"Whatever gets you through the night".

I was perchancing to sleep, in the hours small and the darkness quite plain.  There seemed to be a hint, a whisper, a breath of something at the edge of the mattress proper, something, perhaps, less than in sorts, something that had declared itself, its own existence, sort of a secret.

"Mister Lennon, what is it at my bedside?  Did you see?" I said.

"A ravenously hungry Whatever" he said.  In the darkness, I saw the glint of his glasses, it looked like two cartoonishly afraid eyes, but it was just glass, after all, for he was unflappable, and clear in his spirit like an unbroken leg.

"A whatever?" I asked.  I remembered a tale of a woman, an overburdened single mother who was put down for a colonoscopy.  She said it wish it had lasted longer, not because she was a masochist, or a fiend, but because she was put to sleep, and it was peaceful.

No response.  The erstwhile prophet Jonah had been in the relative silence of a great fish, once upon a time, swallowed-up, taken-up, as per the digestive workings of a time, to sit and get corroded and worked at by "good bacteria", and then a gourd vine had grown above his head to shade him.

I thumped above my head, on the wall, and I heard a rustle.

"It may eat you" said the Beatles front man, coming to again.

"Really?"

"It may eat your younglings and kinsmen" he said.

"Oh, not that" I said.  "Far too many of them for all that."

"Yes really" said John Lennon.  "And it may yet eat your wife and savings bonds".

"Even the savings bonds....." I said, mystified.