Nightmare on 45th Street

Tonight I woke up at 3:45 AM to the sound of an animal scratching around. I held still for a moment, trying to be sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. Perhaps the sound was coming from outside my window. I shook the bedspread vigorously, to test the theory. The noise paused. Darn. It was coming from inside the house. But maybe from inside the wall. I turned on the light. By this time the little varmint had started up again. I sat silently in the middle of the bed in the middle of the well-lit room. The sound didn't stop. It was coming from my closet. As I stared at the closet, watching for any slight rustle of clothes that would let me know whether this menace was inside the closet or inside the wall. I was not at all comforted by the fact that there is a two-foot square area of the wall in my closet that is a gaping hole covered by a sheet of corkboard, remnants of some long past plumbing job (the toilet is on the other side).

At that moment, a spider slides down a web from the ceiling just inches from my face. Before I can gasp, I've slapped it away with my hand. It lands on the floor and quickly hides under a shirt. Never again will clothes touch my floor. I had this rule when I was in high school and my room was in my parents' basement. It was instituted after I reached down to pick up a sweatshirt off the floor, and curled up all cozy in the folds was a dead mouse.

At this point, panicked at the intrusion of not one, but two very rude and icky houseguests, one of which was still scratching away industriously in the closet, I send Kate an urgent text: "Animal in house!" She immediately calls me from her mom's house in Rochester to talk me down. I'm not easily calmed by her assertion that it's probably just in the wall, since that means it has access to the basement and therefore the whole house.

Kate tells me I should close the closet doors and try to go back to sleep. I start trying to do just that, but these doors haven't been closed in quite some time, and offer a bit of resistance. I lean on the middle of the bi-fold to push them closed. The first one closes. I do the same for the second one, give it a little hip nudge, and holy mother of god my arm gets pinched in the crack. There's an immediate huge welt with a bright red line down the middle, and two piles of skin peeled back on either side.

I'm now awake in my bed, with both the overhead light and the lamp on, arm throbbing and unable to sleep for fear the critter will wake me up again. Plus I'm sick and I can't stop coughing anyway. This is not a good night.