She was young and curvy and vivacious, joking with me as she got onto the scanner table. I thought about how perfect her teeth were, and how beautiful her mouth was. She had fine, dark hair, and she arranged it on the pillow as I was putting the IV in. I looked at the paper that she laid down, it was the Sunday funny papers. I could almost read the jokes, but not quite. She kept chatting away, and I couldn't tell if she was just nervous or if maybe she was just trying to put me at ease as I put in the IV. She was asking some personal questions, and then would follow the answers with more questions. Her accent was unfamiliar, and I had no idea where she was from, but English was certainly not her native tongue, although she was very well-spoken. I got the IV in and I hooked up the tubing to the syringe on the power injector. I looked at my patient's face and I was suddenly jolted... she had no eyes. And the flesh of her cheeks was sagging, even though she was still just chatting away. I stared at her face, unable to think, unable to move. A motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention; there was blood making its way up the IV tubing and going into the syringe and coalescing into.... Something that eats plastic. They syringe burst with a POP as the side split, sending a sticky stream of whatever onto my arms and hands... it burned initially for a coupla seconds, then shimmered and disappeared into my skin. Run, Doug, RUN! I tried, but I needed my hands to grip the side of the table. And my legs, they didn't want to go anywhere for some reason. And the patient, with her funny little lilting accent, was still chatting away. Of course, I was unable to make a sound other than a croak. I looked down at my legs, and the flesh was peeling off of them in great chunks. No blood, just muscle and fat. There was a wheelchair handy, so I quickly sat down in it and I started to propel myself to the control booth. My arms wouldn't cooperate, however, and I saw that they were affected just as my legs were. The patient called my by name, and then she laughed. A beautiful, trilling laugh, it was, and sweet to my ears. Realizing the futility of the situation, I laughed too, but my laugh was different... I was undergoing a transformation, and I would soon join the beautiful creature who was now getting off of the table, pulling the IV out of her arm and showing me the reservoir of blood that she'd secreted under the skin so that I would think that she was real. Sometimes I know that I'm dreaming, and then I can change stuff, but sometimes I can't. And I'm never totally convinced that I'll awaken, either. Today was a hard day to be at work, but we've got a full crew back today, and it wasn't really all that bad. It's my late week, so I was there until 16:30, which was all right. And I slept hard last night. There was a big storm just north of here bearing down fast, but I'd decided that I was way too tard to watch a storm, so I went to bed. And it hit just a little later, I could see the lightning flashed through my eyelids. But I stayed in bed. We got the first rain in a long while, 3/4 of an inch. Mostly horizontal, according to eyewitness reports, with 60 MPH winds... Usually when I get up in the morning, I have lines from the CPAP mask on my right cheek, and it'll persist for a coupla hours. Well, today it's still there. 16 hours later... That means that I slept hard and didn't move at all, probably. I'm going to bed shortly and I'm setting the alarm for 00:30, and I'll get up and see what I can see... if it looks good, I'll get dressed and go watch some meteors, else I'll just go back to bed. Two whole bonus days off! I think that I really need them, I do!