An unquiet

“Sleep now, honey. It’s time to rest. The worst is over.”
The last clear thing the little girl heard. She felt her mother’s hand upon her forehead and then the hand seemed to turn white. Then it became pure sweat.
The drips of the hand covered her face and she felt alive with the flood. The water condensed around her eyes and she saw, with a new valance, the strange lights and shapes that now danced around her room. Strange that she’d never seen them before.
There flew a dandelion pig. The most remarkable piglet she’d ever seen. She tried to blow him away across the room but with the smallest breath his body disintegrated into a thousand seeds and scattered across her vision.
Everywhere the floating seeds landed, there grew another creature. A wealthy tiger, beside the bed, whose body was made of flaming pound notes; a pelican, on the windowsill, whose tail rattled like a snake’s; a red monkey, on top of the bookcase, who threw flowers at invisible enemies; a cunning anteater, in the middle of the floor, who played a ukulele and sang in French.
Katie sat upright in bed. Her mother may have been trying to lie her back down but she didn’t really see her anymore. She wanted to watch the menagerie that had blossomed in her room. She clapped with glee.
The anteater was attracting the attention of the other animals with its singing and playing. The pelican seemed to join in, rattling away an offbeat percussion, and the monkey (now blue) threw flowers gently which fell onto the anteater below.
The tiger approached the anteater slowly and the money on its back blazed brightly. It extended a paw, as if to offer the anteater a shake of its note-filled hand. Its head lulled from side to side as the music seemed to entrance it.
Then, with a sharp “TWANG!” the most tightly wound of the ukulele’s four strings snapped and the music bitterly ceased. The tiger leaped with sudden venom, biting and mauling the anteater. The monkey changed into every colour of a jellybean, flashing yellow, then white, then green and hurled its own eyes at the brawling tiger. The pelican let out a colossal grunt that made the monkey lose its balance and fall into the pit with the tiger. All of the pelican’s feathers then dropped off and turned to pepper.
Katie’s eyes widened. Her arm pointed and shook.
The tiger, now finished with the tasty anteater, turned its attention to the mewling monkey. The pelican attempted to fly from the scene but dropped clumsily instead onto the bloody carpet.
The little girl screamed as the fire from the tiger burned a terrible golden yellow, then so white that it scorched her entire body. She screamed and bit and scratched the invisible hands which held her down. “Help them,” she howled. “Help the pelican to fly away.”
Outside the room her mother was consoled as a syringe was prepared. “It may be a long night,” said a grey man climbing the stairs.