Tell us a wild story, dad.
I’m tired.
My dad tells the best wild stories of anyone, she tells her friend.
Okay, Gamma. What would you like to hear? A scary story?
Yes!
Okay.

A friend of Gamma’s was sleeping over Saturday night. I told them the story of the eyeball weasel. Maybe your mother told you this one when you were little. My version went like this: when I was your age and my parents got tired of me and sent me to the boarding school…

Kids went blind, eyeballs eaten out of their heads at night. Put to work on stationary bicycles, generating electricity for the boarding school, cause, you know, what else can they do when they’re blind?

Turns out the headmistress’s pet is an eyeball weasel, living in the walls and coming out at night to eat the eyes of children who are not sleeping as they should be. I catch it in a bag, stun it.

Is the weasel still alive?

In a zoo somewhere. Best thing against eyeball weasels is simply to keep your eyes shut at night. Also: oranges. Oranges repel them like garlic vampires.

Gamma’s friend loved the story. Gamma couldn’t get to sleep until she placed an orange over each eye and slept like that.

Sunday, I had to tell her the story of how I taught Mary the Berry Fairy to ride the bicycle to make up for it.