Fiction.

This mob, while obviously insane with anger, is also LOUD. Like. Really. Loud. Remember that anti-smoking commercial where the guy sings a snappy tune through his stoma? Imagine about forty of that guy — but more gurgly, and you’ll start to get an idea of what my neighborhood’s theme song is of late. Gurgle Gurg Gurgy-Gurg Gurgy Gurg-Gurg! Suffice to say: we didn’t sleep much.

We decided to spend the night in the office so we could try and keep an eye on things outside. A couple hours after the sun set, as we tried to sleep, someone or something broke out the window on our front door. The dogs went insane (again mostly Shooter) — which didn’t help things. The next four or five hours were filled with methodical scratching and banging punctuated by occasional gurgling. Over and over and over again. We had stacked most of our junk against the windows not the front door and were just starting to make plans for a mid-night escape when everything stopped.

Then someone outside screamed.

After that it was pretty quiet. We actually got a couple hours of sleep. After I woke up, early this morning, I got onto the roof to check things out. Unlucky for us, the only roof access in our house is to take a ladder out on the porch roof. Lucky for us, we got the ladder out of the shed about six months ago and never put it back. That’s how we roll.

I can just see into Carytown from the northeast corner of the roof. There are a couple hundred people congregated at Cary and Sheppard. Glass and Powder’s been looted and it looks like it might be on fire. I’m pretty sure there are three bodies in a neat pile at the bus stop. One of them looks like it’s wearing a Saint Benedict School uniform.

We can’t stay here. Not after last night. I don’t know what we are going to do but it for sure isn’t stay here completely at the mercy of the Gurglies.

Also, thanks for the concern posted in the comments. We are ok thus far and doing our best. I encourage everyone to stay in their houses — upstairs if you’ve got ‘em. As for calling the police I’m sure you know by now that the lines are down. Not only are all the lines down but I haven’t seen a single cop (and they are usually copious in our neighborhood) since this all began. As for guns — which cops have — we don’t own any. I’m not anti-gun; they just scare me. Right now I’m reconsidering.

BTW, has anyone heard from Justin? I haven’t since his post last night. I can’t imagine driving home during all of this.

Particularly Shooter. Shooter’s job in our family is to let us know when anything is amiss. Outside, inside, under the house, wherever, whenever. So the eruption of barks around 7AM this morning was odd but not unexpected. I assumed the “damn teenagers” were playing their “rap music” or some such.

I guess sometimes it is easy to confuse teens with “angry mob.”

Our office windows opens up to the roof of our porch where you can get a pretty good view up and down our street. Down the block a group of about fifteen people were smashing in the windows and doors of a small one-story cinderblock house. Elsewhere on the block people were headed aimlessly towards Cary St. and the general direction of the Byrd.

We live in an old house built in 1923 in one of the original suburbs of Richmond. This means huge ceilings and equally huge windows. It also means our house is already falling apart without the incessant bangings of an angry mob.

I woke up Val. Fifteen minutes later after I convinced her I wasn’t kidding — that there really was a mob of lunatics tearing a house down on our block. We ran downstairs to see what we could stack in front of our windows: a couch, loveseat, tables, TV (sigh).

That about catches us up to the present.

The mob has moved west (away from us) to the next one-story house and probably doubled in size. The new house isn’t made of cinderblocks and they’re having a much easier time with it. There’s a growing commotion coming from the direction of the Byrd and I see more and more people ambling in that direction.

Its been about six hours since Shooter woke us up. We are barricaded in our house and figuring out what to do next. I don’t think we can ride this out here. Our house just isn’t safe enough. If anyone out there is reading this leave a comment. I think we’d be safer in a group.

Maybe we can head toward a school building or something.