In the still of the night* - Deborah Gibson

It was a dark and windy night...

Cue: Eerie music

...I was all alone in the kitchen, reading Harry Potter, waiting for the spin cycle on the washing machine to end. Everyone else in me mate's flat were in their respective rooms, either getting ready to sleep or were in slumberland oredi.

The flat was only lit with the single bulb from the kitchen. i din wanna turn on other lights - trying to be considerate.

The laundry is done and i take some, walked down the pitch black corridor and out onto the balcony to hang them. The lights on the balcony were out.

Do you ever wonder why those bimbos in slasher/horror movies never turn on the lights? Well, i was like that too - save for the fact that i wasn't scantily dressed. As i walked back to the kitchen, i smelled something horrible. Hmmm... someone must have done something nasty in the toilet earlier, i thought!

As i walked along the corridor, i felt something under feet. Strange...

Cue: More intense music

..and the smell...

I reached out in the dark, searching for the light switch... . Found it. Turned it on. The yellow light drove the darkness away and the brilliance of it made me eyes take a couple of seconds to adjust. I looked down and...

The floor was covered with MAGGOTS!!!!!!

The corridor was crawling wif maggots!!!!

Maggots were appearing from the kitchen, along the corridor and onto the balcony!!!!

Super mega gross!!!! We were being invaded!!!!!

A quick glance to the balcony revealed the cause - the old bags of rubbish waiting for the cleaners to come the next day. Maggots were streaming out of it!!!

Just like an alien attack movie, i sounded the alarm - thankfully, i was not the first character to be killed of!!!! The whole flat awakened and moved in to action. There was the joker, who was laughing and playing a fool. There was the girl who was squeamish. There was the strong silent macho guy. There was the other guy who was more scared than the girls!!! Me mate just instinctively took the lead and was shouting out orders to everyone. 2 hoovers were dispatched and we started sucking up them maggots!!!!!

"Here". "There". "Watch out". "Behind you". "It's getting into the rooms".

It went on for a while - and for some reason, they kept on appearing out of nowhere!!!! After making sure the corridor was cleared, we were surprised to find some there a few moments later.

Then it suddenly dawned on a couple of us. The scared guy took the initiative and got a knife from the ktichen. We proceeded to pull out the vinyl/plastic-ky type flooring... and yes, them maggots were under the flooring too!!!!! Hoovers on and sucking resumed. We literally teared up the whole house, from the kitchen to the dining, to the toilet, to the shower...

When that was over, we were exhausted... but we realised too tha them maggots were crawling out of the hoovers!!!!!

Next operation - empty the hoover bags and throw them all out!!!!

When that was over, we went back in... to find that there were still maggots crawling out from under the flooring!!!! We couldn't use the hoover this time so it was manual extermination - using toilet paper and picking them up one by one...

Man, it was super drama. And we had a riot of a time!!! It was good in some ways - everyone had the right attitude and were laughing more than complaining.

They had to be thankful i was bunking over that nite cuz i wasn't, they would only know about the "invasion" when they wake up in the morning!!!!

Oh, in the excitement of it all, none of us bothered to take out our cameras to take any photos. 2 mornings later, i still saw a stray maggot crawling along the corridor, no doubt looking for its mates. Got a photo of that! Still in me camera, tho...

*This cover version was recorded for The Wonder Years soundtrack. Another a capella version was done by Boyz II Men in 1993.