I only turned my back for a second, and they all died. All of the hot girls, dead.

This party had suddenly taken a very bad turn.

What could I have been thinking? Rat poison is, by definition, poison, and who was I to say which small amount might be safe and which would not? Which would bring a nice high and which would bring death?

As I moved my hand over their bodies to check for any remaining signs of life, of hope, it was as if darkness flowed out from my fingers and onto everything around me. I could no longer see their faces. This might normally have been considered a good thing, what with them being dead and all. But this time, this time it was not. For as I reached to check for a pulse, I instead found the toothy grimace of agonizing death, seemingly about to bite down and rip at my flesh. Instead of the faintest of breaths, I instead found hands contorted by pain into claws that seemed to grasp at me, as if to pull me in with them.

But it was only my imagination. The dead do not bite. The dead do not grasp.

The darkness flowing from me continued to spread. The lamp in the corner served only to illuminate itself - its light no longer reached the walls, or the floor, or the ceiling. Or the grotesque scene on the bed.

I knew that I had to get away from there, from that macabre display, from the darkness.

So I ran.

I ran, and the darkness continued to flow from my body. It became an expanding wake of nothingness which I pulled along behind me.

I ran faster.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, but it was not fast enough. I bent forward, and I began to use my arms as well. I dug my fingers into the ground and I pulled with my arms as mightily as I pushed with my legs. I became something else. Something no longer human. A beast. Running from darkness that I myself had created, that I myself continued to spread.

A moment of clarity struck me.

I stopped.

The darkness caught up with me, surrounded me, enveloped me. It began to contract and flow back into me.

As I stood, panting, in that shrinking circle of darkness, I saw lights in the distance.

Then I woke up.

So after my sole reason for even being in the place left in an understandable huff, I left Rich O's myself and went out to the BBC or Bluegrass Brewery or whatever the fuck it's called. There are two of the places, and they used to be the same company but now they're not and nobody fucking cares because we all have enough drama in our lives without our bars getting into the act. Anyway, I went to the one way out in East Louisville because they have hot girls there.

I had two main reasons for going to the BBC - besides the hot girls. The first was the yummy BBC Alt (258) that I'd had at Rich O's. I'd actually ordered a BBC Dark Star Porter but oh well. The second reason was the yummy BBC Dark Star Porter I had at Rich O's (188). Both of these beers are among my favorites, and Rich O's only had them in bottled form. I wanted drafts. So I went.

It was, as usual, quite crowded there, but I found myself a seat at the bar and had myself a Dark Star (208).

Do any of you remember that one stalker guy that followed me from the BBC to Rich O's a while ago?

That same fucker was at the BBC again. I don't think he saw me though. Whew!

Next I was going to have a BBC Alt but they'd just blown the keg or something so instead I left and went to The Pub in downtown Louisville.

While I was there I had a couple pints of yummy Newcastle (2492) and I talked to some uberhot girls who were there for a bachelorette party. So that was fun until one of the girls asked me why I was in a bad mood and I said that men are insensitive pigs who only think about one thing and that started all of the girls agreeing with me a little too enthusiastically. Plus they wanted me to do shots with them and none of them were Holly so I declined. At one point I realized that I was surrounded by estrogen so I left the girls and went down the street to this Sully's place and had a Diet Coke.

Then I came home at around 1:30.

That's the subject of some SPAM I got today.

I have no idea what my zwinky might be, and I don't think I want to know.

Sadly, that was the highlight of my day. I did manage to kill one of the servers at work. I think that it was justifiable homicide, but I have to await final judgment from the jury of my coworkers. We'll see.

Other than those two things, that's it. I think my brain is empty.

I don't like to write entries when I'm pissed. I do it every now and then and I never like the way it reads.

I suppose that I'm not really pissed right now. Just irritated. But it's been going on for almost 24 hours now, and it shows no signs of abating, so maybe it'll grow into being pissed if I don't write about it.

Also, maybe two people will know what I'm talking about here. My sister has accused me of writing in code lately. She's admitted that, lately, all she does is skim my journal for anything resembling coherency and then turn away in disgust when she finds none.

But I digress.

I wonder, what the fuck were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? With your head?

The first time was slightly amusing. Akin to one of my comics perhaps. Juvenile and predictable yet harmless.

The next 8,000 times were overkill.

Guess what? She knows that she's hot. She knows it without needing to hear it from you over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over inside of about 15 minutes.

That's what her boyfriend is for. He gets to tell her that she's hot. Not you. Not me. Nobody except her boyfriend.

I really don't get what you were thinking you'd accomplish.

