“A new apartment will make you feel like a new person. Good to kick all the old ruts, yeah?"

Brandon had an awful, persistent habit of optimism. Made him an unpleasantly likable man. Even Brandon, though, had a light edge to his voice. I'd grated on him during the eight-hour moving process. No, I didn't know where I was going to put my potted bromeliad. No, I wasn't sure whether I could get the keypad entry set up for visitors. No, I hadn't measured the full-length mirror that had been left in the bedroom.

Basically: No, I'm neither curious nor curious. I just wanted to move into a new place because it was closer to my new job, which despite everything, was no different from my old job. Different title, different business email, different Karens, but the same work. It was, honestly, the worst possible outcome.

Life had been a rut. And when I say a rut, I don't mean a couple months, or a bad year. Years. It felt like years since anything had changed, and with no indication to the alternative, all I could think about was the grave. Not leaping into it, no, but the fact that in a few short decades, I would fall in, sleepy and a little sad, like I had been every day for these past four years.

“Yeah. Thanks."

“Any time!" He appraised me a little longer. I'd gotten us a pizza and a 2-liter of soda, which wasn't really… great compensation for moving someone all day. I knew I'd disappointed him and possibly offered a passive insult by not being more cooperative. Anyway, he left.

And then I was alone in my new apartment, surrounded by miscellaneous and my pet rat, Mufasa.

“Come here, Mufasa," I muttered, holding out a hand towards his cage. The big waddling albino deftly undid his lock and raced under my long-sleeved hoodie up to my shoulder, where he perched to retrieve the treat I always kept behind one ear. The touch of my tiny companion gave me some amount of comfort. It was enough to stand up off the floor and at least put together my bed again. While I worked on the flatpack frame, I kept seeing myself in the mirror on the wall. Tannish skin, near-black hair in a thundercloud to my shoulders, too-lean physique, and dour, square jaw. A shark's tooth necklace with the tip chipped off the main ornament hung over a black it-comes-in-packs-of-three vee neck and cargo pants like two oddly cut tents forming a canopy over Velcro strap sandals.

Yes. I cared how I looked. At twenty-three, someone living in their second apartment probably shouldn't still look like a college freshman. I wasn't a prodigy – I hadn't even graduated. Instead, two years had been long enough to figure out college was a scam and I could code better than any M.S. student on the East coast. But the light had gone out. I'd landed my first job at twenty by being aggressive in my interview and demonstrating on my laptop, on the spot, that I could perform. Over the next three years, I got told “no" by DoD-fellating dipshits enough times that… goats climb mountains, but if you tie one to a stake in the ground, it'll put all that energy into MMORPGs and its newly discovered ability to buy beer. It was nothing short of an act of God and my disinterest in food that had kept me skinny. Anyway, the bed was done.

Normally, my parents would have helped me move, but being on the opposite side of the country, it was too much of an inconvenience. It wasn't too much of one for them to call and lovingly remind me to buy myself groceries and explore the new neighborhood a bit. So, I put Mufasa away and headed out to check the new versions of every store I'd ever been to.

I didn't notice my tail.

The new apartment was a converted townhouse. I had the bottom two floors and a young couple had the top two. Our neighbors were packed in next to us like anchovies on either side, but I didn't mind being in the middle of the block, since it meant less noise from an intersection. I would get florid with my words, but there's no point – it's a middle income, residential city block. Power lines. Two-story buildings distinguishable only by paint jobs from five years ago. Tiny garden plots, two of which seemed obsessively tended to and the rest of which were crapshoots shot by briefly interested gardeners with varying outcomes.

The walk and weather (early spring wind) did nothing to mollify my mood after realizing I'd disappointed Brandon and not only disappointed him, but not been able to bring myself to care openly. Instead of exploring, I went to the closest available tiny grocery store and picked up some frozen veggies, a bag of chicken breasts, and a bunch of instant dinners to microwave when I inevitably let the chicken go bad and relied entirely on frozen meals and delivery. Oh, a bag of rice to ignore, too.

