It smells like this desk has been cleaned with ammonia – hell, the fumes are so strong they’re irritating my nose at times. I wonder if there’s a tactful way to bring my discomfort to the attention of the other receptionist? I somehow doubt it, seeing as she just slammed the phone down while a caller was still talking.
In the excitement of the past few weeks, I forgot to tell you about the creepy thing that happened when we were driving home from Waldorf after that party. I might have mentioned the fact that the way to Nikki’s brother’s house involves a lot of twisty roads in the woods. It was about three o’clock in the morning when we finally left the party, and we were slowly driving along this one road looking for an intersection that was almost hidden. We’d driven past it without realizing it when I saw what looked like a large dog walking alongside the road. Except.....except it looked wrong. The shoulders were too broad, too shaggy, and too much higher than the animal’s head (which was narrow in the manner of an Afghan hound). I was reminded of the build of a small black bear I’d once seen walking along Skyline Drive.
I was given the distinct impression that the animal was grinning, and I realized that the head didn’t look much like a dog’s anyway. We drove past it too quickly for me to figure out what it might have resembled. We eventually realized that we must have driven past the intersection and turned around. The animal, whatever it had been, was no longer walking by the side of the road; I assumed it had gone back into the woods.
The more Dirk and I talked about it, however, the stranger it seemed. We agreed that it seemed to be a hybrid of a bear and a dog, and we also got an impression of near-human eyes and a grin. I had sudden visions of what might have happened had we been driving just a bit slower – I could see it launching itself onto my windsheild, grin firmly in place. I wondered what kind of noise it would have made. Dirk brought up werewolves, which I firmly set aside.. But I wonder....
I had the most fucked-up dream the other night. I dreamt that I was staying in a one-room efficiency at the White House (for the slightly-less cultured, the White House doesn’t rent out rooms to people. The President and the First Lady would get crowded rather quickly if they did), and Dirk and Krisco were trying to kill me. I was given the impression they were undead (like zombies), but I can’t remember if that was it or if they were just slow. I sat on my bed holding my largest knife so that they wouldn’t see it when they came through the door. As they walked in, I stabbed Dirk in the stomach, effectively gutting him, then I did the same to Krisco. I could feel the warm resistance of their flesh when I stabbed them.
I dimly remembered cleaning up the blood and hiding the bodies in a box somewhere in my closet (either under the floorboards or on top of a shelf). Then I ran from the White House. The rest of the dream was spent panicking about whether or not they’d find the bodies and wondering what stage of decay they were in. I also pondered the possibility of someone smelling the bodies and whether I could move them. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d managed to pick them up in the first place, and I didn’t think I could do it again.
The dream kind of petered out at that point, alternately flashing images/feelings of stabbing them again with images of what the bodies probably looked like after a week.
I considered this one a bit better than one I had a year ago, where I killed Dirk and hid his body under my mattress but kept sleeping on the mattress all the same. I mean, at least I didn’t keep living in the apartment after I killed them, with the bodies slowly rotting away in my closet.
You’ve got to be thankful for the little things.
I don’t think I told you that Blitzkrieg died. I knew it was coming, because she was two and a half years old already. She’d taken to sleeping all the time, and the one time I picked her up she couldn’t open her eyes all the way. She slept continuously for a week, then died while I was at work on Friday. It looked like I was about to lost Mr. Fishie at the same time, because he was floating on his side at the top of his tank. That fish stubbornly refused to die, swimming around the top of his tank, on his side, with a determination that I’ve never seen in a fish. I swear siamese fighting fish are made up of equal parts of meanness and stubbornness. He eventually just got better, and he’s just fine now.
I miss Blitzkrieg, even if I did threaten to feed her to my cats every time she got just a little overzealous about chewing on her cage. Without her, I would never have known that hamsters could, in fact, scream when they were being chased by seven cats. I always wondered why mice, who can run very, very quickly, always got killed by our cats when they escaped, but hamsters didn’t. I mean, hamsters don’t move very quickly – they certainly don’t run. More like a hurried waddle. But the cats never caught Blitzkrieg.
Katie and Chris suggested (rather cruelly, but that’s why we get along so well) that I take Blitzkrieg’s body and put it on my scanner so I could post death pictures, but I’d already thrown it away by then. Besides, I’d have to throw the whole scanner away if I did that. Yuck.
Dirk’s mother was telling us yesterday that pizza wasn’t really good for him – he needed to get some “meat and taters in him so he could be healthy.” Pizza, especially the kind that Derek eats with all the green bits, is actually a heck of a lot healthier than his mother’s “meat and taters.” His mother has apparently never heard the term “cholesterol”. Or “food poisoning” for that matter.
My mother’s been attacking my father more than usual lately. As soon as he got home from Minneapolis, she started attacking everything he did. I think it’s PMS, because she attacked me, too. She snapped at me for something utterly ridiculous and started issuing mandates, so I told her she was messed-up. I think she almost started crying.
I’m so glad I’m off tomorrow.