Was she supposed to say, "Well gee whiz! I never suspected that you thought I was pretty! Thank you so much for letting me know! I must have sex with you right now on the coffee table, you stallion!"

It was really a pitiful display you put on. To be ignored must not sit very well with you. Otherwise why would you choose to say the same thing over and over again? Isn't one of the signs of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect differing results? Shouldn't you, of all people, know this?

This was the second time that your mouth ran someone I care about out of that place. You are on notice now. I will no longer wait for them to defend themselves, or for their boyfriends to defend them. Before there is a third time, I will defend them myself.

I think I must be weird or something. I think this because I realized yesterday afternoon that I actually like getting my teeth cleaned. I like the picking, and the scraping, and I even like the polish thingy.

Anyway, after my dentist appointment I took a nap, then at around 8:30 I went to Rich O's.

The place was completely packed with strangers and assholes, so I turned around and left immediately. I stood out in the parking lot and tried to decide what I should do. I could just go back home because I was pretty tired after all. I could go over to The Pub in Louisville and have some of their yummy Newcastle. I briefly considered then dismissed the idea of going to The BBC for some of their yummy porter.

In the end, all of those options seemed like too much trouble, plus my sister had told me that she might come to Rich O's, so I went back in.

For a while I just stood at the end of the bar and had Smithwick's (1172), then some strangers left the bar so I sat there and had another Smithwick's (1192).

I talked to no corporeal beings all night, even when people would come up to me I did my best to shoo them away. It was not a night for socializing.

My last two beers were in the form of bottled Newcastle (2452.) Both were absolutely yummy.

In retrospect, I should have just stayed home last night. The entire night was a waste. Even the ghost couldn't bring me out of my funk.

This time, it wasn't a chill that ran down my spine. This time, it was a vision.

Just a flash of an inkling of a hint of a face. Eyes. A smile. Sparkles.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," I said.

"Sorry I'm late," she said.

"Don't worry about it," I answered. "I wasn't even sure you'd be here tonight."

"I wanted to be here earlier," she explained, "but there were all these girls in my way."

I'd been expecting this.

"Those are just whores," I said. "You can go right by them."

"They looked mean," she said.

"It's all show," I explained. "They know who you are. What you mean to me. They'll get out of your way. And if they don't you can just go right through them. They're no match for you."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"I'm positive," I answered. "They are nothing compared to you."

"Okay." She seemed relieved. "Did you miss me?"

"Only when I breathed," I responded.

She smiled.

I won again.

I dreamed that I was swimming upstream somewhere, and it was hard, and to keep myself focused I was singing a song to myself.

It was a fucking awesome song. Kind of hard rock with ballady parts thrown in, or maybe it was a ballad with hard rocky parts thrown in. Whatever. It was awesome.

Also, I looked up ahead of me to see where all the water was coming from, and some whore had opened the valve on a dam. And she was laughing her ass off. What a whore.

Seeing the future is easy when you've seen it all before. And for years and years, this particular scenario is pretty much all I saw. All I lived.

It'll be fun. It'll be relaxing. It'll let me feel more like myself. Instead of like this cowering pussy I've been feeling like lately. I'll be able to coast through this. If I were an actor, then I'd say that this is the role I was born to play.

I can see exactly how the next six months are going to play out. I don't need a crystal ball, or tarot cards, or fucking tea leaves. I'm no withered old hag, I'm just a guy with a pretty good memory. So I know what's going to happen, because it's already happened so many times before.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Even though it might not seem like I'm enjoying myself, don't be fooled. Even though I'll start throwing words like slut and whore around, even though it'll seem like I'm pretty much miserable at times, even though you might feel this motherly urge to snap me out of it and to try to make me feel better - don't bother.

I'll be fine.

I'll be having fun.

I'll be myself again.

Today is moving day at work.

They're taking my entire (IT) department and moving us downtown, and today is my team's turn.

I've been looking forward to the move, for various reasons, not the least of which is that I'll be closer to MixedSignalGirl. So we could do lunch or whatever if we ever get our collective shit together.

I'm not exactly holding my breath though.

Anyway, I'm still sitting at home right now. No sense rushing in to work at the crack of 8:00 when none of my stuff has been moved to the new building yet. So I've been working on some security documentation. It's just incredibly fun stuff. Not.

Remember a while back when I wrote that my wants were wandering aimlessly because my needs had been met? The problem with that is that I knew my wants would fixate on the first thing they bumped in to. Yeah, well that's happened now. It kinda sucks, but I'm used to it.

I'm not much of a poetry person, but I really love this snippet from Rupert Brooke.

When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,

I need a really good slaking.