I got back to the apartment. Walking in this time was different from walking in while moving in. While moving in, it hadn't felt like my space. It had felt like an empty vault having stuff put in it. A destination for a large shipment of Things. Now, it was mine. My living space. The place I would be for the next… how long do people live places? Two to eight years? Twenty?

The front door of the building opened into a vestibule about one person could occupy at a time that turned at a sharp right angle to a staircase (I did not envy my upstairs neighbors their moving experience), had two petite mailboxes next to one another, and confronted any visitor with the bland, heavy, wooden door to my apartment. Once inside, there was a coatrack on the floor that one day aspired to be hung up on the wall, a kitchen area with real tile, and wooden floors beyond that with an excellent, marble-colored couch, a similarly excellent easy chair, two shitty metal folding chairs, and a bookshelf looking like the central altar of a moving box-related religious ceremony. It was plenty of space. More than plenty.

After walking through that area, there was a bathroom stuffed into a corner across from a door that I had rapidly removed and stored down the stairs it hid, which led to my bedroom. These stairs were carpeted in forgettable gray^TM (by Pantone), as was the small hallway that featured a door to a full bath and my bedroom. I had a twin bed because that meant most of my room could be occupied by a wall-length computer desk, Mufasa, and my singular prized creative possession: a full-length keyboard.

Back to the front door, though, and my experience entering it. It was weighted to close automatically, but it bumped something the first time and I had to turn and close it manually. “Mufasa, come fix this door," I called downstairs. Obediently, several long moments later, Mufasa did, in fact, come running up the stairs and climb up my pants leg and shirt to sit on my shoulder (where he received a treat), but he did not fix the door. I deigned not to test it presently. I needed the keyboard. An enormous effort of will dumped my groceries in the freezer before I fled to my bedroom.

There was a tiny, foggy window at the top of one wall that let in enough daylight to not need to turn on the ceiling light. In comforting, early evening darkness, I donned headphones, plugged them in, and started playing. I've never been amazing at piano, but you don't have to be good at an instrument to feel rewarded by it. Even if the sounds aren't perfect, they reflect and channel the emotion you intend and if you're playing for yourself, only you need to hear the intention. Anyway,

I played for four hours.

At the end of four hours, I realized I had put the chicken and the rice into the freezer, rectified the problem, and ordered delivery for two. While waiting, I did some actual unpacking between answering texts. The bookshelf was gradually denied its carboard supplicants, who were neatly folded into a pile by the door to be safely ignored, while I populated its shelves with a variety of things from childhood I hadn't let go of. Teen fantasy books, action figures, a trophy from some high school academic competition, a replica dagger from a videogame. Over time, the living room really did become my… space.

Delivery arrived and I stared dumbfounded at the volume of it. I had ordered two entrees of Indian curry, two pairs of samosas, mango lassi, “Vietnamese" iced coffee, and a whole bowlful of honeyed sweetcakes. What are they called. Gulab jamun. I should know that by now. While blinking at the mass of food, I also tapped in an order for beer. They do delivery beer, now. What a world.

What bothered me was that I hadn't dated anyone in two years and hadn't lived with anyone in two years, and when I had lived with someone, we'd rarely eaten at the same time. More than that, I hadn't simply doubled an order. I'd ordered two discrete meals, as though I had been considering another person.

I checked the fridge and freezer for the amount of food I'd gotten at the corner store. That all seemed normal. I checked my beer order. That was not normal. Two sixpacks, one of a nut brown ale I liked and one of some fancy Belgian import. I recognized the name from somewhere. I must have blanked out while putting it in…

Moving stress, I decided, even though the back of my mind knew it wasn't right. I reasoned that guilt from failing to properly reimburse Brandon for his help must have motivated me to buy a second meal. I considered inviting him back over to eat it. I opened my phone. I closed it. Inside, my gut wouldn't let me call him. This wasn't his food. I couldn't explain how I knew it, but this wasn't for him.

