“Chloe dreamt that she was having sex with her father-in-law’s dog, Wystan, a particularly skinny and nervous whippet. The whippet’s claws scratched her shoulders and breasts terribly — his needle-sharp teeth nipped at her ears; what was going on down below Chloe could only intuit, not feel, but the idea alone sent alternating pulses of nausea and shame coursing through her subconscious.
“Chloe awoke to find that her thrashing had threaded the heavy linen sheet through her thighs and wound it around her waist. She freed herself from this loincloth, while disentangling dream and reality, then, pushing herself upright in the old four-poster, she realised that she was not alone: a dagger of sunlight thrust between the shutters, lanced across the room and caught on its very point, standing, shivering in the empty grate of the fireplace … ”
To read the rest of Will Self’s short story, published in the Sunday Times today, go here.
