Sleep With One Eye Open

I have an irrational terror of Yellow Jacket Wasps. They terrify me. If I find myself in the same room as one, I tend to run screaming toward the exit. I know I am prone to exaggeration, but I am not joking about that. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you and I and a yellow jacket are in the same room, you will hear that scream. If I found myself in Room 101, it would be full of yellow jackets. You have to understand how incredibly horrified I am of this simple insect. That said....

I had this dream last night (I suppose it was really early morning). I am lying in bed and I hear this horrible droning buzzing (What the buzzing? Yes... all the time the buzzing... so called... in the ears). I look up and see what appears to be a large fly zipping around my ceiling. Thanks to amazing dream magic, I suddenly discover in my right hand a rather large flyswatter. I start swatting at this fly and then it dawns on me... That is no fly, it is (ominous revelatory music) a Yellow Jacket! So I wield my flyswatter more ferociously, because I am now fighting for my very life. After an epic battle, the fiend is defeated. As I stand triumphantly over his lifeless, and rather smushed, corpse I realize the buzzing is still there. Fade to black.

Then I felt something crawling on my face. I shot upright in bed (I may have yelped) and there, buzzing around my ceiling, was a big old yellow and black wasp-of-death! I may have screamed. I definitely pulled the cover over my head and cowered. The buzzing grew louder. I peaked out from my quilt and saw the winged evil futilely running into my closed blinds over and over again. I occurred to me that if I can just open the blinds, it's probably not so dumb that it can't make its way through the wider gaps and out the window (which is open, but does not have a screen yet because my landlords are... I don't know why they haven't put a screen in yet. I've asked them to). The buzzing insect seemed to be rather distracted, so I decided to risk bodily harm and tentatively reached my arm out to grab the stick thing that adjusts the blinds. The demon bounced closer to me. I panicked and ducked back under the covers.

After a moment the buzzing seemed to get farther away. I poked my head out of the covers again to see the bug running into the blinds on my other window. Thinking very quickly, I jumped out of bed, opened the blinds (to the first window, not the one he was buzzing at) and ran out of my room, shutting the door behind me. I stayed safely in the kitchen and living room for at least an hour. The evil seems to have made its way back outside in that time. I half expect it to come buzzing out from some cranny or nook, or attack me when I open a drawer or something. Seriously, I am very wary about touching things... anything... that might be harboring a wasp.

I thought I would share the story of how I woke up today because, as terrifying as terror is, I can absolutely see the humor in the way I behaved. Even as I was taking refuge under my covers like some kid hiding from the boogie man, I realized that my behavior was absolutely ridiculous. There was no fucking way I was going to come out and face the beast though.

By the way, when you wake up with that much fear, there's no way you can go back to sleep. So I've been kind of sleepy today.