the crawling chaos
Tuesday, 26 April 2005 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI 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.
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.
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Re: Wet Ants or Hot Rats?
Date: Wednesday, 27 April 2005 01:10 pm (UTC)