bjciii... my twisted stories

I went out to dinner tonight with two very lovely women and I made a joke about how I don't like to dust as I'm afraid of what might grab me. One of those lovely women, Erin, made a joke about it and it got me thinking...

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I walked through my life with little more than a backwards glance at the noises in the dark. I firmly believed in the whole "see it, touch it, smell it, taste it" philosophy and thought everyone else was full of crazy-talk when they gave the "Maloik," or touched the roof of their car when they went through a yellow light. Logically, that stuff makes no sense! How can any rational being look at a graveyard as they pass on the road and hold their breath? It's just stupid.

Or so I thought...

Oddly enough, most stories like this start out "The day began like any other day." This one won't, because it wasn't like any other day. First, I ended up oversleeping for the first time ever. Apparently a lightning storm blew through my neighborhood while I slept and blew a transformer on my block which, in turn, sent enough juice through various sockets that my alarm clock took an electrical shit on my nightstand. I finally opened my eyes about 90 minutes late and saw my front awning hanging askew from the window out front due to the severe winds.You may, at this point, be asking yourself how I could have slept through this stormageddon. I will, also at this point, answer you by saying: If I could sleep through an international flight with Godsmack's first major release blaring through my headphones, a little wind won't wake my ass anytime soon. So I look around and see the fried alarm clock, the dangling awning through the mini-blinds, and I reach for my wristwatch which was unaffected by the previous night's fun.

Oh fuck me running... I had managed to not only sleep late, but I was currently supposed to be administering my mid-term to a classroom full of not-so-eager college students. Looks like I was going to have to kiss some major ass and give a lot of extra points for this one.

As I resigned myself to being late, I ambled to the shower and saw something skitter under the claw-foot tub. I knew I was still a little groggy because I heard no clattering on the tile floor, so I chalked it up to that wierd shit you have in your eyes when you wake up. An uneventful shower later (cold, I might add... hot-water heater must have bit the shit too), and I was putting on my best school suit to impress, frighten, and soothe.

Seriously... dressing for a class is more important than dressing for a date. A date has 2 possible outcomes when you reach my age: You either go home alone, or you don't. When you're dressing for a class, you've got 20 or so people of varying ages and disciplines hanging, or pretending to hang, on your every word. Those people need to believe that that person in front of the class, prattling on endlessly about the importance of semi-colons and in-text citations, is in complete charge of the room. There really can be no question to that or anarchy breaks loose and all of a sudden you are no longer the teacher, but the target. Even if it's just an air of power, it's still perceived as such. Seeing as how my class would no doubt be pissed off that they showed up on time and I didn't, I had to look my best or I'd be eaten alive.

However, before any of that fashion sense would be put to the test, lateness be damned! I needed coffee. I cinched up my best red tie, pulled the dark three-button jacket tight against my bulging waistline, and I was off to my kitchen, smoothing the sides of my slowly graying hair against my temples as I hit the stairs.

Since the power was still out in the house (probably the neighborhood), I made the walk in a silence only punctuated by the groaning of the carpeted stairs under my frame. By habit, I opened the window from the front room to my porch to let in some fresh, post-stormy air. Mmm-mmm... smells good!

Here is where we go from reality to unreality folks... keep up because I literally had to re-read this about 2 dozen times before I was sure I got it all down. To be fair, I think I re-read it over and over because I still didn't believe it until I finally managed to look down at the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around my left hand.

Okay... time to continue. Sorry... it's all still new to me, this world... YOUR world of illogic and craziness.

So I make the same trek from the stairs to the kitchen that I make every morning and I grab a pre-measured package of premium roast beans from the freezer. As I empty the package into my battery-powered coffee-grinder (let's hear it for AAA Energizers people!), one of the precious beans drops from my hand, bounces off the badly-in-need-of-a-scrubbing kitchen tile, and rolls under that space under the fridge.

Wonderful. I know that a single bean doesn't really mean the difference between consciousness and sleep, but still... that's some expensive coffee I like. Ain't no jumpers in this house!

Going against every logical action I've done thus far, I get down on my hands and knees, on my kitchen floor, to find a single coffee bean under the refrigerator. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have even bothered washing it off and using it; most likely I would have just tossed it, but it was the sheer principle of the matter damnit!

I took off that decorative vent under the door to see if I could spot that little bastard, but I quickly forgot about that solitary coffee bean which I'm pretty sure is still sitting on that dirty kitchen tile as I type this. No, el bean de solo disappeared from my short-term memory as I saw what could only be described as a topiary of dust puffs under the fridge blocked all view of anything else.

Now my first thought was What the hell is all this shit and how did I get THIS much dust under here? That thought was definitely replaced with Why does it look like they are moving for my next one.

