Janica BuenconsejoI could hear the distant sounds of foot steps from outside of the laboratory, the low frequency chatter of people rushing to go home. The biology lab is dark, but for a row of lights where I am seated. It must have been more than an hour since I have been working because the cells in my visual system randomly started ring making phosphenes appear in my visual eld every now and then. !umbling through my dissecting bag, my post"central gyrus is telling me that the cold metal that I am feeling is the tempered steel of my si#e $$ scalpel. I make one last cut to the cat%s liver, and almost instantly, bile came oo#ing out which would have probably activated my Insula, if it were my rst time to gash a cadaver. &tudying a dead cat is not e'actly part of the night%s agenda, I had other plans. But alas()y work calls out to me and beckons me to nish it, so I had to cancel. *fter closing up the cat, and washing my late' and formaldehyde smelling hands, Istarted packing my things. &uddenly, the slow creaking of a door opening alerted my Basilar )embrane, the sound reverberates throughout the dark room+ I look and I see a silhouette of a man standing by the doorway, holdingsomething I could not make out. ,e moves. I reach for my dissecting bag, hoping to get to my scalpel rst before he gets to me. I now fully realise that I may be in danger, which at this point, made my *mygdala go berserk. &omething about him seems familiar, though. I rummage through my e'plicit memory, -ipping through the events that had happened, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man who is inching his way towards me+ but the darkness of the room betrayed me and continued to hide him from my eyes.I decided to make a run for it when he.Oh, hello! Have you eaten? I am not sure which thought would scare me the most/ almost stabbinghim, or knowing who e'actly this man is+ and I think in about ve seconds I will know which one.When you cancelled, I decided to just bring dinner here, soyeah, I thought you might be hungryI am about to say no when my lateral hypothalamus let out the loudestcry in the guise of the most inhuman stomach growl ever made by any living human. ,e turned on all of the lights which blinded me for a few seconds. *s the photoreceptors in my retina are alerted, the cones in my fovea are actively concentrating on the person who is now in front of me. I have never been this close to him, looking at him now in high denition is awkward+ but my septum has gone haywire and started ring like there is no tomorrow, albeit the septum does not fully capture the whole spectrum of happiness that I am feeling in that moment. In the rst three minutes of our dinner, only the silence seemed to make a sound. ,e breaks the ice by asking me about what I do when I am not studying, and from there we started talking about books, television shows, bad reality shows and music+ I never thought I would be able to talk about these things to anyone, let alone a guy. ,e stops for a moment, as if he is trying to gure out what he needs to do ne't.,e leans forward, perusing the moment, moving near me until his mouth is touching my ear, and whisperedI thought you were going to stab me with your scalpel)y trusty old hippocampus quickly remembered what a joke is and discerned that he just made one, so I let out a laugh which sounded like a dog and a hedgehog were crying in pain.0up, go gure. 1nce all the awkward laughing is done, and the ventromedial hypothalamus starts telling us to stop gorging on the food, procedural memory dictated me to clear up the table. &o I stand and started reaching for the plastic bag that he brought in with him, when my midtemporal corte',through the dorsal stream, slowly processed that he just stopped my hand from getting it. I can only imagine my somatosensory receptors panicking at the electric touch. ,e reached for my shoulders and started violently shakingme. I try to tell him to stop, but he keeps on doing it, and the shaking progressively becomes more violent.I wake up. I start taking in my environment whilst my midbrain reticularformation is still ring. I realise where I am, back in the dark biology room and lying right in front of me is the open cat cadaver. It was only just an 23) dream. But my 45 cells failed to register the gure sitting beside me.You ell asleep! I thought it was ormaldehyde, but I thin" you#re just hungry! Wanna eat?*nd yet it could still happen.