They are spiders, scuttling from behind tables, clambering chairs, legs moving sideways. They are lines of grey crossing clusters of maroon. A factory of ants: chalk scratching boards, water slopping to the floor, crayons smeared across paper, abacas clicking, and the broom, zoom, zoom of car chase. The room is on spin cycle, sucking everything inside round and round. Something like the earth where those who always spin have no sense of it at all. I try to fix my eyes on the people in the swarm. I see one – an apple stuck on the ocean. I’m on the sand close to her, sounds twisting from my mouth. Grains make my skin prickle, stick to the soft web between fingers but I call… her face is turned away. Every moment a child experiences may feel like everything. I call… the sounds scrape like salt across my tongue. I call... her head turns, and a cymbal crashes behind me. I jump at glassed eyes and shrivelled skin, twisted with a grey knot. I’ve told you three times. She suffocates sound. Three? I look up to clouds, trees, butterflies. Down to a small chair. Stay until you can be quiet. They pass at the periphery, crawling like slugs eating holes in other dead slugs. Those we are told not to see, demand to be seen. One ducks his head down, enough to meet my face, see the drops fall, from my eyes to the ground.