Chapter 1 – in which I encounter a beetle

I’m sitting in my room minding my own business when a beetle flies in through the open window. I pay it little or no attention and carry on working, but the beetle is having none of this. It starts throwing itself against the window making such a racket that I am compelled to offer it my assistance. I try opening the window wider and shooing it outside. The beetle sits on the window sill and glowers at me.

“I don’t know what you’re so angry about,” I tell it, “I never asked you to come in here.”

Perhaps this isn’t the correct way to address a beetle and, apparently incensed, it flies up into the air, circles twice around the room picking up speed as it goes and then smack into the centre of my forehead. Imagine my surprise! Stunned, I am almost knocked over backwards. Once I’ve recovered I look around but can find no trace of the beetle. Naturally, I assume it has exited through the open window, but as time passes I become more and more certain that the beetle has chosen another route and has, in fact, exited through me.

This isn’t a particular pleasing thought so I keep trying to ignore it, preferring to rely on a more prosaic explanation, but as the shining beetle mark on my forehead starts to fade I have more and more evidence that the beetle indeed used me to exit the room, as other insects start doing the same thing. The list is quite extensive: three flies, a spider, one ladybird, two more beetles, a butterfly, a moth, a bee, a wasp, several mosquitoes, a couple of crickets and even a glow worm seem to pass one way or the other through the mysterious portal the beetle opened up in my forehead. Each time there is a kind of cracking sound, like a spark leaping, and immediately afterwards the beetle mark on my forehead is prominent for several minutes.

I can’t say I strongly object to being used by insects as a transport hub but I feel a little cheated, as if I’m missing out on some of the fun, so after the latest teleportation in which a beautiful greeny-blue beetle emerges from nowhere into my room I decide to break silence and express my feelings on the subject. I wonder if I’d have done so had I known where it would lead?