“Why name a rat Mufasa?"

“Because he Mufasa than you think."

The pun apparently hit an exposed funny bone, because the sales associate shocked herself with the noise that burst out of her mouth, which then triggered a cascading volley of laughs and polite chuckles around the little electronics shop I'd entered.

It was later in the same day – that is, the day I'd met a man with a stag's head who owned an occult shop – and I had again made a surprising decision, this time to buy a new hard drive at a store instead of ordering it online like a normal person. I wasn't sure what was driving these decisions to go outside. I had some guesses, all to do with the apparent entity living in my new apartment with me. It also explained why I had stubbornly brought Mufasa with me even knowing he sometimes made store owners and shoppers uneasy. Some of it felt internally motivated, though, rather than externally. My upstairs neighbors' friendliness that morning, with their welcome casserole, had been warming. My long bout of emotional piano playing the night before had defused some of the tension of moving to a new place. It felt good to let tiny sips of my old curious, exploratory self influence my behavior.

“Anyway, the ten TB drives are in the back if you want one. Can I ask what sort of work you do?"

Not and get a legal response. “It's for Computer Tech Company downtown."

“Ooooh, you work for CTC? What's it like at CTC HQ?"

“I don't know. My first day is Monday."

She bubbled again. “Oh that's great! Well, you and Mufasa follow me back and I'll show you what we have. It's good to have a physical backup – CTC's cloud backups are trash."

Oh, how I love computer people. No qualms, no ass-kissing. Function and form, and corporate can suck eggs.

We came back to check out and the sales associate got all shy, just briefly. “Hey, also? I love the eye shadow. What color is it?"

“Uh." I stood in stunned bafflement. I didn't even know what tone my own skin was (caramel? hazel? mocha?), much less the first thing about makeup.

She sheepishly slurred half a dozen space-filling words into a sentence-like utterance and handed me my merchandise.

Anyway, I went home with something God would have had to ponder a while to crack and got to work partitioning it. It wasn't hard per se, but it was something to think carefully about since I was, from some perspectives, undermining a tech giant by planning to have my own backups. I figured they'd abscond with it for a day and hand it back to me wrapped in a bow made of legal yellow tape and proprietary encryptions, but it was worth the measure of self-reliance even if they had half a dozen heavily-armored backups scattered around the country.

Look, the hard drive really doesn't matter. What mattered was my other purchase, which I was trying not to think about. It was a little itty-bitty security camera I could mount discretely in my room, so that there would at least be a recording of what had happened like in that movie Poltergeist whenever the thing living in my apartment decided to do me in. I clipped it to Mufasa's cage on a whim and told him sternly not to enter film school unless it was what he really wanted, all while trying to think as hard as I could about anything else. My hunch, which was based on nothing, was that my invisible roommate had some amount of access to my thoughts, and that maybe I could “hide" the camera in plain sight.

I realized also, hey, maybe keeping a journal while I dissociated was a good idea.

One easily accessible thought was my necklace. It was a simple leather cord with a shark tooth, but as of last night, the shark tooth had acquired a bright, deep ruby that seemed to have been cut to perfectly fit where the tip of the tooth had broken off years ago. It was beautiful and menacing, where it had previously been borderline juvenile and cool. The whole tooth was maybe the size of a half dollar coin. It never left my neck and always rested comfortably at the top of my sternum, so the fact something had made a significant alteration to its construction was plenty alarming to keep me from thinking about the camera.

Evening came and I dug into another helping of the casserole Manuel and Maria, the upstairs neighbors, had made for me. I had the wherewithal to take Maria's advice and heat it up in the oven instead of the microwave. When I pulled it out, I noticed with a wry, worried sigh that I had once again prepared two helpings, just as the previous evening I had ordered two delivery meals and this morning, I had cut two helpings of the dish for brunch.

I'm agnostic, and yes, I've heard every jibe that that just means half-assed atheist. And I was lazy about my spiritual beliefs. Why not spirits. Why not God. Why not damnation. Why not a ceaseless march into the void. With infinite options, how could choosing one possibly matter? The hell of it was, it meant I couldn't arbitrarily narrow down my options for what was going on in the new place. All I could do was pull out a beer (and a second beer) and look up news stories about the previous occupant, whom Harry the occult shop owner (with a stag's head) had only called Ms. Obb. According to him, she'd been caught in a high-profile embezzlement case and promptly left the premises.

