Project MERCATOR
My plan for the evening was to motor down to Royal Oak for a poker night (though I suspect 'twas to be a "poker" night instead, with that deplorable bore Texas Hold 'Em in place of actual poker) hosted by my old chum the Anonymous Friend, but he informed me this afternoon that he'd had quite a number of cancellations & was putting the kibosh on the evening. I was still welcome to come down, but in light of the snow on the roads & my plan to motor to Detroit proper for the North American International Auto Show on Sunday I decided to remain closer to home. At home, in fact, dinner being late enough to quell any thoughts of attending this month's downtown Flinttown Art Walk. So, here I sit, on Friday night, having just watched the new episode of Grimm, bloggy blogging & having an I.M. chat with a nascent chum from the History Club I shall code name The Steampunk. It's a full life.

Perchance to Dream
I had a nightmare on Thursday morning. Well, perhaps it is better labelled a dream, because it wasn't unduly terrifying 'til I awoke. In the dream, a wee demon attacked a man & ate the poor fellow's face. The demon was a small, chubby humanoid, like a putto, but with large, leathery wings, like a bat's. The whole exterior of the demon was charred, like a bratwurst that has been left too long on the backyard flames. A frightening creature, but the eating of the poor chap's face wasn't graphic, the body of the demon blocking my view of anything dreadful. The trouble came when my first alarm clock shocked me into the waking world. The machine is located at the foot of my bed, & I have to come out from under the covers & swing around to reach it. I sweep my legs low to the floor, without quite touching it, in the course of this maneuver, & that is where I was given pause on Thursday morn. In my half-awake state, the notion suddenly struck me that the demon from my dream, as well as it's similarly charred but much larger mother, might well be lurking under my bed. Under my bed. I haven't thought there might be anything under my bed since I was in elementary school & feared there was a panther down there. (Not a generic monster, but the very specific image of a panther, its fur midnight black.) Even groggy as I was my rational mind revolted against the absurdity of there being anything nefarious, much less a figment of my dreamy imagination, lying in wait under my bed to menace my dangling legs, & a torrent of venom was soon being hurled at that corner of my mind that had sounded the alarum. I executed the swinging maneuver, a reasonably complex ballet that I can execute almost literally in my sleep, but even as I knew—I KNEW!—there was no danger from a charred putto demon, the echoes of that original burst of terror lingered.

"For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."
—William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene I