During the heatwave, I spend a lot of time on the floor of my room. At the end of the season, as the heat begins to pass, the capacity to think slowly returns to me. I become once more cognisant of my surroundings, and discover something horrible and strange.
I am lying on a thick mat of hair. It has meshed itself into the fibres of the carpet, and can be removed only with difficulty. I have to scrape at it with my fingernails to loosen even a few tangled strands.
The hair is long, wavy and brown. It is my own.
I am not shedding more than the average—we all lose several hairs each day. I am unusual only in the intensity with which I have inhabited a single space, and my inability to see the cumulative effect.
In the end I take a comb and comb my carpet, tearing up handful after handful. There is enough to knit into a garment, or to build nests for several birds.
All this hair makes me feel feral, as though I am a monster that lives beyond human norms, a creature of musky smells and night-time habits, a beast who hunts and claws and bites, and tears the throats out of its prey.