Anyway, holy shit she'd gone toe to toe with giants.

Ms. Obb, AKA Ebony Maurice Obb, had siphoned money from dozens of private investors and the firm that employed her alike, all by forming close personal bonds and taking advantage of people's trust. She was an outgoing, charming woman in her mid-fifties. I found an interview with her daughter from after the search warrant was put out and Ms. Obb had gone missing.

“After Dad died, she really withdrew into herself. Her friends kept trying, we kept trying, but she just wasn't the same Mom she used to be. I was against it when she said she wanted to move, but she'd been in a rut two years and at least it was a change. I wanted her to date again! Mom isn't fit to be an old widow the rest of her life. So she moved on in."

The reporter asked, “And that helped?"

“Not immediately, but yes it did. I told her, Momma, you keep calling me once a week, 'cuz I'm worried and my little girl needs her grandma. The first few weeks, she'd call and we'd talk about the weather and about my daughter, and then I don't know, maybe a month in, she said, 'You know your daddy always wanted me to push a little harder at that job. Both of you believed I could, and I never did.' And I said, 'Mom, yes. If you feel alright, you tell 'em you ready to work again, and you do what you do.'"

“And that's what she did?"

“That is what she did. I just – ha HAH – I just didn't know she'd do it so good. Started as just her getting back to work, and a year later, here she is, raking in millions."

“Do you know where your mother is now?"

Raucous laughter clipped the mic and a series of bleeped words signaled the end of the interview.

Huh.

With another sigh, I noticed both portions of casserole and both beers had been consumed while I did my research even though I only had memories of the one. My motivation to ever try cooking it for myself was fizzling rapidly, which wasn't a new sensation. I was accustomed by this point in my life to brief flashes of the ingenuity and drive I used to have being snuffed out once considered a second time. I would just order in or see if I could stomach the idea of cooking the chicken breasts. This line of thinking was a bad sign, but what was there to do. Therapy. I'm not going to therapy. I'm not broken. I just. I don't know.

Instead of pursue that thought, I decided to finally pluck up the courage to look at myself in a mirror. The sales associate had said I had nice eye shadow. I had managed to coax my brain out of panic mode by convincing it she must have been referring to the perpetual dark circles around my eyes and not known it, but there are some meaningful differences between makeup and a dermatological scar that will follow you to the grave.

Scar isn't the right word. I think they're bruises, technically. Bruises and melanin? Something like that.

So, to the full-length mirror in my bedroom I went. Mufasa escorted me there and stood on his hind legs to bob his head curiously at the mirror. Ah, there was the problem. I noticed it probably at the same time he did, but Mufasa has opinions and wit of his own, and far be it from me to presume them. My eyes, you see, were surrounded by slim rings, no more expansive than pool goggles, of millimeter-length, coal black fur.

Okay.

No, probably not okay. I felt at them with my fingers. The fierce fur was soft to my face*. It was unmistakably fur, though I could see how someone could convince themselves it was heaps of eye shadow. I pulled at it and winced as it tugged at my skin. Maybe glue, maybe my ethereal roommate had pulled a prank and glued it on there? I plucked at it a few times. Hairs came away in my fingertips. I wrinkled my nose, pinched, and yanked, and stared at the strands in my fingers. The roots were there.

Not okay.

Look, I know what you want to hear. “I had always loved wolves. I had always loved animals, or rats, or weird things." No. No, I hadn't. I hadn't cared. I had Mufasa. I had grown up with a macaw. And that was it. I liked logic puzzles and music. My nerddoms were Star Trek and fighting games and the WWE. I liked hikes, but not so I could “feel the animal within" or whatever; I liked them because they were quiet and they felt peaceful. I didn't headbang to Metallica's “Of Wolf and Man" for any reason any of the other millions of metalheads didn't.