Experimentally, I unpacked everything on a low TV table. Before I knew it, I had arranged things side by side, with the dessert between, as though to be shared with another person. I shivered a little. This wasn't normal behavior for me. It wasn't normal behavior for anyone.

Anyway, I ate, the beer arrived, and I took it all downstairs to drink.

All of it. Not just the nut brown ale. I brought all of it downstairs. I left the second meal untouched on the table, but without realizing it, I took both packs of beer with me. Another shiver. If I drank everything here… it wasn't enough to kill most people, but I weighed one-twenty. It was a near thing.

I set about putting together all my equipment. Custom computer with one of those neat-looking glowy cooling systems, three monitors, two keyboards (well, one and a half), and a gaming mouse that conveniently also worked well for navigating different coding environments and text programs. A top-of-the-line gaming chair, since while working, I would pretty much live here. A lot of work was remote nowadays, and thank god for it, though enough was still in-person that the move was a major upgrade.

With all that set up, I popped open a second ale (of course, I also politely uncapped one of the Belgians for whatever entity I seemed to be providing for) and went back to playing piano. The keys were synthetic, but heavy. The weight and feedback meant better control, since I wasn't skilled enough to benefit from those featherlight key settings some professionals use. The light outside had dimmed with evening, so all I had was faded, yellow light from streetlamps, since I felt comfortable in the dark. I was experienced enough to not need to see to play, and I wasn't trying to learn anything new. Right then, I was just playing for someone I loved.

I stopped myself. I wasn't in love with anyone. I was used to playing for myself, by myself. I felt breath on my shoulder and violently elbowed backwards with a shout. Mufasa bit my ear reproachfully and I realized it had just been him nesting in my hair. I reached up to stroke his head and comfort him. Terrified to hear an answer, I muttered, “Is someone else here?"

A car went by outside and it made the light flash in my new mirror in an unsettling way. I flinched and turned on the light. When I came back, the bottle of Belgian was half empty. I cast my sensory memory backwards to see if I could taste the strong, malty flavors that came with those. I searched my physical sensations for feeling bloated, my mental ones for feeling drunk. I walked upstairs and “washed the plates" by throwing all the disposable containers away. There was only one set of them, and they were all empty. The other containers had vanished, including the bowl of gulab jamun. I hadn't touched the mango lassi that I could remember. I didn't feel sick. If I'd eaten that amount of food, I would have been visibly swollen and in a food coma, but I wasn't either of those things. I checked my order receipt. There were the two meals' worth of food.

“Whatever you are," I said with a touch more confidence, “if you're storing takeout containers in the walls, you'd better buy me roach killer, too." Nothing. Some creaking from upstairs as my neighbors ambled about. I wondered if I should greet them and decided against it. That would take that awful, detestable substance called effort, and all of my effort today had been spent on Brandon.

Feeling a little silly, I trekked down and then back upstairs to get the remaining beer in the fridge, hoping that if I was going full-on dissociative, at least putting a door between myself and the beverages would protect my liver. I finished the one I'd opened, tuned out in front of streamed cartoons (with the lights on), put Mufasa away, and went to bed.

My head hit the pillow and someone left my room.

The next morning, my upstairs neighbors brought a casserole of friendship. They were politely charmed by my almost-adult living space. One was a dark-skinned, tall, South American femme fatale with a Ph.D. in biomedical science and the other was a lamb-faced postal worker with an ashy complexion and a surprisingly basso, sonorous voice.

“We met in the city choir," Maria explained in her own low, bronze tones. I hadn't asked, but it did satisfy a curiosity I was pleased to notice. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to invite them in. I didn't have any food prepared. My fridge was full of beer and raw chicken breasts. I could offer them water and frozen peas.

Manuel asked me, “What brings you here?"

“Work," I answered dumbly.

“What kind of work do you do?" he doggedly persevered.

“IT. Project manager at Computer Tech Company."

“Oh? CTC's big here. Pardon me for saying so, but you look young to be a project manager." I pardoned him, silently.

“Yeah, I guess. I'm told I'm a self-starter." The half-assed joke was received with whole-assed politeness.

