We've finally arrived, dear reader. I began my tale with a curious soliloquy, featuring an elusive Coca Cola bottle, and all this time you've likely been sighing and checking your watch and wondering when our tragic hero's going to finally close the circle, connect all the dots, and describe the particulars of his present situation. Well, my present situation has changed, so I'll need to cover more ground, but I can still begin with the events which were once the present and use them as stepping stones to reach what is our current present now (Isn't time elusive, dear reader?). 

The disappearances began some time after our last encounter. Having no other places to properly prostrate myself, I camped out in the plot formerly occupied by my easy chair and attempted to resume a relatively normal lifestyle. I began wandering my halls again and picking up my belongings and turning them over in my hands as I pondered philosophical questions. 

Unfortunately, these excursions never took me beyond the barrier. I avoided the whole sector like radioactive spill, which is a shame, considering how many years I'd been planning on fixing that room up and building a home recording studio (not that music was much of a sought after commodity anymore, what with the acid rain and scavengers and such; but I still believed in the principle of the thing). 

Occasionally, I'd doubt myself, mull over the sequence of events and wonder if I'd fabricated the whole thing. Then I'd remember the horrible disturbance and the unearthly giggle and the cryptic message and conclude that I was better of not finding out. Only a fool sticks his hand beneath a rock, where he suspects a snake might lie. 

And since I could do nothing to fix the problem, I began suppressing it, thrusting it into that secluded cranny I keep at the base of my mind. I desperately wanted to forget about the whole affair, and the more I strode back and forth, occupying myself with other concerns, the more I began to view the barrier as just another item in my bungalow. 

Anyway, I was preoccupied with more positive developments. I found my can opener, dear reader! During my excursions, I spotted it glinting atop a metal shelf; and, no, I hadn't put it there, myself; but I didn't press the issue, because fortune seemed to be smiling upon me again.

My eating habits grew more regular. I started cracking open a new can of beeferoni or chicken soup or pork n' beans at least three-times-a-day, and I'd sit cross-legged and munch the victuals while I watched the television screen a few feet away. Yes, I started watching TV again too. My viewing options were admittedly limited, given that every channel was a new variation of static cloud, but--get this, dear reader--I began to notice subtle images and sounds flickering behind the noise. Ghostly apparitions, fragments of speech, faces even. 

I couldn't guess the nature of the phenomena. My imagination, perhaps? A cable frequency playing on repeat in the aftermath of the disaster? Coded messages from the old ones? I didn't care which. Whatever the manifestations were, they provided sufficient entertainment, enough to supplement my habitual sitting and eating and gaping. 

Unfortunately, while my waking existence had improved significantly, the twilight world of my slumber became more turbulent. I started dreaming horrifying, preposterous things. 

Like for instance: I had a nightmare that the yellow extraterrestrial appeared again and this time gripped me by the forehead and morphed me into a tiny lab rat. I shrunk to the size of a tea cup, and the creature picked me up by the tail and placed me inside a maze constructed of cardboard, and I began to skitter back and forth in search of an escape route, while the monster's vacant face hovered above and its blood-red eye scrutinized my every move. 

Like for instance: I had another dream that I was caught in a forest of brambles. Someone or something had lent me only a rusty machete to aide in my escape, and whenever I set out in one direction, hacking and stumbling, all the other brambles grew up in my wake, confining me again. To make matters worse, I hadn't the slightest inkling of which direction to follow. For all I knew, I was staggering deeper into the thicket.

Like for instance: I dreamt that I was dead. Really! Dead! A heart attack had seized me while I sat knitting in my easy chair, and now I was lying face down against the carpet, raging silently at my caretaker, with a bottomless anger. The kind of anger to manifest itself from beyond the grave. 

My sleeping habits grew even more sporadic than they'd been before. I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid of the apparitions that would surely emerge from the void behind my eyelids, so I resolved to slumber as little as possible. 