I then had what I now understand to be a panic attack. I slowly sat down on the floor. I curled my knees up to my chest. I stared into the middle distance. My breath came shallowly, whenever it pleased. I let myself fall onto the floor. And then I just… stayed there. For a long time.

I don't know if you've had a panic attack. They come in different forms, but it's generally not a bunch of frenzied flailing and wailing. It's sharp, tight, sob-like whimpers punctuating long minutes of silence and staring. It's trying to simply not… be. From outside it, I can call it a different flavor of the sort of apathy that had enveloped me over the course of my last employment, but from within, there was no escape. No window, no light. There was a wolf in the room, hungry, stalking, and there was no way out, and it wouldn't pounce, and so all I could do was pule and try not to be noticed.

Mufasa stuffed his nose in my ear and started hunting earwax after twenty minutes had passed. I startled, and that broke me out of the cyclic thoughts that had kept me petrified. With that tiny break, I was able to unclench a few of my muscles at a time. I immediately put my hand up to cover him and stroke him and basically just make as much surface area contact with my familiar as I could. It settled my breathing over the next few minutes. A portion of my conscious mind recognized that I was in a state that was unsustainable and started on additional self-soothing mechanisms. I took deep breaths. I felt at my necklace. As my body tenderly unraveled, the world came back into focus. Some ever-wise, deep, primal mind hidden in the back of my brain said, “Water. Food." So I got up, robotically poured a glass of water from the faucet, and ate a yoghurt snack cup (which was shared generously with Mufasa).

Another deep breath. I brought my hands up to my face again and felt around my eyes. Soft fur, still there. I steeled myself and walked downstairs to my bedroom to look. My reflection arrived a second or two after I did. The more punctual between us patiently waited, then inspected more closely. My plain brown eyes inspected back. I turned my head one way. My reflection turned its head the same way, half a second later. I turned my head the other way, and it caught on faster this time. Slow learner, if it honestly thought

What the fuck. I punched the mirror, and thank the skies that I'm a scarecrow with no fighting experience, because breaking mirrors means seven years' bad luck, mostly stemming from shards of glass getting embedded in your knuckles and the carpet. Instead, there was a harmless bonk and I stepped away. My reflection did, too, but I had cognitive dissonance from the way it was fractionally out of sync with me.

I'd drunk the beer too fast. That had to be it. I'd drunk the beer too fast so I wasn't seeing straight, and the rings around my eyes had, I don't know, developed some sort of rash. I'm not a doctor; maybe hair follicles spring up in response to stress. Using my phone and a web portal to my new insurance, I made an appointment for Wednesday, which was just, eons distant from the present Saturday, but without pain as a symptom, I couldn't justify dialing an emergency line to myself.

Instead, I made sure my security camera was working and could see the mirror, my bed, and the entrance to my bedroom. I found myself looking at the extremely expensive business card I had tucked in my wallet earlier that day. “Harry Normandy, Harry's Occult and Sundry." It seemed to me that if anyone would know what was going on, it was him, but I still couldn't quite let myself think it wasn't severe dissociative identity disorder from stress. I put in an hour of piano practice, put Mufasa away, and with trepidation oozing out of my pores, slipped into bed.

*from "Beasts," a poem by Richard Wilbur

Smoke billowed out of my eyes and someone left my room. 

I watched as my body collapsed into a cloud of ashy vapors. In the same moment, smoke rushed from beyond the plane of the mirror and took shape as a vaguely human creature. In the same motion with which it coalesced, it stepped into the room from the mirror with a stride that was too short for the speed it moved. Two steps, and it had left the room. The movement was purposeful and without hesitation or consideration. My jaw so tight it hurt, I rewound again and watched. My blankets fell where my body had been. A being made of smoke stepped out of my mirror. Visible. Real.

Super good visual effects work, but nothing I'd never seen before. All the same, I couldn't help being impressed with myself for how cleanly I must have gotten the recording off the camera, looped in hours of stillness to cover for when I'd been working on it, then put it back on, all without leaving a trace I could find in any of my computer's log files. I had even gone to the trouble of deleting any history of downloading reference clips or whatever I'd used to do the smoke effect.

These are the stories we tell ourselves, even when yesterday, we met a man with a stag's head.

