DAY FIFTY, late night, [panic mode activated]

Aaaaaagh! Date on Friday AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

DAY FIFTY (very early)

With . . . with . . . Abliguritia Thundersmasher-Roth! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

DAY FIFTY-ONE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

It is Tuesday now. Lots of stuff going on around here. I do not care about any of it.

Or, I suppose—more accurately—I am earnestly, completely incapable of caring about any of it. At all.

Feelings of rawest, most abject mortal terror are most decidedly settling in, kicking holes in the walls, pouring beer into the couches, and otherwise making themselves right at home inside the parts of my skull where the jangling, overstimulated raw nerve endings of my ganglia are most directly related to the interlinked tasks of reminding me that I have nausea-inducing stomach pain and that my chest is pounding very hard, like it is being slap-bongoed with sledgehammers, except from inside.

It is quite distracting.

I am experiencing my intermittent adrenaline-dump headaches in seven full dimensions, three ghost directions, plus one rapidly oscillating and sphere-shaped backward angle that I’m calling the “partridge-in-a-pear-tree” zone, and in anywhere from nine to sixty-three different colors at any given time; between the hiccups of my ongoing slow-motion heart attack, I am actually able to feel the onset of my constantly tingling fingers and toes losing their sensation, floating away, and then snapping back into reality, often pointing in the wrong directions or attached to the wrong appendage altogether; I have lost my appetite for anything except—perhaps—salted butter wrapped in bacon and batter-fried in rat oil, like Mom used to make.

My bowels, I should add, are a twisted and writhing coil of ugly, bathed in acid.

It would be even worse if I had access to butter, bacon, or salt, I presume. As it is, I’m just chugging mouthfuls of rat oil. And coffee.

Those parts of my brain not most directly related to experiencing this stress—and the accompanying surreal immediacy of actively watching myself stare blankly and slack-jawed into the blinding flash of my own existence’s ultimate stage fright, as if my entire life up until this interminable, stretched-wire second has been a flashback leading up to that horrible, inevitable moment wherein I will—this Friday—humiliate myself in front of Abliguritia Thundersmasher-Roth, probably by ogling her boobs, pouring an entire bowl of soup down my pants, or referring to the wine as “good, but a little wine-y”—are all basically on lock-down.

Also, I appear to have gone at least somewhat blind from the shock.

I don’t care.

Similarly, I do not care that my nephews, along with Mr. Bliss and Wallyworkle Tinklehammer, have been exploring the previously unknown catacombs beneath the strategically important fountain. I do not care that they have found weird, Lovecraftian stuff down there, all oozing with blasphemous menace, some of it dealing with pretty out-there conspiracy theories linking Roswell and Jack Ruby to the Great Flood. I do not even care that some of what they have found in the basement may border on copyright infringement due to the (apparent) use of intellectual property and associated materials owned by the Disney corporation.

Oh, and the show is going further over budget, too.

Don’t care.

I am on auto-pilot. I am ignoring everything. With a little luck, it will go away.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to hyperventilate until I cry and pass out.

I have a date on Friday to prepare for.

DAY FIFTY-ONE

Nothing to report. Stuff is occurring, probably. Do not care.

DAY FIFTY-TWO

May or may not have talked to my boss today; may or may not have either been given an assignment or a promotion by either Dark Lord Torkelheim or Stonnehyldd the “Smokin’-Hot” Stone Golem. Not sure; have not slept. Do not care.

Date tomorrow night.

Also: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

DAY FIFTY-TWO (later; evening)

That sounded like explosions, somewhere around here. Do not care.

DAY FIFTY-TWO (later; very possibly morning[?]-ish except the sun isn’t up.)

I swear to the unholy pantheon of all goblin deities that something is chirping outside, but those just CANNOT be birds. It might actually be screaming, come to think of it. And I might smell the smell of that particular kind of smoke that comes only from haunted forests being set on fire by dwarves.

Do not care.

DAY FIFTY-TWO (the black hours of torment when the nightmares take flesh)

Shaendralya just showed up, heavily armed and with quite an adventuring party in tow, with a half-flaming cult hot on their heels, along with several wildly firing robots with miniature ballistas mounted in their chests, also severely on fire. From what I can discern from the surprisingly well-enunciated and exposition-heavy screaming, the heroes were apparently marching on the dungeon, cutting through the haunted woods to use Sigvald’s secret entrance to sack the place, when they accidentally stumbled upon my prankster-pirate/deliveryman-dwarf nemesis in the midst of rigging the kickball fields for the company picnic with limpet mines in the middle of the night.

Oh, yeah. I’m in charge of the kickball tournament this weekend; must try to remember that. It would have been a really good prank to pull on me, now that I think of it.

The altercation between the heroes and the explosive-laden pirate-dwarf, and the subsequent escalation of open fire, spooked the hidden cult that’s been living in the woods; the situation rapidly deteriorated into a large-scale shooting match, with all invested parties simultaneously heading—of course—toward my room.

I’m not sure who the robots are with, precisely, but they sure do like shooting; whoever built the buggers should be applauded for the enthusiasm of the little guys, if not their accuracy. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m impressed by their teamwork in bumping up their individual reload-speeds. That’s just good design.

Fortunately, I’ve been sleeping in Sigvald’s closet, since I lost the rights to his old bed to Kyle the evil pseudodragon in a game of poker the other day (apparently, I tried to beat a straight flush with a “go fish”; like I said, I’ve been a bit out of it), which he then traded to General VanO’Shaughnessy Blah-blah-blah #3 for some vinyl records and first “dibs on figs” in the case of pre-painted miniatures they’re buying, so I wasn’t actually in the line of fire when everyone showed up.

My quick-thinking allowed me to stay completely hidden—safe in the closet—while an enraged flesh-golem con-man engaged with and subsequently fought off the last of the invaders.

Or, well . . . I mean, I assume that he’s going to eventually fight them off. They actually still sound pretty enthusiastic out there, now that I mention it, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. Any second now.

ALSO: do not care.

Date tonight.

DAY FIFTY-TWO

Have not technically slept.

Since . . . uh, Sunday, I think it was.

This is going to be a very difficult day.