Barry and the PoltergESPN

Early in the wee hours of this morning I was awakened by Barry freaking the fuck out over an imaginary spot on the wall above my night-table. My night-table is populated by an unfortunate stratification of very heavy hardcover books (i.e. the Shelby Foote) and comics books. Most of the comic books are in plastic sleeves which are very slippery. Thus a book which is very heavy and should be secure in its own dense gravity becomes free to slide straight off my night-table when an insane cat is inspired to get up on them and frantically scrabble at the upper portion of the bedroom wall.

After the loud thud of various 800+ page books (and, occasionally, a very stocky cat, mind you) I rolled over to see Barry once more make his way up off the increasingly scattered pile of fallen books and comics and onto the table for further out-of-his-head scrabbling.

The thing is... there was nothing there. absolutely. nothing. With my lamp turned on I inspected the entire wall, and the adjacent wall for good measure. I flicked the curtain back and forth to dislodge any hidden winged or 8 legged beasties. nothing. Yet when I turned off the lamp and lay down, there goes Barry once more trying so hard to climb up the wall.

Part of the other reason why I came to the conclusion that there was nothing there was that Pickle would have nothing to do with all of this. She sat calmly at the foot of the bed and alternately slept or looked up with her alarmed expression (one of her two expressions) when something loud hit the ground. Earlier the previous evening a buggy had been frolicking in the window-sill just outside our apartment. She enjoyed this thoroughly, and she and Barry had spent a fruitless 10 minutes attempting to bend space and time and somehow scoop the bug up through the glass and screen.

Point is, she can see buggies. She LOVES them. Barry is the one who ultimately mushes and eats them (minus a few legs, usually), but Pickle the Hunter is no slouch. And her mighty powers of observation where not deceived. There was no bug on the wall, just a retarded cat hurling himself at imagined bugs on the wall.

Awake enough now so as to answer nature's call, I walked to the bathroom and back again. As i re-entered the bedroom I took inventory unconsciously. One Croftie (sleeping). One Pickle (sleeping). One Barry... (sleeping... in the exact, warm spot I'd recently vacated. His plan all along I'm sure. But here comes the scary part. From the living room came an incredibly loud noise. My computer had not only 'woken' itself up, but was playing a video feature from ESPN dot com with the volume on my speaker turned all the way up. And yet, the screen was dark.

Needless to say i jumped, ran into the living room and turned off the computer. My brain was still mostly asleep but i could not figure out how the particular video on a particular site had somehow began playing for no reason many hours after anyone had used the internet without having woken up the monitor in the process. For example, if something bumps the table the computer is sitting on and the monitor 'wakes up', then whatever is on the screen might 're-animate', a video might play, an ad might do its wiggly dance. But the screen was dark.

So my only conclusion was that something supernatural was behind all of this. And since animals can supposedly 'sense' ghosts, i imagine this specter was a ghost buggy. who began the evening by teasing the fat cat and ignoring the stupid one. who likes ESPN. he had better not like the Red Sox. otherwise I won't be so quick next time to stop Barry from flaying his ghost ass and eating him up.