At 4:30-ish in the morning, the entity had come back in and stood over my bed. It had stared down at where I had been sleeping for long moments while its body slowly roiled. Its eyes were a hollow, yellow color. Its face was elongated like an animal, but indistinct. In a quick, single step, it strode back into the mirror. In that same instant, tendrils of the same smoke poured upward from beneath my bed and crawled under my sheets to reconstitute my form. As I watched the sequence again and again, I heard myself whimpering. I was afraid.

It seemed prudent to check my body and possessions for augmentations in the style of the ruby that had been added to my necklace the previous night. My cloud-like hair didn't have any new ornaments or colors. My skin seemed unchanged – and I was thorough about that – and while the rings around my eyes had stayed, they didn't seem to have expanded. When I opened my fridge, though, I learned that within walking distance there was a one-of-a-kind gourmet grocer that was open very, very late.

Cornish hens were split between my freezer and fridge. Smoked salmon. Unpronounceable cheeses. The entire bottom half stuffed to the brim with fresh greens and root veggies. The shelves in the door held imported beers and dessert wines. The freezer was crammed with sausage meats and sirloin steak (packaged for deep storage), as well as a few flavors of gelato and an expensive-looking vodka.

I opened my kitchen cupboards. Jars to survive an apocalypse. Spices that had to have cost more than my fancy-pants hard drive. Fruits, more cheese, charcuterie meats, red wine, and a whiskey in a ludicrously crafted glass bottle that – I did the math, I promise – was older than I was.

A second panic attack, then. This wasn't generosity. This was an assault, just like the gemstone had been. I sank to the floor again and tightened myself into a little ball of bone and nerves. Everywhere, black smoke when I closed my eyes, my body dissolving in a single moment, my entire physical being manipulable at the whim of some hidden entity.

Sure, it was clearly trying to be “nice." Overwhelmingly beneficent. It had seen a broken piece of jewelry and fixed it in the best way possible. It had perceived my aversion to cooking and brought a cornucopia of interesting, exotic foods to pique my interest. You know who else is “nice"? The guy who tries to get you to himself after class behind the school. The girl who breaks into your locker to leave love notes and homemade candy. The person who knocks on your window at night to offer you a rose. All of those are “nice." With the right context, it's even romantic. Without context, it's an invasion and a threat.

Thank goodness for Mufasa, though. The fat rat let himself out of his cage and scamper-waddled up the stairs to demand breakfast by clawing my scalp and neck for the treat I usually tucked behind one ear. “Thanks, bud," I choked out as my tetanic state gradually softened. “How do you like… Iranian cheese?" I climbed to my feet, grabbed one of the packages, and shared a breakfast of a completely new culinary experience.

I found I had been supplied with a single-serving French press, an electric coffee grinder, and single-source beans from Ethiopia, so I figured I might as well do as suggested, as long as this amount of expense had been taken. I mean, what can I say. It was magnificent. The aroma alone brightened the senses and made the morning sun streaming through my windows more golden. The taste muted the sounds of the city outside.

Once finished with the indulgences, I found myself wrapped in an idyllic sort of melancholy. It wasn't a deep sadness. It was a light, settling, comfortable sorrow. I noted in the midst of it that I hadn't prepared any extra coffee or breakfast cheese for my extrasensory patron. It followed that I was experiencing its sense of loss for not having been included, or perhaps it was contrite. Regardless, I reined in my sympathy for it. One of us was an intruder in the other's domain. Reconciliation wasn't going to come with some extravagant display, and besides, I suspected that this wasn't a heartfelt apology. It was still an uninvited attempt to “fix" part of my life.

I only had the one day left to myself before work started. Not entirely sure what to do with it, I decided it simply couldn't hurt to visit Harry. As I stepped out the door, I nearly ran into Maria and Manuel in the tiny entryway.

“Oh! Good morning," Maria serenaded us. “Who's your friend?" She looked at the space just past my head and behind my shoulder.

I blanched and firmly chose not to follow her gaze. “Wh, uh."

“What's his name? Tubby fella," Manuel commented, his eyes settling on the same place.

