Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Did I forget to mention that the alarm clock is set to go off at 4:30am on the weekday mornings when I run? Yeah, you read that right: four freakin’ thirty ayem. It’s really dark outside at 4:30, man! On those mornings, I have been running around my neighbourhood—from one pool of street light to the next. For protection from insomniac rapists, sleepless serial killers and their fiendish bleary-eyed ilk, I carry this vicious-looking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest™ eye gouger

which was brought back from LA by a friend as part of the swag from the recent Disney press junket for the film. Last week, I thought I might hafta use it on the neighbours’ Chow who was put outside for his morning pee towards the end of my run. The furry bastard charged me every time I passed their yard—even when I skirted it by passing their house out on the street instead of on the sidewalk. Not sure if he doesn’t realize their short fence would be easy for him to jump over so that he could sink his teeth into a ripe cheek or if he’s all bark and no bite. I would not like to find out. And he would not like to find out how it feels to have a Pirates of the Caribbean key fob shoved into his eye, methinks…

The perils are numerous out there at 4:30am… I discovered one morning, as the sun started to rise, that I had fortuitously been stepping around a dead sparrow that was lying on the sidewalk along my route. Imagine the sickening squirsh and the godawful swearing that would’ve resulted if I hadn’t been quite so lucky. Rotting bird guts would’ve done a real number on my girlishly pink Peter Pan getaway boots. And I can’t see the (myriad) potholes very well when I skirt out onto the roads unless I happen to be underneath one of the streetlights. Then, this morning, when I rounded the corner down by the park near my house, I was admiring the full moon hanging over a spooky ground mist that was about three feet deep across the park’s expanse. Reminded of the (unheeded) warning from An American Werewolf in London–“Stay off the moors!”–I wondered if that eye gouger happened to be solid silver… somehow, I doubt it. Then I spotted somebody out in the middle of it. (No, not a werewolf.) He was carrying something. Something big and bulky. I’m certain it was a body in rigor mortis, encased in those extra-large black garbage bags. Probably his spouse. Or maybe a nosy neighbour, who’d come to his back door wondering “What’s he building down there?”. Either that or a golf bag.