“What about your roommate? Are they home?"

I froze. So they thought someone else lived here, too. Ice crackled around my chest, metaphorically. “Huh?"

“We saw you moving in with someone, is all."

Oh. Brandon. The flash freeze thawed. “Oh, no. He's a friend. Just helping me move."

“Ah, okay."

Maria jumped in before there was an awkward silence to fill. I could tell she was highly experienced with being a human. “We'll get out of your hair. I'm sure you're tired after last night."

Last night? Not 'yesterday'? “Heh, yeah, moving sort of winded me."

And now came the awkward pause. It was obvious she had meant something else, but now it was too confrontational to correct me. She thought I had left home last night. Maybe I was being paranoid. She saved me with, “It was nice to meet you! I taped the recipe for the casserole to the dish if you want it. You can microwave it, but it's better reheated in the oven."

“Thanks." I almost got an exclamation point to land at the end of the word, but not quite. They left, so I cut two slices of the casserole – dammit – and dug in. Holy hot damned hell, Maria and/or Manuel could cook. I would, in fact, be attempting to replicate the recipe in the future.

As an experiment, I stared at the second slice of casserole for ten solid minutes. It didn't stare back, thankfully, but it also didn't start having invisible bites taken out of it. Feeling extremely paranoid, I flicked my gaze away for a fraction of a second and back. Still there. Again. Still there. My phone buzzed and I read the text message without thinking.

Ah-hah. Casserole gone. I laughed, not entirely sure the mirth was all mine, or was all mirth. It did, at least, make me feel less crazy. A second text came in and I noticed the timestamps were several minutes apart, rather than seconds.

I was losing time.

Losing time is one of those many things you can't understand until you experience it. I had never really had that happen before. I could account for the minutes and the hours, even when I was highly focused and motivated. I didn't lose the time. I spent it intentionally and it dilated or contracted depending on my level of concentration. The previous night, playing piano for four hours, I hadn't been surprised when four hours had passed. I had been surprised that I had wanted to play for so long, but I hadn't been shocked to learn what the time was when I'd looked up from the keys.

This was different. I didn't have a recollection of the past… I checked the timestamp again. Six minutes of my life. And, as before, I didn't feel overfull. If I had dissociated and eaten the second helping, surely I'd have felt full.

I blinked my eyes, hard. Stress. It was just stress. I was in a new place. I didn't have the broad support network of friends and family many people seemed to. I had a new job on Monday and just the weekend to prepare for it.

It was tempting to bury myself in music again, but I was feeling uncharacteristically invigorated after my brief laugh about having developed a second discrete personality and decided to go for a proper walk. This time, I held my head up and familiarized myself with landmarks. Drugstores, a little movie theater, an occult shop, a flower boutique, a row of restaurants that included the one I'd paid six dollars to deliver food one block last night. I treated myself to a movie (only one ticket) and a long, solitary latte (just the one), then stopped inside the occult shop.

Immediately, fragrances assaulted my senses. Patchouli, lavender, sage, rose – just, everything. It wasn't the sickly sweet of bath boutiques or beauty stores. It was heavy, musty, breathable odor that felt like a thicker fluid sinking into my body through my lungs and skin. Behind a counter made of glass displaying skulls and necklaces and power stones, there stood a man with the head of a stag.

For several moments, I just stared. I looked outside. I looked back inside. The man with the stag head stared back at me. “Can I help you?" he asked, as though he wasn't speaking from the mouth of a stag.

I stuttered. “I. I, uh. I don't."

He smiled understandingly, which is difficult to imagine on a stag's face, but I need you to, for the purposes of envisioning what I was experiencing. The fur was like dark chocolate. The eyes were a docile brown. His voice was soft and fell in a high baritone range. “New customers can find occult shops a little off-putting. I promise there's nothing in the air but scents. I like to keep incense burning to ward off malignant spirits."

“S… spirits." I ran my hand through my mane of hair. I suddenly didn't like calling it a mane. I found Mufasa there and covered him with my hand to comfort myself.