I began taking catnaps, sticking my toe into the void and retracting it before the monsters could seize me. I slept while sitting up. One minute I'd be gaping at the television static; the next I'd snort awake, scattering my plate of beeferoni across the floor, which already littered with discarded food. 

And, just like that, life's cruel circumstances poisoned my good fortune. It didn't matter that I was eating better, or that I'd adopted a healthier outlook on life, or that I felt better about myself as a creature of worth, despite the unfortunate circumstances which barred me from ever accomplishing a thing. The nightmares were there to remind me of all the dysfunctions written into my subconsciousness. The spirit is willing, but the mind (and its subterranean labyrinths) is like a vice man is born into; and the mind is stronger than the spirit in men like me. 

Then the television remote went missing, and I knew for an indisputable fact that I'd placed it on the floor before my daily excursion to the toilet. Of course, the excursion had let me on a detour when I realized that I was out of toilet paper everywhere, shuffled from the bathroom, sweat pants around my ankles, and perused my spaces for similar items--some left over paper towels, possibly, or any paper of any kind. 

I settled on an old magazine cover from my bedroom, returned to my throne, and performed the deed successfully; but just as I was about to exit the latrine, a sleeping spell took me, and I decided my current posture was satisfactory for the catnap I mentioned earlier, and I sunk briefly into the abyss. 

Tentacles, dear reader! Eldritch horrors! I started awake and--I'm embarrassed to admit--tumbled sideways over the rim and became lodged between the toilet and the wall; and my process of extricating myself took so long and required so much effort (an outrageous amount of effort); and the event caused me so much chagrin, that I'd all but forgotten about the television remote when I shuffled back into the living room. 

I didn't notice its absence until I decided to cycle through the other realms of static, reached for the space beside my hip where I thought the appurtenance to be, and palmed the bare floor instead. Imagine my dismay! I knew I'd left the goddamned thing in that exact spot, unless my memory had decided to rewrite my past. Still, I retraced my steps, just to make sure. 

The piece of shit wasn't in the bathroom, nor was it lying anywhere along the route I'd taken on my search for toilet paper, which meant fate had decided to bear my possession away, as if by a magic trick. Poof! The palm-sized bar of plastic, circuits, and alkaline evaporates into the astral plane. The universe met its quota for TV remotes, and now it must dispose of the excess by preternatural means. 

My winter coat vanished next, followed by my box of tapes; then my Coca Cola bottle, of course. All of my belongings suddenly seemed possessed by an impish poltergeist, who experienced psychotic pleasure in keeping me paralyzed. For how can a man perform even the most rudimentary tasks when all his tools vanish at the worst times? 

How can a man, brush his teeth, bathe himself, cut his hair or his finger nails, eat his fill, drink enough to stay hydrated; much less contribute anything of value to society? How can he relocate a dead body, for instance? Especially when he's paralyzed with fear and grief, because the death came suddenly overnight, and he can't call anyone, for who would he call and what would he say? What can a man do, but occupy himself with other things--fixing a pickle loaf sandwich, for instance.

That was my dilemma, dear reader. I wanted desperately to get off my ass, but my ass required pants; and where the hell did all my pants go?

The worst part was the items would often reappear after the fact. After I'd long moved on. I found my winter coat jammed into the dishwasher (what kind of imbecile would store it there?), located my tapes lodged in haphazard places (places I hadn't traversed in months). 

My bungalow became like a living labyrinth, and I was just a pathetic microorganism straying throughout its belly. For a long time, I denied the possibility that the creature was responsible. I'd locked it away after all, and my barrier showed no sign of tampering, and I was even partially convinced that the monster had starved to death, isolated from its food sources. 

But I stopped ignoring my suspicions after the Coke bottle disappeared. I felt the blackhole open beneath my feet again, began to speculate that the creature had found another escape route. 

Fate, however, cut short my musings, as fate is wont to do. Shortly after the bottle incident, I became horribly, violently, ill.