My neighbor is tunneling to China through my dining room

For the past week or so, I've been using a laptop in my dining room. The reason for this is both boring and irrelevant. Basically, I had it in there for a reason one day and I'm a lazy sot (okay, so I'm not really a sot, but I dig that word), so I just hadn't moved it back out again.

Have you ever used a rasp?

Well, it sounds like my neighbor is using a rasp in the wall of my dining room. About forty or fifty times a day, I hear this:

VRRRP-VRRRP. VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRRP-VRRRRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRP-VRRP-VRRP-VRRP. VRRP. THUNK. VRRRP-VRRRP. VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-THUD.

Then I hear people cooing and making vaguely intelligible "ooh, GOOD [baby/dog/prisoner-chained-to-the-wall/whatever]" sounds.

VRRP-VRRP-COO. COOOOOOOOO-VRRRRRP-VRRRRRRP. GOOOOD [MUFFLED THING].

There was a book that I read when I was about twelve- The Funhouse, I think it was called. (I was big into horror movies and scary books when I was a kid.) I don't remember much about the book except that there was this freaky little reptilian-circus-freak baby at the beginning of the book.

[Well, whaddya know- it was a book written by Dean Koontz under the pseudonym "Owen West". Must be why it was a stupid book.]

I remember that the reptile-freak-baby-thing had long claws and scales and pointy teefs and green snake eyes (or other equally scarynasty stuff) and that it tried to disembowel its mother when she got creeped out by it and tried to smother it with a pillow. Or maybe, come to think of it, it actually did kill her. Whatever. It was a scary baby-monster. Scarier than the regular ones, even.

Well, I think that's what is living next door to me. I think there's a pretty, white, lacy crib up against the wall, and in that crib there is a fanged, clawed, lizardy thing digging its way over to my apartment. I think it's actually on its way to China, but 'cause it's a lizard and all, it doesn't have a very good sense of direction. Then again, it is heading east, now that I think about it.

If I'm found disemboweled in my dining room, I'm telling you, it was the lizard next door.