It started in my dreams. I'm floating in the ocean during a storm, and waves crash all around me, and all I can see is gray. Then, from just out of eyesight, I hear this low rumble of a gigantic steamship, cutting through the monstrous waves, the cyclopean blades of the motors infesting the very water with its monstrous growl. I feel a current pull at my feet and start moving toward the sound. I start to panic, feeling myself getting closer and closer to the unseen ship and its churning rotors. Just as I feel myself start to get sucked under, feeling the vibrations all around me, the ship disappears and the sea calms. It's still all gray but I can't hear the ship anymore.Sometimes I have another dream. I dream that I'm back in the city, walking toward my job, just as if everything was back to normal. I come in, grab my bagel and coffee, and head to my cubicle. In a nearby cubicle, someone has turned on the radio, which has lost reception. No one seems to mind though. I sit down and log in, then put my headphones on and check my email. Everything is normal, until I look over and see my boss, well, he's my ex-boss now but in my dream he's still my boss. He motions for me to take my headphones off so he can say something, but as soon as I do he opens his mouth and starts screaming at me. I can't understand anything that he says; it's just this roar, like a buzz saw cutting through wood, amplified twenty-five times into my ears. It's incredibly painful and I try to put my headphones on but there's Bob... I mean there's a coworker holding my hands so I can't shield my ears. My boss keeps screaming at me until I can't take it anymore. I start to cry and ball and scream myself. As soon as I do this though, he stops yelling, and everything returns to normal. My coworker goes back to his cubicle and my boss leaves, and then I wake up.I know these aren't what you'd call normal dreams, but really how do you classify a nightmare as normal? I've heard that if they recur, that means something. I don't know, I personally don't put a whole lot of belief in all that kind of stuff, dreams are just dreams and you usually forget them for a reason. The only problem was that these dreams started to affect me just like the bug noises did. I personally don't believe it but Todd Sachs mentioned that it looked like I'd been losing a little bit of weight, and Nancy Morton asked if I was OK. I really don't like Nancy that much though; she's much too nosy. Nevertheless I noticed much more fatigue after my morning walks, and I didn't have to visit any doctor to have them tell me I had allergies. Living in the city, I thought I was exempt from all those Sudafed commercials and hey-fever sneezes, but now that I'm living in the country, I'm discovering all too quickly how pesky they can be. Nevertheless, I was still feeling good, and not missing work at all. This may sound silly, but I've actually found the secret to sitting out on the porch and watching life go by. The wives in the flowerbeds, the kids playing around, the weather slowly changing from day to night... it's all quite relaxing. For the longest time the only disturbance in my life was while I slept.I think it was a Thursday, yes I know it was a Thursday because Thursdays I do laundry and I remember I had just put on my bed sheets when I saw it. A spider had crawled up on the ceiling of my bedroom, where it sat there, defying gravity with its six extra legs and just waiting for the lights to go out. Although I had just laid down on fresh clean sheets, there was no way I was going to sleep with that thing hovering above me, waiting for me to start snoring or yawn in my sleep. I got up and got my broomstick. I slowly got the tip near and tried to get him to move over to a wall where I could bat at him at a decent angle, but the spider was so startled by my intrusion that he made a mad dash, momentarily forgetting he was on the ceiling rather than the floor, and fell, staying in my sites for about two seconds before falling into the shadows behind my desk.This worried me considerably.For all I knew the spider could've crawled right under my bed, plotting a scheme of retribution to be exacted once I had fallen asleep. I could not let this happen. I turned on every light in the room, found my flashlight and went to work.It was very late when I heard it, still searching for the spider that had inexplicably disappeared into thin air. I remember I was very tired and very irritated when I heard it, because it took me a second to notice it, then another few seconds to recognize it. What was this mystery sound that I heard above the din of insect communication you ask? It was a lawn mower.Chapter Four
