I was truly in a pickle, dear reader (pardon the double entendre, but a desperate man is apt to make inane jokes.)

I'd only just convinced myself that the monster was a figment of my imagination. Now the inexplicable had crept up behind me again. Damn to hell whichever of my distant ancestors first relied on sleep! Sleep, that yawning chasm carved into memory. Sleep that dress rehearsal for death. 

If it weren't for sleep, I'd have witnessed how the hose extension displaced itself, but my biology insisted on forcing me into deafness and blindness and dumbness for an immeasurable span of time. Next thing I knew, I was awake, and the hose extension was gone. My hand grasped at thin air. 

No, I hadn't dropped it, dear reader. I ruled-out that possibility first, leaping up and rummaging around the easy chair's circumference and uncovering only a miniature copse of used kleenexes and discarded bottle caps and (I'll be damned) an old WalkMan I'd misplaced years before. But no sign of the hose extension. 

My mind performed its customary inquiries. Was my memory mistaken? Had I draped it over the vacuum cleaner instead? A simple glance toward the appliance, standing innocuously in the corner, confirmed the negative. Noctambulism, then. Had I moved it in my sleep? Had my subconscious sought to sabotage me? I was drifting toward deep fathoms here, dear reader, for a subjective creature possesses no method of discovering unconscious deeds done in the past. It was an unfalsifiable theory. 

Unfalsifiable theories are cruel concepts indeed. They might provide portals into the unknown, but, at the same time, they lend the philosopher no method for confirming his suspicions. The problem is written into their very fabric. For who can prove, without a modicum of doubt, that God exists? What scientific tools might one use to measure God? What controlled experiments might one perform? In a similar vein, who can prove the existence of the Old Ones, wandering in their nether realms? 

What I'm saying, dear reader, is that I was at a loss. I possessed no method for disconnecting my consciousness from space-time and observing my sleeping body splayed out over the leather seat. Which forced me to make an existential wager. I selected the theory that, if true, presented the most immediate peril. What harm was there in playing things too safe? I reasoned. And, on the other hand, what benefit would I glean from assuming the sleepwalking theory and dying a few hours later, strangled by the pickle loaf's tendrils? 

Yes, I'd surrendered to my paranoia again. Can you blame me? I'd seen and heard too much. The vanishing of the hose extension seemed too much like the actions of a cognizant creature acting out of self-preservation. What a coincidence--my one extermination tool had evaporated. 

And I could find nothing to replace it either, even after hours of searching and cursing and hurling my possessions hither and thither. I didn't know if the vacuum had come with any replacements, because the presence of the vacuum itself was a mystery to me. But I couldn't help wondering if all my other "hose-like" appliances had vanished too.

As things stood, I'd lost my best means of prodding my junk from a distance. So the way forward would be treacherous, require determination and--I had begun to realize--cunningness to match my adversary's. I started envisioning new sporting methods. 

Hunting was a vain endeavor, first of all. Even if I managed to find a suitable tool/weapon, it would take me days, weeks to cover every inch of every room. And, worse, a complete search could hardly yield any definite results. If the creature were as clever as I suspected, it would certainly change location whenever I drew close, making my pursuit an endless game of hide and seek. A wild goose chase, or pickle loaf chase, or what-have-you. Perhaps that was the creature's scheme, I reasoned--leading me on and on until I collapsed to the floor in a heap. Defenseless, exposed. 

I decided to turn the tide, lure it out of hiding. Make the pickle loaf do the work instead. My pantry was still stocked with canned food, enough to last me a good number of years, especially considering my sporadic eating habits, and I could spare some corn or beans (both, I decided, since I wasn't sure what the monster's diet consisted of.) So I spent a few hours designing an apparatus out of whatever odds and ends I could uncover, prodding each unexplored region of trash with the end of the broom stick (in place of my missing contraption). 

I forced one of my closets open and pulled a plastic bin from the top shelf and dumped-out all the Christmas decorations I'd store therein. I found one of my tool boxes and opened it and, by a stroke of fortune, exhumed a box of command strips. All I needed then was something to prop-up the bin, and no sooner had the intention entered my mind than I remembered the broom stick in my hand (of course!). 

It was roughly a meter too long, but that was easy to fix. I propped it against the wall and, summoning all my strength, performed a karate kick straight through its mid section, and the wooden shaft split with a loud snap! Clean through. The halves clattered to the floor, and I stooped and picked one up, so elated that I actually lifted the stick toward the ceiling and let-out a war cry. It rumbled through the corridors of my bungalow like the sound of approaching thunder: "Pickle loaf beware! Our hero set out to do something, and he's about to see that thing through to the end!"

Something like that. 

Understand, under normal circumstances, I don't succeed so easily at accomplishing a task. Normally, if I intend to accomplish one thing, I'll need to accomplish something else first, and so on. What might be, for a normal man, a straight line from point A to point B, is, for me, a disordered maze, a labyrinth someone scrawled on an old scrap of parchment. 

