I've been alone in the house the last few days, although it will be repopulated with various benign organisms later tonight or tomorrow. Naturally my head goes a little strange when I'm left to my own devices for too long (i.e. longer than six hours). What devices, is perhaps more to the point. Well, there's the odd whirring mental mechanism that suggests to me that it's not the least bit preposterous to suspect that a growing tendency toward emotional costiveness is in fact a sign of colorectal cancer. Also, when alone I cannot take a shower at night without first turning on every light in the house and regaling myself with whimsical anecdotes narrated in a somewhat-too-loud bar voice, as if needing to make myself heard over a Cheap Trick cover band. Maybe subconsciously I feel that a retarded person bellowing to himself in the shower will at the very least make any encroaching sinister agents consider moving on to a more predictable target, since they're pretty tired and it's the last Invasion of Evil of their shift and do they really want to deal with another hysteric and so on. I am prepared to shriek at all times and in all situations. On my deathbed I fully intend to shriek at the enveloping darkness. Some people are ready to flirt at any moment, they're never caught off guard by even the merest erotic attention. They'll flirt with people you didn't even notice were there. Me, I'm in a state of constant readiness to flinch, gasp, or run away. Escape routes noted. Can the balcony really hold this many people? I don't like the look of those butch girls over there. The great plus of living in tiny apartments was that I could see it all from one chair, no blind corners behind which who knows what might be lurking or crouching or breathing (rasping) or preparing to fly at me with glinting knives and a banshee wail or other unearthly cry. I don't like the old floor to ceiling drapes, I'm very grateful that a less cluttered aesthetic is in vogue. So I'm a little jumpy, that's not so ridiculous. I didn't make this world of terrors, I just live in it. Oh, wait. I did make it. Oops!