Man On Roof

True story.

    There is a point between sleeping and waking where, just for a moment you will accept whatever happens as being reality. It's the point where you cross from dream to real life, and you're not sure what has come with you for a ride...

    That is why it took me a moment to react to the thumping from above my head. The first reaction from my mind was to incorporate it into the dream (the dream was about a giant leach that turned into a school bus, so it wasn't particularly difficult to add it into the dream, I think it was a percussion group that started up at the back of the bus), but the thumping was insistent and eventually my brain hauled itself out of Neutral and into First Gear. It sounds as if...


    "There's someone on the roof," I hiss as I nudge my boyfriend awake, "Wake up!"

    "Phsshrggl," he replied groggily. He always has problems dealing with basic thoughts when he first wakes up.

    "Get up, I think there's someone on the roof," I'm out of bed by this point, and just as I finish speaking, my hypothesis is confirmed by further sounds coming down from above. "See I told you so, now get up!" The digital clock on his bedside reads 12.04am, but he always sets it five minutes fast, so it's really a minute before midnight.

    He's fully awake now and starting to get up. It's been really cold recently so I am fully rugged up in long pants and a jumper in bed. But my boyfriend doesn't really feel the lower extremes of temperature, so he's only wearing a t-shirt and underpants. It's going to take him a few moments to find a pair of pants to put on, so I go out into the kitchen to see what I can learn.

    We live in an old terrace house. It's single-fronted property four rooms long. At some point in it's long history a previous occupant had extended out from the back, so the back room - a combination kitchen and living room - has a slightly lower roof for half of it. Considering the ceilings are eleven feet high through most of the house, we're not talking something you have to duck under to have a lightly lower ceiling in this room.

    Anyway, the reason that I am telling you about this is that at the point where the ceiling changes height there is a window across the drop. A light in the supermarket out the back shines through here at night, usually providing just enough light to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom without having to turn on any lights. And through this window I can see the silhouette of someone moving on the roof.

    I flick the kitchen light on, then flick it off. The silhouette panics and I lose sight of it. There are a few thumps as he moves around on the roof, then a quiet crashing sound and a slight yell.

    My boyfriend has finally found a pair of pants by this time and joined me in the kitchen. Together we walk to the curtains that cover the back doors, and he reaches over and pulls one away a little bit.

    Through the glass of the door we look out into the backyard. It's not a big area, and technically, it's probably not actually a backyard. It's about three meters wide and maybe four or five meters long and completely covered over with timber decking. At the end is a roller door that leads into the supermarket car park and a very small shed filled with everything that doesn't fit into the house. In front of the roller door sit two large pot plants, watch with a native magnolias. They've recovered really well after the storm (but that's a whole other story). On the right hand side of the decking is a large planter box. We've got a few native flowers in there, and my boyfriend's 'experiment' - a vertical herb garden. Personally I think that it's a bit of an eye-sore, but he insists that one day it will work. I doubt him on this.

    On the left-hand side there are some raised tiers with pot plants on them. I designed the tiers myself and they work really well. I went out to a recycled timber-yard with my Dad one day and...

    Anyway, the pot plants are full of herbs and things like that. The Thai mint is doing really well at the moment, although the normal mint (we've got two) seem to be suffering a little...

    Oh, and there's a guy lying in what used to be these timber tiers with pot plants on them. He looks kind of young, maybe 19 or 20 years old (is it strange that I find it hard to tell the age of young people any More?) and he's wearing a newish-looking grey pinstripe suit. He looks dazed.

    I unlock the door and my boyfriend steps out. I should point two things about him at this point. Firstly, he's a big guy - six foot two and, in the words of a drunk guy we walked by in the street one day, 'built like a fucking brick shithouse'. And secondly, he's almost always the calmest person that I know. Even when he was bitten by my sister's boyfriend's rottweiler he was still rock solid. Which probably goes to explain why he wasn't screaming or yelling like a normal person might at this point.

    Suit-guy was trying to stand up at this point. It seemed to be causing him a bit of difficulty, and it probably didn't help that he was sitting in a wide pot of dirt with a mint plant in it. The other pots were scattered around him. As we step out he says "Don't call the cops, please mate."

    "What on Earth are you doing here?" asks my boyfriend. This is what I mean about him being calm - if I'd been him there probably would have been more yelling.

    Suit-guy has finished standing up by now. He reeks of alcohol - no real surprise there I suppose. He looks at us "I pulled the short straw - please don't call the cops mate".

    And that was the best that we got out of him. My boyfriend let him out of the roller door into the supermarket car park, and that was the last that we saw of suit-guy. Or falling-off-the-roof-guy. My boyfriend tidied up in the backyard, putting things back together as best he could, and I came into make a report to the police.

    So, Officer, do you have any further questions?