Meanwhile...

...the day job lay slumbering: dreams of apostasy goaded orbs behind open lids to feverish REM, rectangular pupils dilated and contracted unseeing. Awaking with a start, the day job stretched its corpulence, the fleshy wattles quivering in waves from cranium to coccyx. It licked its lips over worn, blunted teeth: poking the tongue between generous diastems it uffished, and recalled the absence in its mental well-being. The obeisances of the shades were like the field of Carthage post Punic: fallow.