Midnight Madness

`Tis a sad, sad morning: came online to find zero mail in the Inbox.

Anyway, moving onto the reason I:m posting--


Last night my sister and I got caught up playing with these metal contraptions that are sort of physical mind teaser maze puzzle things, where you have to separate three interlocked knick knack things. At around midnight I got ready for bed, shoved my earplugs snugly into my ears, crawled into my ofuton, and tried to get to sleep. My sister, however, was still trying to extricate her metal pieces, and was clanging away into the night. I was having all sorts of trouble sleeping, so when my sister tapped me on the head quite vigorously, I sat up immediately.

`What the heck, man?`

`Someone just opened the door. I heard footsteps.`

`Is it Koju-Ojisan? Did you hear a car?` (our uncle)

`No`

We were both scared as hell and had no idea what to do. My mom was fast asleep, and we didn:t want to wake her unless it was necessary. I grabbed a metal yardstick, and my sisterand I started inching towards the wood+paper sliding doors that separate the room from the entryway. Every time we took a step, the ground would creak. My sister and I would break into fits of silent nervous giggling. A couple of times, I was sure I heard heavy footsteps from a couple rooms away. And the outdoor sensor light was on.

We were paralyzed by fear and unable to gather the courage to open the door, so I woke mom up. She leapt out of the room and ran down the hall, turning on all the lights. There was nobody in the house, and no sign of anyone having entered. We decided the intruder was probably one of the cats--they:re able to open the doors. When we looked outside, we saw the culprit behind the motion-activated sensor light: a tanuki.I:d never seen one before, so it was kinda cool.

But I still had the heebie jeebies, and had horrible nightmares when I finally fell asleep. All of this lack of sleep is catching up to me. Exhausted, is I, is I.