the crawling chaos

[freckles_and_doubt]

I have become accustomed to the fact that, every few weeks or so, I have another vivid, half-waking nightmare in which I dream that Things are coming through the wall above my bed. Assorted Things - sometimes bright lights, sometimes weird machinery boring through the plaster, occasionally the whole wall is bulging with water and about to burst, and I wake up pressed against it trying to hold it back. I had put this down variously to basic psychological disfunction, over-exposure to the Cthulhu mythos at an impressionable age, existential angst, marking stress, or too much cheese for supper. However, I am beginning to wonder if, in fact, it's prophetic.

I wandered into my bedroom last night, to fetch, if I recollect, dressmaker's chalk. The wall above my sewing table was, for some reason, weirdly shadowed, and I looked closer, only to realise that a huge swathe of it was black with a seething, boiling, writhing mass of ants. About half a metre's worth of vertical crack had opened in the wall, accompanied by bubbling plaster, and the little buggers were pouring out of the crack like a miniature rush-hour of suited businessmen on an unexpected savanna. There must be a whole massive colony of them inside the wall, undermining busily. It could come crashing down at any moment! Rats! Rats in the walls!

Of course, it would all have been much more sinister if the writhing black bodies had spelled out "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IT IS THE PLAGUE OF THE TEN THOUSAND PESTILENTIAL PUTRESCENCES!", but I suppose you can't have everything. As it is, the Evil Landlord has killed the population explosion with evil chemicals, and promises to excavate and re-plaster (or, in other words, rebuild the bedroom walls from the ground up) tomorrow, which is, in a kind and friendly fashion, a public holiday. I will, however, be spending it in writing a paper for the colloquium this weekend, and marking second-year medieval romance essays. And the moral of that is, A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing.

The perverse and demented gods of audio-visual equipment did not smile on me again, today. Memo to self, more blood of students in the sacrifices.

Comments

erggh!

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds horrible, horrible...!
Warm weather is bringing on the flies here, as well as nasty stinging waspy yellowjackets. Hard to believe sunshine and pleasant weather have their downsides.
Good luck with work,
thak.

eeeeeeeeee

[(Anonymous)]

Oh. My. Gods. I would have a nervous breakdown and collapse. I hate ants. I hate hate hate them.

You have my deepest sympathies.

Love, Dayle

Wet Ants or Hot Rats?

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Is it still damp there? A change in the weather for the wetter has effects on the walls (paint falling off) and on the ants, who have evacuated their flooded subterranean citadel for higher ground.

Re: Wet Ants or Hot Rats?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It rained millyuns over the last week and a half, but has calmed down and has been sunny and dry for a few days. Woe! Shall have to take buckets to the garden tomorrow.

That's pretty Cthulhoid ....

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

And by "cthuloid", I mean "horrifying and disgusting and unlikely to contribute to future peaceful sleep".

Does that make Evil Landlord (Gerald and Herman) Number Ten Ox? Teehee.

So. What Buffy character are you?

Re: That's pretty Cthulhoid ....

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't dare suggest that the Evil Landlord was in any way Number Ten Ox, he might raise my rent. And, nice catch on the literary reference, btw.

I am, as I posted to pinkthulhu's blog, Giles. Mysticism at 90% or so, and femininity at 0, otherwise I suppose I might have been Willow. The academic pedant in me is obviously showing.

Re: That's pretty Cthulhoid ....

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I'm all chuffed and stuff, I scored "Master" in the quotes one. But I was Xander in the which character one... Xander, I ask you!
:)
Kathy.

Re: That's pretty Cthulhoid ....

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've always had rather a soft spot for Xander - he has a huge amount of emotional insight, and is a lot more central to the Scooby Gang's continued survival and sanity than he himself believes. Hell, he's saved the world at least once, and through said emotional insight, too ;>. Not entirely inappropriate to our Thak, really.

Re: That's pretty Cthulhoid ....

[(Anonymous)]

Well, seeing as OkCupid happily gave me zero for an English test, and then later relented to give me zero on only the expert section, I have no respect for their zeros. Their system for calculating stuff sometimes dozes off (excuse the technical terms, please), I think, leaving the test writer incensed with wrath, or possibly just with confusion. Pretty severe wrath, in my case. It took me days to get over it. In fact, I don't think I am over it, I'm getting cross all over again.

I did the Princess Bride test the other day and only got 79%. It's really pretty hard.

wolverine_nun