Someone was scratching at my side door late last night.
I was having this weird dream about octopuses—octopi?—more than one octopus, and there was this sound like someone dragging a board full of nails across a rough wooden surface. I fully woke up after the sound totally overwhelmed my dream only to find that the noise was coming from the hallway leading to the side door.
I grabbed an aluminum bat that I managed to find at the store yesterday and skulked to the door. The sound repeated several more times as I approached. I could see the door vibrating as whatever it was dragged across the outer surface.
I tried to sound all macho but I’m pretty sure that when I shouted, “Who’s there?”, that I sounded more like a little kid whose voice was still cracking at the onset of puberty.
Regardless, the noise stopped immediately. I still waited a minute before opening the door. There wasn’t anyone outside or on the street in either direction. I was about to go back in when I saw the gouges on the lower half of the door. It looked like a Bengal Tiger had been clawing at the wood. Splintery gouges raked from the middle of the door to the bottom. They weren’t very deep but the door was definitely damaged.
The news has been saying that the lockdown will probably be extended another three weeks. If people are acting this crazy after only eleven days, what the hell will things be like by the end?

***

It’s very strange seeing everyone wandering the streets and going to the store with surgical face masks or plastic face shields. I even saw one guy wearing a ninja hood with only his eyes uncovered. I seem to remember that lots of convenience stores had signs saying that masks could not be worn in the store. I wonder how they’re liking the new normal?
I’ve been trying to work on new shirt designs for the store once this ends but it’s hard to concentrate and feel creative when everything you see and hear is about the pandemic and people dying. There’s so little happy news right now, even the talk shows are all about the lockdown. Sure, I could watch reruns or stream classic shows but I’ve seen most of the things I would like and really don’t want to deal with some show which never appealed to me, to begin with.
I see posts online about the robed nuts and other places with unexplained explosions like the one in my neighborhood but the mainstream media seems to be ignoring this in favor of worrying about the Dow. Maybe it’s because it’s not anything newsworthy or is just the product of paranoia rather than reality; I don’t know.
I walked by the house that blew up again today and there was absolutely no debris visible, it’s almost like the hole in the building was made by the walls, floors, and everything within just disintegrating. There was still no sign of the people who lived there.

I’ll have to go back to the market tomorrow. I’m running low on veggies and toilet paper (of course). I hope that there was some effort made to restock things over the last few days. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Stay safe out there and keep yourself healthy. This is Joey, saying ta ta for now.