Benny had succumbed to something resembling sleep in that she at some point no longer noticed the piano music, or the occasional yip from the other storage unit that signified her werewolf neighbor for the most part settled down. Could one [i]really[/i] sleep when they had no eyes to close or a physical brain to go into a REM cycle?

In any case, those were questions Benny long since gave up putting much thought into. What she [i]did[/i] think about, however, was suddenly being pulled back into the waking world. Benny bolted upright then, not even registering the announcement until it mentioned her name. Even then, her mind went back to the Chopin music and her neighbor and the racket he’d been making earlier.

“What the---? Goddammit, Randy, settle down in the---!”

Benny lifted up her face mask up over her skull to a sudden bright spotlight, and would have winced had she had eyelids. She then picked out a stage, a microphone in front of her, and what she guessed to be a small audience. Only then did she briefly the recall the announcement she heard as it startled her awake. Something about “humor in humerus,” and then her name.

“Er, sorry about that,” she said, grinning. “Werewolf neighbor.”

Benny pushed herself off her chaise lounge, standing up and brushing down her robe. Was this a dream? Maybe it was a dream, but she was obviously the star of some kind of comedy show, and that was all the incentive needed to run with it.

“You can probably imagine with the full moon and the howling at night and the banging against the walls when you’re trying to sleep.”

Not exactly a planned routine, but the first rule in entertainment was to take any stumbles and roll with them. So she picked up the microphone and kept at it, reaching up only once to adjust the face mask on her skull like a headband to keep it in place.

“It’s like, ‘Hey man, I need to wake up on the right side of the coffin tomorrow! I’ve got a very important reaping! Can you keep it down?’ But hey, I try to be neighborly. It’s not like the guy [i]asked[/i] to be a werewolf, you know?”

As she spoke, Benny’s eyesockets better adjusted to the bright spotlight, and she started to pick out the people in the crowd. A very fine Asian man in ancient robes, a half-rotted zombie in fantasy armor -- handsome guy -- and a crocodile with an afro. Another being might say this dream took a turn for the weird. For Benny, this oddly enough felt normal when half of her friends and neighbors were monsters and/or weirdos. Just ones she didn’t know, which was the only thing she considered weird about it.

“So I go to talk to him one night. Extend the arm of friendship. He accepted it---and my leg too! Gotta say, things were kind of awkward after that.”