It happened again.
It’s the early hours of the morning, and I wake up suddenly to find a huge piece of machinery standing next to the bed: I have only a vague impression of what it looks like, but from what I can tell, it’s tall, and made of metal, and has this long arm protruding from the front of it. As strange as this thing looks, though, the strangest thing about it by far is the fact that it certainly wasn’t standing next to my bed when I went to sleep. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere in my house. Huh.
Barely have I had time to register the presence of this thing, however, than it swings into action, and I watch in horror as the “arm” rises up and propells something towards the bed. As the item lands, I realise what it is: it’s a CRAB. Well, I mean, what else would a mysterious metal contraption propel onto my bed in the middle of the night?
Well, I do what anyone would do at this point. I jump screaming from the bed, slam on the light (vaguely registering as I do so that hey, the big metal thing isn’t there any more, but who cares because CRABS IN THE BED, people!) and start yelling at Terry to “GET UP! QUICK! AAARGH!”
Terry, jolted awake by the bright light and the hysterical screaming, reacts as he always does to this kind of thing: he raises himself up on one elbow and regards me solemnly. “What. The. Hell?” he asks.
“ANIMAL!” I shriek, apparently unable to even say the word “crab”. “BED! BED ANIMAL!”
“No,” says Terry, very slowly, as if speaking to an idiot (which, actually, now you come to mention it…) “No there isn’t. There are no Bed Animals.”
And instantly I realise: he’s right. There IS no crab in the bed. Because I just dreamt it. Again. And woke up screaming. Again.
So, needless to say, all of this is getting a bit tiring, and I mean that literally: it’s hard to get back to sleep after a “crab in the bed” episode, don’t you find? I’ve always said that if you’re going to have a serious phobia about something, crustaceans are a fairly good one to pick, because it’s not like they figure largely in most people’s lives, (Well, not if you live in a land-locked area, like I do. If you were a lobster fisherman, say, then it would be a seriously inconvenient phobia to have.) but now it would seem that my brain has found a way MAKE them a big part of my life. And to also find a way around the one thought I always use to comfort myself in these scenarios: how would a crab get into my bed? It couldn’t! There’s just no way a crab could even get into the HOUSE, let alone my bed! It would have to travel for MILES across land, first of all, then it would have to somehow break into the house and make its way upstairs, and, you know, they’re smart, but they’re not THAT smart.
(If a crab did that, it would have to be pretty determined to get me, huh? Guess what I’ll be dreaming about tonight?)
My subconscious has found a way to make it happen, though. Crabs would get into my bed by being fired there by a giant “slingshot” machine. THEY HAVE HELP, people. The Crab Overlords have made machines their servants, and if they can do that, well, I’m not the only one who should be afraid, basically.
Why can’t I dream about puppies? Or kittens? Or maybe even those little dwarf hamsters I saw in the pet shop last week when we were in buying some supplies for Rubin, and which were omgcute. But no. I have to dream of crabs. OF COURSE I do.
