"Come A Little Closer, Clarice...."

As I am in search of a) an apartment, b) furnishings for said apartment, c) job with which to pay for said apartment and furnishings and since all these things can be found together (along with the potential man of my life!) on Craig's List, I am completely addicted.

I check the website every 20 minutes.

Yesterday I found dishes and a loveseat, $25 each, both of which I picked up last night (from opposite ends of town) after borrowing a friend's mini-van.

It was after 9 PM and I still hadn't been home or eaten and I suddenly found myself lifting the couch into the van with this man I had just met 5 minutes before. I was inside the van. It all seemed too familiar in a chills down the spine kind of way.

"Have you ever seen Silence of the Lambs?" I asked him from inside the van. He looked at me strangely, maintaining a shocked expression despite his eyes narrowing in suspicion, as though he were suddenly afraid of me.

"Um...not in awhile."

"The young single woman - the one he throws into a hole in the ground with the idea to use her skin as a lampshade - she gets abducted when she's inside a van 'helping' her abductor move a couch." Somehow, I thought that if I said this, he would know that I knew what he might be up to. They say a woman is less likely to be a victim if the attacker knows she's going to put up a fight. They're lazy at heart - attackers.

"Oh, right..." he said. Yeah, buddy, you just keep away. This couch is too good to be true for only $25 and I smell something fishy. I handed over my cash, flashed a smile, jumped into the van and spent 10 minutes pulling out of his long, narrow driveway. So much for a quick escape.

And that something fishy I smelled, it might have been the couch. Yes, as a matter of fact....