Changing a light bulb, for instance. A man like me must first rumage through his cardboard boxes for the box of lightbulbs he stored away years ago, and if he turns up nothing (which will undoubtedly be the case), he must journey to the nearest outlet and purchase a new box. But a man like me can't just step out in public looking like a troglodyte. He must groom himself first. 

And proper grooming requires a razor of some kind. So a man like me will spend more hours digging through his cabinets, and eventually he'll reason that the search would go a lot more smoothly if he had a flashlight to illuminate all the shadowy crannies, and he'll begin hunting for a flashlight next, and so on down the line, until a man like me forgets what he even needed in the first place. 

And if he remembers, he'll reason that he could save himself some trouble if he just learned to live without the appliance that first prompted his vain chasing after the wind. So a man like me will retreat a few paces, and the brambles surrounding him will advance.

But this time, everything fell neatly into place. The Lord, in his capricious grace, bent down, dipped a hand beneath the clouds, and bopped me on the head with a single finger. "Despite all odds, this man will succeed," he whispered. Emboldened by the Lord's blessing, I was a force to be reckoned with. I worked quickly yet stealthily. I was like a creature myself, dear reader, scuttling from room to room, suppressing chuckles. 

In my genius, I envisioned a creative spin on your normal box trap. Just take a plastic bin, place command strips all around its square lip, prop it up with a wooden rod, and you've fashioned yourself a doorless, windowless container without any escape routes. Give the rod a little nudge, and "splat!" or "thud" (or whatever noise a line of command strips makes when it adheres itself to the floor)--our varmint is trapped inside. 

I tossed the broom handle and the box of command strips into the bin and slunk into the kitchen, bin in tow. There the tile floor was optimal for sticking. I shoved aside a layer of dirty paper plates, cleared a bin-sized circle, and erected my snare in the middle, and again, the endeavor was a success. No hangups or hiccups. No disappearing appurtenances. I stood, surveyed my work, hands planted on my hips, practically glowing with elation. The trap was leaning exactly as I'd pictured it in my mind, the broom handle situated just right to topple at the merest breath (or inadvertent brush from a tentacle). 

I only needed to set out the bait, a simple enough enterprise. So simple, I left it off until the end. A trip to my pantry, and I found it, peeking from the highest shelf, a can of pork n' beans, the kind of comfort victual no one in his right mind would refuse. The king of England, seated on his thrown, dines on a bowl of pork n' beans, I reckon. I tossed it from hand to hand as I swaggered back into the kitchen, and the trap was leaning just as I left it, and the whole endeavor was practically completed. 

The can opener. I'd forgotten about the can opener. Doubt slipped into my mind. I'd placed it on the table last time I'd utilized it, certainly. But the table was coated in a whole myriad of things, none of which bore the slightest resemblance to the stainless steel, hand-held-easy-open can-opener I'd snatched-off a gas station rack in my thirties. 

It was in none of my drawers or cabinets either. Believe me, I checked every single one. I threw them open and removed every goddamned item therein, hurling plates, utensils, glassware, old cereal boxes over my shoulder. But the can-opener was gone too. Dematerialized. Vaporized. I didn't want to think about where it had disappeared to (though I had my strong suspicions, as you might imagine). Instead I preoccupied myself with opening the can through some other means. 

Cutting it: I hunted through my discarded utensils and resurrected a butter knife, stood the can of pork n' beans on my kitchen table, gave it a few tentative taps, testing the waters. Then I jabbed at the round metal lid with idiotic force, and the knife glanced off and nicked the table, and the can tipped over on its side. I tried again, this time holding it in place with my other hand, but the result was nearly worse. This time the blade ricocheted and almost lacerated one of my fingers. So I abandoned the venture, reasoning that I could find a better method, one that didn't require me to risk life and limb. 

Man-handling it: I picked the can up and gripped it with both hands, and then I twisted with all my might.  I strained, dear reader. I grunted. But the steel remained stubbornly in place. I gave up after only a few seconds; one, because I quickly recognized the futility of it, two, because I nearly passed-out from the exertion. 

Bludgeoning it: I admit the final method was hardly a conscious decision on my part. Suddenly, the can was airborne, and it met the opposite wall with a violent smash. I'd hurled it, you see, before I could reason with myself. When I picked it up, the lid corner was caved-in like a bumper after a wreck, but I still hadn't breached the titanium shell, goddamnit! I heaved it again, channeling all of the inferno inside me, and for an ephemeral instant, the can was suspended in the air. Then it exploded, dear reader. It split open and painted the wall brown. Brown guts eructed up and down and everywhere. They became a modern art masterpiece dripping down my wall paper. A success, in other words.

I retrieved the butter knife and scraped-off some of the slop onto a paper plate I snatched from the floor. As much as I could. I knew then and there that the brown stain was a permanent addition to my dwelling, but I wanted  to make sure the creature didn't forego the trap in favor of my mess. Once the plate was full, I slid it beneath the bin so it was barely brushing the wooden shaft. Then I crept away and alighted upon my easy chair.

I decided to feign sleep until the snare worked its magic. 

Then I promptly drifted off for real. 

And I proceeded to dream.