An autistic woman who cannot get to sleep is about to guarantee a totally sleepless night by applying her overactive imagination to the mundane sounds of her house, it has been reported.

Abeer Zaki, 43, is lying awake as the hours tick by, which means that every little floorboard creak or rustle of leaves outside her room will increasingly feed her paranoia that a very soft-footed intruder has entered the house and is enjoying an unhurried break before they decide it’s her time to meet God.

Zaki whispered: “Do you think the fridge could be humming in a different key than usual? Maybe there’s a person in my fridge who crawled in after I put my lasagne away, and they turned the fridge off because they were getting cold, and so to hide they’re imitating the hum of the fridge, and they’re just biding their time in there, possibly even eating my lasagne, until the time is right to jump out and murder me.”

“Okay, okay, I’m spiralling. But I heard a creak on the landing, followed by what I think was something falling over in the kitchen. Maybe someone’s in the house, but they’ve just gotten a late-night craving, Nigella-style, and gone to the kitchen, where they’re going to also eat all my leftover lasagne and then murder me.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that inanimate objects can just make noise even if nobody is manipulating them. Why is that something we all just accept? Clearly the people who make Stuff don’t live alone.”

Zaki then heard the sound of foxes mating outside, which caused her to briefly forget that even if La Llorona was real, she probably hadn’t moved to Tower Hamlets.

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