OK, let me tell you about last night.
I’m allegedly working late at the office [read: faffing about with online games] and waiting for my beloved to get off their divot so we can get some noms. I’m all alone, it’s a well lit office. I should be fine, right?
Wrong.
Just as I settle in to minding my own business, there’s this… noise. A quadrupedal thing in the ceiling, trotting from the back end of the office to the front. And we’re on the top floor of the building[two levels, before you ask].
My Brain: Is that a possum or a rat?
My Brain: It can’t be a possum, they sound like a horde of Clydesdales.
My Brain: It must be a POSSUM SIZED RAT
PSR: I think I’ll go back to where I started.
Thompity thompity thomp, the mystery quadruped takes a jolly little saunter back to their point of origin.
My Brain: It’s okay. It’s O-kay. It’s just one freakishly large rat. It can’t hurt me. Probably more scared of me than I am–
PSR: Hey guys, watch me breakdance!
My Brain: I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but kindly do it somewhere NOT above my head?
My Brain: Shit, what if it falls on me?
So I send the following texts to my beloved as a gentle hint to either hurry the fuck up or identify the fauna.
Me: THERE’S SOMETHING LIVING IN THE WALLS AND I CAN HEAR IT MOVING
Me: IM SERIOUS THIS IS SOME SCARY SHIT
Me: ITS INSIDE THE ROOF
Me: IT WALKED OVER MY HEAD
Me: HLEP
Silence there, as Poe wrote, and nothing more. Not so, the devil possum rat from hell
PSR: Yo George! Where them chips at?
DPRFH: I got ‘em around here somewhere, hang on ::scrabbling noises in the wall::
By now I’m freaking out and trying to keep it together while two giant possum rats plot my inevitable demise. I’ve seen enough horror movies and Doctor Who to know that the person who pokes things and investigates directly is the one who bites it before the opening credits roll.
So I send this cheerful message to my love: THERES TWO OF THEM
Trying to stay rational, I think… Hey, maybe if I make some noise, they’ll go and haunt the neighbouring office and leave me the hell alone.
Me: Rack off! [5 octaves higher than originally intended]
150 billion rabid, blood-thirsty, demonic, giant rat-possums: O-OH, WHAT A FEELING, WE’RE DANCING ON THE CEILING!
Hence my final texts to Beloved:
Me: FUCK
Me: FUCK THIS I AM OUT OF HERE
Me: I WOULD RATHER WAIT IN A SCARY PARKING LOT THAN THIS PLACE
And what does the love of my life, conspirator in all my cunning plans and best-beloved text back?
“Ok”
Never in my LIFE had I been that close to homicide.
I didn’t peel rubber leaving that stygian-darkness parking lot, but there is a new, tow-bar-shaped dent in the brickwork from when I backed out.
Proof that what you can’t see is twenty times scarier than anything you CAN see.