Before sleep last night.
I went with some friends to a bar where a lot of college kids hang around and rub on each other.
There were far too many people and none that I found interesting enough to even attempt talking to.
I don't drink and I don't dance, so, invariably, in situations like this, I end up standing around, interjecting my stupid little comments when I can, bored out of my fucking skull.
It was outside and it was hot. Standing still and sweating down my back kind of hot.
When I eventually had had enough fun, I made the long way back to my car.
Parking was not designed well. When I say it was a long way back, I mean a looong way back.
I was tired and less than happy. I'm just fucking sick of the whole thing. I'm sick of starting over with different women, thinking this is the time I might be done, and being wrong.
I'm sick of running into women who don't know what they want. Or, worse, who know what they want and are scared brainless when they actually find it.
Anyway, whatever.
I could go on about relationships for days and days and just get boring-er and boring-er.
Feh.
I'm driving home.
I'm not listening to music.
I have the AC on low and comfortable.
I hear an odd vibration, scratching sound from beneath the dashboard. At leasts it seeme to be coming from beneath the dashboard.
I move some of the garbage that's sitting below the passenger seat, thinking it must be a straw from a container of soda or something.
The sound comes again.
Huh, I think to myself, this is odd.
I move some other stuff around, thinking the nature of the sound is causing it to seem to be coming from somewhere it isn't.
The sound comes again. It's absolutley coming from under the dashboard.
A fat rat plops onto my right foot and begins to panic. It's scrambling madly about, biting anything next to it and chittering insanely.
When the panic hits me, I forget I'm driving and begin attemting to stomp it to death.
I lose control of the car, I'm screaming.

None of this actaully happened. As far as I know, there was no rat, but there was a sound. It occured to me that it could be a rat that had crawled up into my engine while my car was parked way, way out in the dark next to some garbage. So for most of the rest of the way home, I was imagining the rest of it.
I have a vivid imagination. Sometimes this is a good thing. Most of the time it's a good thing.
But there are times I really wish I could turn it off.
I was imagining the sound it would make in the almost silent car at it landed.
I was imagining the street lights reflected in it's little red rat eyes.
I was imagining the way it's fur would feel on my leg, individual hairs poking into my skin.
The insane chittering.

GAH!

I was itchy all over and I could keep my foot on the pedals.
I had to pull over where there was a lot of light and see if I could see anything.
I pulled into the parking lot of an Amazing Superstore. This is a late night porno supermarket.
But the parking lot was well lit.
Don't ask me how I knew this.

I parked under the biggest, most brightly lit sign, and jumped out of the car. I'm not exaggerating. I jumped out of the car because I was afraid something was going to come chittering out from under it.
Nothing did.
I reached, carefully, back into the car and pulled hood release.
I stood in front of the car and stared at the hood.
I had to pull another lever to get the hood to actually open.
Lucky for me, my car's a Volkswagon. The second lever pops out from under the hood. All I have to do is pull it.
Imagine if it was another car? One where you have to reach in, under the hood, and feel around blindly for the second lever? I might have stood there all night.
As it was, I stood there for too long.
A car pulled up and the driver kind of stared at me, but I didn't look back. Eventually, they drove away.
I popped the hood and leaped backwards like I was expecting a demonic jack-in-the-box to scream out at me.
I was actually excpecting a demonic rat to chitter out at me.
Neither of these things happened.
I stood there for a while, looking into various cravasses. Around the motor, sicko. I didn't find anything. I didn't hear anything.
I slowly became aware that I was standing in the parking lot of a porno supermarket at 1am.
This might draw the attention of a policeman.
He might walk over to the car.
He might ask me what the problem was.
Being an idiot, I would tell the policeman that I thought there was a rat in my engine and I was afraid it was going to claw through the firewall and land on my feet as I was driving and chitter insanely in panic at me.
For the safety of myself and others, I decided to check it out.
I came to the parking lot of the Amazing Superstore, because I knew it was well lit.
Don't ask me how I know that.
I don't drink.
Can I use your flashlight for a minute?

This was an interchange I didn't feel I needed to have at the moment, so I said fuck it and got back in the car.
I drove home and only took my feet off the pedals a couple of times.

This morning, I heard nothing from under the dashboard and there was no dead rat smell.
I don't know what the hell was going on.

More dreams last night.
I'm on medication that's supposed to help suppress dreams. Like, I'll still have them, but I'm not supposed to remember them.
I had some last night that I remember.
I dreamnt of explosive fire in my grandmother's house. Closing doors then running up stairs to escape through the windows of a second story that never existed.
Then going back into the house to find that it wasn't damaged very much by the flames.
The house, it still sits there, in my head. Waiting for me.
There's something I haven't finished in that house and I'm terrified to think what it might be.

More from grandma's house last night.
A rival family across the street. For some reason, they're the evil ones. I'm trying to protect my son from and old, old, dark that lives there.
A woman.
She wants to swallow my son whole. She wants to swallow him whole so she can have a final, devistating orgasm.
She wants to start at his feat and swallow him whole, keeping him alive the entire slow time. As her mouth closes over his crying, screaming head, she will experience a sexual release unlike no other. She will become as powerful as anything that has ever existed, either real or imagined.
Then, finally, she will die.
But she has to trick him into it, it seems. She can't just attack. She needs to lure him willingly somewhere. So all I have to do is educate and he'll be okay.
But he goes outside to look at a snake, which is her, and starts to follow it into the forest.
I save him. I get to him in time. But I'm scared to think how many, many ways there are to trick a trusting child.