In The Night Garden

Day 45 in the Night Garden. How have I survived six weeks in this dreadful place? I ate the last of the Pontypines yesterday, and already I grow weak with hunger. I must leave soon to forage food. Worst of all, the Haahoos have discovered where I’m hiding. Their monstrous shadows wash across the windows of my refuge. I hold Macca Pacca’s corpse to the window and wave his skeletal hand on a stick, but they are becoming ever more suspicious. Why doesn’t he venture out with his soap? Why isn’t he washing faces? Because I ate his heart in a cassoulet. Once — long ago — I would have been cruelly shamed by my crimes, but all morality dies in this place. I survive by becoming one of… them. Yes. My name is Iggle Piggle. I am a monster. But it was the Garden made me this way — the Garden. I now wish only for sleep — perchance to dream. Dreams are my haven from these waking horrors. As I drift, I hear the words, as though whispered from the deepest parts of my skull…