Of mice and termites

So yesterday I woke up after having a rather odd dream. Involved my dad asking very loudly for mustard or something. Maybe it was horse radish.

Whatever.

The important bits of yesterday happened after I woke up.

So yeah, after weird dream from my few hours of sleep, I got around to calling my therapist and scheduling an appointment for Sunday. I told him I needed to talk to him about things that happened before my mental breakdown. My current working theory is that my insanity sprouted from some trauma in my past. I'll get to that if my theory proves fruitful.

Anyway, today was pretty boring. I was home alone for a while, heard some strange noises, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Yeah my paranoia might have gotten the best of me and I looked around the house a couple times with a knife on hand. So what? That's normal when you hear shit shift in another room. How was I supposed to know my dogs had just knocked over a stack of books?

The only really eventful thing that happened today was what down at church. I play for my church's band and thursdays are our meet ups for practice and whatnot. My dad and I arrived an hour early like we normally do and while he did some stuff to get the sound system running for practice, I went out into the woods. Yes, the woods that I went into and met that guy in the lawn chair. The place I cluster f-bombed a Revenant. I don't know why I went back, guess I was just bored and I didn't really believe my own memories about what went down there.

So as I made it to the ridge upon which the meeting supposedly happened, I felt the urge to stay away from that place. I guess I didn't want to find out what would happen to me/what I would do should I see that lawn chair again, or any signs that my insanity may have been founded in something more concrete.

Instead, I turned away from the ridge and walked to a tunnel that runs beneath a road. The road barely gets used, and the tunnel itself is tough to get to, being surrounded by tall grass, weeds, and murky water. I stood at the edge of the tall grass and looked into the tunnel, wondering if I should try getting closer.

That's when I heard the cracking of wood behind me. I spun around, now thoroughly convinced something was coming to get me. It turned out to be a sound of more mundane origins than the eldritch explanation I was anticipating. A huge branch fell just feet away from me, sending a few bugs into the air. After I calmed down, I could see that termites were the cause, the little things swarming over the broken limb.

Come to think of it, I saw a lot of wood out there ravaged by termites. Like... a lot. Just piles and piles, everywhere. It seemed like the termites had cleared out a lot of the trees that used to be there, which is an amazing feat really. But kinda unnerving that there are that many termites out there. Makes my skin crawl.

SPEAKING OF SKIN CRAWLING.

So I went back into the church and into the sanctuary to get set up and calm down from almost being crushed by a branch. As I entered, I heard clicking above my head.I looked for the source, without luck. And then I just listened for a minute. There was constant clicking, a few scratches here and there, all seemingly coming from the ventilation system. It was then I realized what was going on.

Rats.

There had to have been an entire family of the vermin up there. I told my dad and we shuddered about it together. I got my mind off it by playing some drums. Can't hear the little fuckers over the sound of crashes and toms.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.

In summary: Got paranoid and almost crushed. Then I heard rats.

Interesting day, wasn't it?

-Matthew

(PS I might not post for the next few days. Gonna hang with a friend tomorrow, hang with another on saturday, and then I have church and my appointment on Sunday. If I do post, it will be around this time again. But don't expect it, all you non-existent readers.)