Trigger Warning

There was some kind of shouting match between Nerys and Mum to begin with, because Mum had come back from the shops and not bought anything from Nerys’s shopping list except the shampoo. Mum said she couldn’t find the tanning cream at the supermarket but I think she just forgot. So Nerys stormed off and slammed the door and went into her bedroom and played something that was probably Britney Spears really loudly. I was out the back, feeding the three cats, the chinchilla, and a guinea pig named Roland who looks like a hairy cushion, and I missed it all.

On the kitchen table.

When I found the empty jam jar in the back garden the next morning. It was underneath Nerys’s window. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.

Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered. I figured it would just be more yelling, you know? And Mum would work it out soon enough.

Yes, it was stupid. But it wasn’t uniquely stupid, if you see what I mean. Which is to say, it was par-for-the-course-for-Nerys stupid.

That she was glowing.

A sort of pulsating orange.

When she started telling us that she was going to be worshipped like a god, as she was in the dawn times.

Pryderi said she was floating about an inch above the ground. But I didn’t actually see this. I thought he was just playing along with her newfound weirdness.

She didn’t answer to ‘Nerys’ any more. She described herself mostly as either My Immanence, or the Vehicle. (‘It is time to feed the Vehicle.’)

Dark chocolate. Which was weird because in the old days I was the only one in the house who even sort of liked it. But Pryderi had to go out and buy her bars and bars of it.

No. Mum and me just thought it was more Nerys. Just a bit more imaginatively weirdo Nerys than usual.

That night, when it started to get dark. You could see the orange pulsing under the door. Like a glowworm or something. Or a light show. The weirdest thing was that I could still see it with my eyes closed.

The next morning. All of us.

It was pretty obvious by this point. She didn’t really even look like Nerys any longer. She looked sort of smudged. Like an afterimage. I thought about it, and it’s . . . Okay. Suppose you were staring at something really bright, that was a blue colour. Then you closed your eyes, and you’d see this glowing yellowy-orange afterimage in your eyes? That was what she looked like.

They didn’t work either.

She let Pryderi leave to get her more chocolate. Mum and I weren’t allowed to leave the house any more.

Mostly I just sat in the back garden and read a book. There wasn’t very much else I really could do. I started wearing dark glasses, so did Mum, because the orange light hurt our eyes. Other than that, nothing.

Only when we tried to leave or call anybody. There was food in the house, though. And Stuffed Muffins™ in the freezer.

‘If you’d just stopped her wearing that stupid tanning cream a year ago we wouldn’t be in this mess!’ But it was unfair, and I apologised afterwards.

When Pryderi came back with the dark chocolate bars. He said he’d gone up to a traffic warden and told him that his sister had turned into a giant orange glow and was controlling our minds. He said the man was extremely rude to him.

I don’t have a boyfriend. I did, but we broke up after he went to a Rolling Stones concert with the evil bottle-blond former friend whose name I do not mention. Also, I mean, the Rolling Stones? These little old goat-men hopping around the stage pretending to be all rock-and-roll? Please. So, no.

I’d quite like to be a vet. But then I think about having to put animals down, and I don’t know. I want to travel for a bit before I make any decisions.

The garden hose. We turned it on full, while she was eating her chocolate bars, and distracted, and we sprayed it at her.

Just orange steam, really. Mum said that she had solvents and things in the laboratory, if we could get in there, but by now Her Immanence was hissing mad (literally) and she sort of fixed us to the floor. I can’t explain it. I mean, I wasn’t stuck, but I couldn’t leave or move my legs. I was just where she left me.

About half a metre above the carpet. She’d sink down a bit to go through doors, so she didn’t bump her head. And after the hose incident she didn’t go back to her room, just stayed in the main room and floated about grumpily, the colour of a luminous carrot.

Complete world domination.

I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to Pryderi.

He had to carry it back. I don’t think Her Immanence really understood money.

I don’t know. It was Mum’s idea more than mine. I think she hoped that the solvent might remove the orange. And at that point, it couldn’t hurt. Nothing could have made things worse.

It didn’t even upset her, like the hose-water did. I’m pretty sure she liked it. I think I saw her dipping her chocolate bars into it, before she ate them, although I had to sort of squint up my eyes to see anything where she was. It was all a sort of a great orange glow.