I was alone at my sister's place, which was a small, dark affair tightly cramped with furniture around the edges. Three largish aquariums were prominently displayed, but were difficult to see in the low light. Two of them off to the side seemed strange, and on closer inspection turned out to have no water. The few exotic fish inside were lying on their sides, still laboriously trying to breathe . I somehow ordered for more water to be sent in through a building-wide system of pipes, but it was very slow to get here. I sighed and move over to the main aquarium in the front of the room. This one was full of life, with striped fish of various colors and a lively though small crab. He was pushing against the lid, which started to buckle and push out towards me. Alarmed, I straightened it back out, but found that I was slower than the crab, which was now having help from some of the fish which were jumping up forcefully. Suddenly, the crab shot out of the tank and onto the floor. I knew it was fairly delicate, so I looked around for something to gently pick it up with. I settled on a box of kleenex, and tried to rope the fellow in. On the third kleenex, I snagged him, but it was able to eject its hind legs and scurry away. Somehow I knew that this was one of a crab's defenses. So I tried again, thinking it was out of tricks. Instead of letting itself be captured, the crab split itself open at the front, falling apart into three shell piece with bits of its organs and eyestalks scattered inside. I tried to scoop it up gently with a piece of paper, as if it would come back to life once back in the water. But I saw that I was smearing its insides and I quickly gave up. I put in an order for a new crab, which was for a ridiculously high $95.

I exited the apartment and found myself in long tunnels pulsing with lava through trenches on the sides. I knew I was in some kind of fortress that needed protection. I hurried over to our team's makeshift headquarters, which was a friend's apartment - another small, cramped place, though more elongated, a bit lighter, and more homely. Inside were three team members, which included my coworker Nina. We were playing Scrabble and I couldn't believe what I had. I played the word ZZZINTRA on a triple word score. My friends, astonished, grabbed the calculator and came up with 135,000 points. I was giddy with the possibility that it was the highest score of all time. I tried to follow the math as they explained it, but I kept getting different numbers. Then I remembered that the highest possible Scrabble score for one word is only one thousand something. So I kept trying to recalculate, but the numbers floated aimlessly around in my head. I called over to Nina, who had been my playing partner but had gone into the bedroom. She called out that she was about to head out shopping with her husband and didn't have time to look at the score.

I then appeared in a large, flat beach bordering the ocean. Sparse grass and rocks broke up the sandy monotony, and there were barbed spikes sticking up at various intervals around the place. I knew these to be buried crabs that could lunge out and hurt anyone. However, I didn't know which were ours and which were the enemy's. So I sneaked around, loosely and silently following enemies as they went to check on their crabs. I had a spike of my own and plunged it into the ground when the coast was clear, killing the crabs. Then Will Ferrel came chasing after me with a large spike, but running goofily and making threats in one of his trademark silly voices. I taunted him back, saying I was the best at what I do. So he challenged me to find and stop him, just as he jumped into a small round pit of loose sand. I knew immediately that he had a system of tunnels made by human-sized worm-like creatures (like smaller versions of the ones in Tremors). I started to run towards the border of the beach, which abutted a playground-like area. I zigzagged around to confuse Will and the worms, who relied on sound. I avoided the sand pits as I went. Before I made it out, Will launched himself, riding one of the worms, into a ten feet arc and into another pit. He had was shouting "whoa!" and had clearly missed hitting me, but I knew he would try harder next time. So I doubled my speed and lunged out for the border and into a small wooden house that sat just within. I quickly opened a double door to one of the high balconies just in time for Will to arc into the house and out through the door. Only now he looked like Ron Howard and he was riding a large kite, though he was tangled up in the strings. I slammed the door to catch the tail of the kite and keep Ron from falling to his death. Lisa Simpson called out that I should take care of the problem. So I shouted for one of our teammates, who had played one of the smaller parts in Happy Days, to come do it. He hated Ron for how he treated him on the show, so he gleefully locked the balcony doors. Then, in time lapse, I watched the trapped tail of the kite get bound to the door handles using a wire coat hanger. I couldn't see the guy, just the hanger itself as it got tightly wrapped first up, then sideways, until there was no way Ron could get back inside.

posted by Larry at 9:49 AM