It clicked that they meant my rat. I was so jumpy after the past day and a half. “Oh, yeah. Manuel, Maria, this is Mufasa. Mufasa, say hi." He obediently waved a little paw and was rewarded with a dab of peanut butter from my finger – again, I always, always have treats on my person for him. “Tell them how old you are." To the couple's delight, he lifted both paws and got another nibble.

In all seriousness, Maria, who had clearly never met a trained rat, asked, “Is that two, or eight?"

“He's two. He's an old man. He's fat because he's also very smart."

“Oh, he's precious. Well, don't let us keep you two," she chimed. “We're just on our way to choir practice."

Something in her manner became uncertain. She seemed in an early stage of being flustered. She must have wanted to ask something. So, I beat her to the punch.

“Hey, uh." It was awkward, trapped in the little hallway. “Did you, uh. Did you see what time I got in last night?"

It was a weird question, but it hit the mark. She looked embarrassed. “I don't want to pry," she lied, politely. She and Manuel exchanged glances.

He added, “The last person to live here, that lady Ms. Obb, came and went at odd hours, too. Are you… related? I saw in the news she has family that lives not too far from here."

I shook my head no. “No, I think I'm… sleepwalking, is all."

“Oh, I've heard of that," Maria sympathized. “My uncle used to sleep-drive around the neighborhood. His partner had to start hiding both their keys every night."

“It's the stress, I guess," I offered. They nodded and counter-offered to keep an eye on me, which I accepted gratefully.

It rippled through me, in psychosomatic waves of realization, that this was the most positive interaction I'd had in person with acquaintances in weeks. Months? In my preparations to move, I had stopped going to get-togethers and stopped planning to hang out with people. Friends had voiced their concerns, but I hadn't summoned the urge to care, even though I had wanted to. A few had sent texts asking how I was. I had answered, but all my answers had been lies.

Anyway, they left, and I went to Harry's. Harry and his stag head smiled a welcoming, professional smile at me at first glance, but then he quickly frowned. I'll tell you, a frowning stag face in a trim grey suit surrounded by what I could only assume were tools for everything from necromancy to dick pills (which aren't that far distant from one another, one could argue) was more intimidating than I could have predicted. Panic crept into my shins. It was a bright, beautiful morning. I had a new job and a new apartment and the full support of my family and, presumably, my friends, and the sight of this shop owner frowning at me petrified me from the knees down.

“Are you alright?" he asked. His voice was smooth and round and soft. My right hand jerked out to steady myself, remembered everything in here was priceless antiques, and instead flailed behind me at the doorframe so I could catch my balance. My left went to Mufasa. The morning light reflected and refracted too much through all the finery. I stroked my familiar and focused on deep breaths.

“No," I stammered, surprising myself with my honesty. Without a word or hesitation, Harry walked just to my side and turned a sign on the door from “Open" to “Back In A Jiffy." He pulled a scrim across the glass. He was slightly taller than most men and I was slightly shorter than most people, so his rack of antlers towered over me as he moved past, but Mufasa anchored me just fine in the moment. I didn't fall and I didn't curl into a ball.

Harry stepped away again to face me from a cordial six feet away. The heavy, earthy smells in the boutique washed through my being as I regained balance and deepened my breathing. With the door closed and the elegant curtain drawn down, the light dimmed fractionally – enough that it was no longer pressing at my vision. He watched patiently and unapologetically used the time it took me to recover to look inquisitively at my eyes. After I had been still for a few moments, he gently asked me, “You're a little sad." Not the cruel meaning of the word. A careful, caring request for confirmation of what he saw.

At the question, emotion swept in. My parents were across the country. I hated my job. The new one wouldn't be any different. I had let friendships go slack. I was barely competent enough to buy my own groceries. I was starting to have panic attacks, alone in my apartment in a new city. Never mind fur on my eyes and phantoms in my bedroom. I was sad. Simply, plainly, sad.

“Yeah," I answered as my eyes whelmed with tears. I sobbed. Harry Normandy, in every way a perfect stranger with his soft, brown eyes and surreal crown of antlers, delicately pried my grip from the door frame, clasped my hand between the two of his, and let me.