The man with the head of a stag shrugged gently. “You don't need to believe in them to benefit from the tools that keep them away, or draw them in. Is there something you needed?"

I looked around the little shop. It was big enough for only three or four customers to occupy comfortably and I was the only one there at the time. “Just… l… looking, I think," I managed.

He nodded, then looked behind me. “Well, take your time, and if anything comes to mind, just ask. Miss Plink, good to see you again." I looked over my shoulder to find an elderly white woman with a cane that probably cost more than my apartment hobbling her way in. She smiled with genuine cheer up at… the man with a stag's head.

She warbled, “Don't 'Miss Plink' me, Harry. How's business?"

“Wonderful. Would you believe I finally sold off that ruby?"

Ruby. He sold rubies in this hippie palace. No wonder she didn't care that Harry had a stag's head. There's a lot people will ignore when you see enough money.

They started chatting, so I busily ignored them and tried to calm myself with curiosity. The store was small, but was packed neatly such that one had plenty of elbow room despite the density of trinkets. There was a section of trendy sticks of incense and books about chakras, but much of the store was high-class: gilded bones, hand-sewn masks with feathers and fur, teeth fashioned into jewelry. I felt extraordinarily out of place. Sure, I fit the Goth bill, but I was closer to a scene kid when it came down to it and this place was fully orthogonal to torn jeans and penta-tone hair. Speaking of which, it wouldn't hurt to start my new job with some fresh color. Pet-safe, of course, for Mufasa.

Miss Plink eventually left with a handful of “recharged energy stones," and never before in my life had I been so cautious about putting scare quotes around the concept. After all, she was receiving them from a man with a stag's head. His antlers bobbed with his polite bow of his head when she left and the sight was surreal. Then, he turned his attention to me.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Have we met before?" he asked me, clearly trying to remember.

What a perfectly insane question for a man with a stag's head to ask me. “Not… that I remember."

“I swear someone just like you was in here last night, and I put tremendous stock in déjà vu."

I gulped. Maria had seemed to think I'd been somewhere last night. And I knew, with unshakeable, terrific certainty, that someone had left my room the moment I'd gone to sleep. “I think I'd remember having met you."

“Oh?" he queried. It didn't even seem to be feigned innocence. Was I just hallucinating?

“You, uh. You have a distinctive" stag's head “face."

He smiled. “I have been told that, I suppose. Did you find anything that interested you?"

For longer than was polite, I kept staring at his head. Because yes. Yes, I had found something that interested me immensely. “Interest" is, here, a polite word that meant it alarmed my lizard, monkey, and human minds all at once. Instead, I gave a half-nod, half-shake. “I think a lot of this is out of my reach. I didn't realize what kind of place this is."

“I understand. You're always welcome to come and look, and if there's an occasion, we do rentals. Here – my card." His hands were the usual shape, though I expected fur. They were strong, but manicured. He knew what kind of shop he owned and kept himself accordingly At a guess, his face fur was conditioned and combed. He wore a grey suit worth a small car. The cards had cost $10 apiece to make, if I knew my stationery. I was almost unsurprised that next to “Harry's Occult and Sundry" in gold script and above an email address and telephone number was a magical etching of some kind. “Harry Normandy. Are you new in town?"

“Yeah. Just moved in on Thereabouts Lane."

“Oh, I know Thereabouts. You must be moving in after Ms. Obb. Shame about her."

“What, uh. What happened?" A chill wafted through me.

“Embezzlement." I chewed my lip. What. He continued. “Stole millions, out of that little apartment. It was a wonderful front, if you ask me." He tilted his head. “I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. Mister, Miss, Mix…?"

I told him. I wish I hadn't.

Anyway, when I got home and washed my hands, I saw my shark's tooth necklace in the mirror. The tip was a glimmering red, which was new, and I should have known if something had happened to the necklace I never stop wearing. I looked more closely.

I'm not a gemologist, but if that wasn't a ruby, perfectly set to replace the chipped tip of the tooth, I'll eat Mufasa.