3.3: Bats

On the third Sunday, Froggie finds that he is now sharing the pub with bats who seem to have moved into an upstairs box-room. Normally, he would have driven them out with both a broom and gusto. But today he is too unnerved by their eerie rustling and simply closes the door, resolving to stay downstairs from now on.

Is making his home merely in the saloon bar a retreat from a world, a bad thing? Or is it a way to be cosy and safe as the blackness of autumn grows, a limited form of flourishing, like hibernation? He cannot tell.

There have still been no customers, though the barrel of Toads’ Tipple he replaces with a fresh one seems a little lighter than the previous week. It is a helpful nerve tonic, he reasons, though it may also explain why he passes most days drifting into sleep, unpredictably, and waking always to darkness.