Suzy: It walked UNDER my pillow

Suzy, dear, I have been meaning to send you this story for some time now. Today feels like the day for it. Hope you are feeling better...

So...

(Because that's how Laurie likes my stories to start)

When I graduated from college Moose and I were engaged and trying to decide where to settle in. We picked a city that was in the state between our two families. Not too far, not too close, just right. It had a major university was a seat of government and had a left-of-center vibe that we both liked.

We rented a house a block off campus near the stadium which has surely contributed to my dislike of most things related to college and professional sports. Home games were a nightmare and our landlord parked cars on the lawn. Post game the drivers would hit the house trying to back up, or throw trash in the yard, or not pick up their car for 2 days.

The day we moved in we found out that the boy who had been renting the main level with some friends was moving upstairs by himself. Marcus. Marcus the boy who saw no need to pack anything and who decided carrying things up the stairs by himself one at a time while we sat on the front lawn with a Uhaul waiting and waiting would be the way to handle his move. Graduate school. Physics. 'Nuff said.

Anyone who has rented knows that there is no way this place got cleaned before we moved in. I really believe this triggered many of my OCD issues. The basement smelled funny. Like maybe there was a body buried down there. A few years later we found out the landlord, who was a firefighter by day slum lord by night, was also a drug dealer and got in the kind of trouble that lands you the lead news story at 6 and 10. So it might actually have been a body. I don't know. I wouldn't go down there. And it had nothing to do with the fact that the laundry was also down there. Really.

All of this is the long way around to let you know the house was not...well...while cute and classic brick and stained glass and all...not reliably sanitary.

So after a long day of waiting and not being able to reach the drug dealing slum lord we finally had the chance to move in the bed and toothbrushes before going to sleep. I was feeling very anxious about the space and hearing things which were probably Marcus drawing pentagrams on the floor above us but which sounded like things scurrying in the walls.

So, when I felt something move underneath my pillow I thought I was imagining it at first. Heart pounding, I tried to catch my breath. Moose was already snoring and I finally relaxed enough to rest my head on the pillow again. Wrong move. Because this time, when I shifted the pillow, SOMETHING GRABBED MY HAND!!! I am not kidding you! All I could think of was a giant, grey rat. I was out of the covers and standing on the bed because if one was under my pillow there must be a whole colony down on the floor. I later learned that I was also screaming but at the time the world seemed silent. The kind of scream you only hear in slasher movies. Only in the movie they usually come to an abrupt end. This one kept going. When I ran out of air I started yelling, "A rat! It's a rat!"

Oh, let me add this little bit to the story...Moose, while all kinds of manly, has quite a rodent phobia. And white turkeys. But who can blame him on that one because when he was 6 his class took a field trip to a turkey farm and that morning his big brother told him not to worry because only the white ones bite. Have you ever seen a turkey farm? Needless to say the 6 year old Moose spent the field trip on the bus with the driver.

So now we are both standing on the bed yelling about rats. He gathers himself enough to ask where it was...you know...so I would know where to go get it and smack it with a shoe or something because he sure wasn't going to do it. As I am kicking pillows and blankets to the floor I am telling him it was ON the bed and UNDER my pillow and it EVEN GRABBED MY HAND! Look! Look! Are there bite marks? I am going to need rabies shots!

And Moose falls to the mattress, still in hysterics, only now he is laughing. Because that thing under my pillow? Was just him trying to hold my hand as we fell asleep together for the first time in our smelly little rental house.

After we re-made the bed and discussed and agreed upon nighttime hand holding protocol I could still hear noises upstairs. I am pretty sure it was Marcus, scuffing out the pentagram, surprised as hell that shit might actually have worked!