard lay still. In an act of desperation, she brought the parasol’s pointed end extremely close to the creature’s tail, causing it to move away briskly. No sooner did it begin to crawl towards the supposed destination than she dashed towards the main door to open it. The lizard hurriedly left her abode. With a sigh of great relief, she secured the main door, placed the parasol back where it belonged, and rested her aching back on the sofa bed, recalling the entire encounter.

She went to the kitchenette to see if there was another lizard lying in the sink. When none was found, she squeezed the bottle of a disinfectant, lathered her hands up, counted thirty seconds, and then opened the faucet to wash her hands. As the soapy water flew counter-clockwise into the sink, Norah thought that it was too late to be cooking. It was the melting vanilla ice-cream that she wanted to devour.

Presently lain on the sofa bed with a mug of chilled ice-cream, Norah thought, ‘My mechanical life does not make me wretched as it does my coworkers. At my place of work, pressure is immense, period is crucial; every minute counts. I have begun to like such weightiness.

‘Back here, I find the same old lizard lying in the kitchen sink; I find the room doors locked—I lock them myself before leaving; and I find the same static things around me.’

Norah was waiting for the ice-cream to soften to avoid brain freeze. Through the windowpane, she saw that the moon was gone. The dogs were quiet. She remembered the people she once knew—they wrote poetry on celestial objects. Writing was not her forte, she believed. What was, then? Battling with lizards? She tittered.

Relishing the ice-cream for the last time now, Norah said, ‘Two hours of watching a lizard and I must admit that lizards are, indeed, smart creatures.’ The mug was licked clean.

It was a Friday. Weekend was not far away. All she needed now was a good night’s sleep, or so thought she. Sigh! An object of great dismay—she saw it again. ‘Brown, indeed, looks well against a gray background,’ thus concluded she.

Lizards have a malevolent inclination to destroy her peace; she was now assured of it.