The Beast

Stay indoors. Doc's orders. They said the pneumonia'd gotten into my chest, and the elements - wintry as they are this time of year - would only agitate the devil further. So indoors I stayed, and dear Hannah could see my misery clear as day.
She slid a cup of tea under my downtrodden face and sat quietly beside me with her own cup in hand. I sniffed - chamomile? Why, Hannah, it's 11:00 in the morning! "It's exactly what you need," she insisted, and I took to drinking it, because I am prone to do whatever she says.
Soon, I was asleep, and when I woke, I was outside. The elements! O God save us from the elements! But I quickly realized, as I came to, that it was not so. I awoke in the same spot where I had fallen asleep, but up around me, taking root in the carpet, grew trees of cardboard and dusty boulders of my favorite books. Overhead, newspaper birds flew, and squirrels (real ones, of course) skipped in the eaves.
There came then, a rustling in the brush, and out leapt Hannah in the most authentic jungle-explorer togs I'd ever beheld. She brandished a machete in one hand, and an unconscious baby alligator in the other. A look of danger flashed in her eye - not fear, of course, but thrill. Adventure was nigh.
"We have a problem," she whispered. "It's loose in the jungle!"
I asked what, but she would only refer to it as "the beast," always followed by a shiver. She took me by the wrist and yanked me across the room. The whole house was a menagerie of foliage and critters, and we duck and wove through it, ever-wary of the beast in the wings. The more we trekked along secretly through the half-shadows, the more noises I heard of creatures I couldn't see, and the more I could feel the wicked presence of the beast, whatever he was. Then, I saw him.
He loomed, head and stories above us. A hulking monster, his laughter roared down upon us and nearly knocked Hannah's hat clean off. She held it tight, though, and turned to me with confidence.
"The only way to beat him," she said, "is to yell and sing and make all the many noises that require the deepest of breaths."
And so that is what we did. We shouted, screamed, laughed and sang until the great pneumonia beast had dwindled to nothing more than a sniffle. He was soon gone entirely, and we celebrated with another cup of tea. Chamomile, again? And when I woke, the house was back to normal.