Here, the one part of my brain would have said Easy there pal. It's just the ceiling fan. These things are dust after all; there is no weight to them, so even the slightest breeze is gonna make 'em dance. Unfortunately that cool, hard logic that I was so fond of echoed in really quick with The power is out slick. No air conditioning and damn sure no ceiling fan. The porch window is two rooms away, and the kitchen windows are closed up tighter than a nun's knees. Those things are moving on their own. The sane thing would have been to move back and take a second thought while the other path was to say The hell with those crazy thoughts and sweep my hand under there to clear out the menagerie of what my grandmother always referred to as "dust bunnies."

Let me stop here. All you men will understand immediately which path I decided to take while you women will probably wonder why I did what I did. Let's just say it has to do with an innate sense of machismo. See, this sense of masculinity basically makes me, and every man for that matter, do things we know we shouldn't. We do it because we are men, damnit, and therefore shouldn't be afraid of anything. This is that sense that, even though we're just as grossed out by that damned spider you ladies call for us to kill, we have to do it because we refuse... refuse... to look anything less than fearless. Yes ladies, even if you're not around, we still act this stupid. I hope that answers one of those unanswerable questions for you, but I have digressed long enough.

So, with no further ado, I shoved my left arm deep under the fridge and swept outward intending to "free" the dust bunnies from their dark abode. Well... the path to hell is paved with good intentions right? As soon as my arm went in, I felt this absolutely excrutiating pain all over; it felt like I had plunged my arm into a bucket of needles actually.

At this point, all pretense abandoned, I quickly yanked my arm back and was shocked at what I saw.

Those dust bunnies were clinging to my arm and shaking violently as if they were in a feeding frenzy! I shook my arm, but those little bastards hung fast. I tried to beat them off with my other hand, but one just jumped over and gripped my pinkie between its... I don't know what. They were fucking dust for Christ's sake! How can dust have teeth? How can dust even be cognizant of the world around it? How can dust be attaching itself to me and causing this much pain?!?

I started swinging my arm against the wall, but that only succeeded in causing the in-wall ironing board to fall out and crack me on the head... hard. I don't quite recommend a sharp blow to the head to get you thinking straight, but as I momentarily was concentrating on my now bleeding head, I realized that dust and water were definitely not friends. I stumbled over to the sink, twisted the hot water tap so hard that it snapped off in my hand, and grabbed the sprayer. Cackling wildly and quickly losing vision due to the streaming blood into my eyes, I started soaking my left arm with the nozzle.

It worked. Almost immediately the pain was lessening as the dust bunnies were melting away on my arm. One actually dropped off and "ran" back towards the fridge before I sprayed it down like Bonnie & Clyde at a bank job.

I screamed at my victory and, for whatever reason, I yelled "I ONLY WANTED THAT FUCKING COFFEE BEAN YOU ASSHOLES!!" at the darkened space.

I think, had my morning's craziness ended there, I probably would have recovered to sanity eventually. I would have chalked all this up to some loose tacks under the fridge that tore me up and I was imagining the rest. Yeah... had the morning craziness ended there.

After I screamed at the fridge, I stopped for whatever reason. The rushing water was still hitting the sink with hurricane force and I was clutching the spray-nozzle like a Colt ready to take on John Q. Law. It was at this point that my break with reality occurred.

Slowly, that single coffee bean rolled out from under the refrigerator and came to rest about a foot from my foot. It was saying to me "Peace offering. You don't hurt us, we don't hurt you. Take your coffee bean and we'll call it even."

At some point I must have slid to the floor and sat, but I can't tell you when it was. I vaguely remember the power coming back on, because the fridge eventually powered up and I heard the compressor spin alive. That, by the way, scared the shit out of me...

I remember walking to my bar in the dining room, careful to stay as far away from the underside of it as possible, and uncorked my bottle of Bushmills 1608 Reserve Whiskey which my good friend Bernadette had brought to me from Northern Ireland the previous summer. I don't know how long it took me to finish it, but as I sit here, it's still empty... on its side about 3 feet from my computer.

I saw a few more of those dust bunnied peek their heads out from under my desk, from under my bar, and from under my buffet. They seemed to be watching to make sure I wasn't going to flood the house or something. I mean... it wasn't just dust anymore was it? It was something else entirely.

So here I sit... 48 hours after that initial attack. I had to take a few personal days at work citing a personal issue, and I haven't slept since then. There's an uneasy truce in the house and I'm not sure how long it will last. I mean, they've proven they can hurt me, but if I sleep, they're quiet enough to climb in my bed and choke me while I'm laying there... right?

I mean, you're the expert on this... I'm new to this place. I never understood this crap before, but here I am mired in it! My life was logic and evidence. Your world was the one with the weird rules and the crazy theories. My days were filled with commas, nouns, and verbs while yours were filled with imps, gargoyles, and ghosts.

The only thought running through my head is from that movie my parents had me watch as a kid: The Wizard of Oz. I never really liked it, but I thought maybe I had to like it because I was a kid, so I pretended for them. Now, almost 25 years later, one of the lines that The Cowardly Lion spoke kept reverberating in my head:

"I do belive in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do believe in spooks!"

God help me. I really do think I believe in spooks now.