Night Night

 It was late, late at night, and on this rare occasion, I was alone in the house …or so I thought.  I was playing a favorite video game of mine, Plants vs. Zombies, a delicious blend of creepiness and humor, because of course, there are no such things as zombies… or so I thought.  Immersed in my game, I was furiously beating back the zombies with awesome strategy and the quickness and finesse of my lightning reflexes, when I heard a-rustling in another room of the house.  I stopped and listened …but now, there was nothing more than the imagined tick, tick, tick of the silent digital clock on the desk beside me.  I resumed my game, driven to lay waste to the world of the zombies and prove myself forever the victor with a capital ZV (Zombie Vanquisher).

Yet again, I was disturbed by the sounds of papers and small objects being moved around, in some room, close by.  Was there some mad, midnight organizer, distraught over clutter in my home, come to vanquish me and my lackadaisical attitude towards dishevelment?  

I called out, this time.

  “Hello?  Is there a body about?”  

My own life’s breath was my only reply.  So, back to my zombies I went, but this time, with one ear cocked, like a dog with a bone somewhat distracted by the beetle in the shadows.  

Then, there was a brief scrabbling sound on the hardwood in the hallway, but I could not be torn from my quest for zombie extinction.  Soon, I heard sounds of movement in the very room where I sat.  I looked up from my game with dread.  

But there was nothing. 

No specter with feather duster in hand, no cranky housemaid from the grave.  But now, a rustling amongst some file folders on the floor, and then, I heard it: a scratch, scratch, scratching from behind the haunted piano (our antique--- okay, antique-like--- dark wood, upright piano that sometimes resonates strings on its own, seemingly to distinguish and emphasize particular thoughts from the stream of consciousness passing through my mind).

A rat!  That must be it.  A grimy, hairy, yucky rat that I alone was going to have to deal with.  A grimy, hairy, yucky rat that was disgusted that there was not a place for every thing and every thing in its place!  But before I had time to ponder this further, IT sounded.  The phantom brushed the piano strings, vibrating them into a ghostly soundtrack to a ghastly scene.

I decided I would bang on the piano keys to drive the neatnick out with the cacophony.  I pulled out the piano bench to access the keyboard, when I spied there, on the carpet, an eerie sight, a crawdad, claws raised in attack mode, ambling towards me in a threatening, off-balance, slow, but surprisingly efficient, zombie-like motion.

Wha-at?!

A crawdad?!

A crawdad, like some dream-veiled Salvador Dali vision.  A crawdad, as if drawn up out of the water in the Moon card from the tarot.  

My son has two crawdads for pets that he keeps in a ten-gallon aquarium in his room.  But could this be one of them?  How would it have gotten out?  No time to ponder that, now, though, as the crawdad made his slow, lurching progress toward me.  I ran to the aquarium and retrieved the net and ran back to scoop up the crustacean, though he struggled against it.  I deposited him in the tank in my son’s room and successfully determined that indeed, he was one of my son’s crawdads, specifically, the one named Speedy.

Crayfish Interrupted

I watched him as he sulked in his cast-resin cave.  No doubt he was devising plans to steal my identity, next time, and make a splash in ‘Vegas.  At last, I had proof that though we may clean ‘til the zombies come home, the THINGS in our lives really will just crawl out of their places all on their own and spread themselves about in disarray.  Naughty, little crawdad.

Oh yeah, I guess I didn't mention I'd write about crawdads, too.