I spent my first night back in the old apartment reassembling shelves and unpacking boxes while receiving sporadic texts from Binsa detailing the ongoing progress of her date.

  I treated myself to delivery pizza and coffee-flavored rum, eating too much of the former and drinking too much of the latter, so that the reassembly process of my shelves came with additional hurdles.

  I listened to a podcast about art theft during World War Two. I had the first of my shelves assembled when I caught my reflection in the stand-up mirror and went over to look at myself.

  I’m five foot nine and in moderately acceptable shape. I flexed a bicep at the mirror, and while the mirror didn’t gasp, it didn’t chuckle, either. I stared closer. I have big ears. Thin lips. My hair is short and dark brown and resists any and all attempts at cohesive structure. My eyes match my hair. I’ve got one of those ridiculous cleft chins that I think looks like a pair of butt-cheeks, although Binsa claims it’s handsome rather than ridiculous, and even seems to be serious.

  Thinking of Binsa, I tried to emulate some of the dance moves she’d practiced in the mirror, but the cause was hopeless and I realized I’d better start the process of getting my bed together before the night got much older.

  Walking into my new bedroom, my dad’s old bedroom, I christened my arrival by tripping on a packing box and sprawling onto my mattress with a slice of pizza, leaving a stain I knew would be there forever.

  “Nice job, Josh,” I told myself. “An excellent omen.”

  I was all the way done with my bed and beginning to think about assembling the next bookshelf when my sister sent me a flurry of texts. The date was going well. They’d enjoyed dancing. The woman’s name was Joelle. They’d kissed on the dance floor and in the bathroom. There were no cats in the dance club, which sucked.

  After a few dances, Joelle had put her hand on my sister’s butt and Binsa had blurted out, “Yes I’ll go home with you!” and now, with Joelle in her bathroom showering to get ready for sex, my sister wanted to know if she’d seemed too forward or… maybe attractively impulsive? Binsa also wanted to know if she should still be dressed or naked when Joelle came out of the shower.

  I texted, “Holy shit stop texting me.” Ten seconds later, my phone beeped with, “Coward.” I shut off my phone and stashed it in the kitchen, where the coffee rum inquired if I would like another glass.

  “You’re so thoughtful!” I told the bottle, pouring another glass, and it was at that moment I heard a noise from my old bedroom. A little thump. A murmur.

  “The hell?” I said. My first thought was a burglar. My second thought was a murderer. My third thought was to find a weapon, but it was already too late for that because my inebriated curiosity had overridden my common sense and I was halfway across the living room and heading toward my old bedroom, so if there actually was a homicidal maniac in there, then he’d have to battle against a twenty-three year old art history major armed with a glass of coffee rum, and good luck with that.

  There was nobody in my old room. Nothing seemed to have fallen over. The window was closed. I stood in the middle of the room, turning in a circle like a tipsy sentinel alert to any potential danger. But there was nothing to be seen and my head didn’t favor spinning.

  I decided to text my sister and tell her how I’d heard noises in the old bedroom, too. When I picked up my phone I discovered a string of missed texts, including one where she said that she was going to peek while Joelle was showering, along with a picture of Binsa’s face looking frightened, with a text of “Women are so scary! I love it!”

  I decided not to bother my sister while she was busy, so I set to work on the next bookcase. Halfway through the assembly I thought I heard a light knock on my front door, but when I opened it up there was nobody there.

  “Cool,” I said to the empty hall. “First day back, and my sanity’s already gone. Maybe Binsa’s right. Maybe it was a mistake to move back here.”

  I was about to shut the door when I noticed movement at the end of the hall. It was the gray cat I’d seen on the lawn. It padded silently down the hall, giving me the slightest of glances when it passed by, continuing to the end of the hall, where it went down the stairs.

  I knew that I was watching a cat the whole time, but for some reason it felt like a ghost. The hallway was cold and smelled of cinnamon. I was very glad I’d thought to get my bed ready, because I clearly needed sleep.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I closed the door, locked it, and went to bed on my first night back in my old apartment.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Binsa came to visit me in the morning. By then I’d gone to the corner store and stocked my refrigerator with enough food to feed a mid-twenties college student for a full week, a precisely calculated figure that acknowledged my tendencies to frequently grab take-out.

  I made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomatoes sat upon a thick slice of fresh bread and doused with ranch dressing, aware that I was being gross but also pretending that I was some sort of culinary genius.

  On the toilet afterward, I’d looked around the bathroom, perched in a familiar spot but with a new perspective of being older and larger.

  I’d showered and returned to the task of unpacking when Binsa knocked on my door. I barely heard her because I’d found my charger and had my resurrected laptop belting out music at “problem neighbor” levels. When I opened the door my sister stood there wearing sweatpants, an old t-shirt, and a huge grin.

  “I got laid,” she told me, first thing. She wasn’t even technically in my apartment. She still had a foot in the hall.

  “I got drunk,” I said, because I felt competitive and needed to offer some sort of achievement.

  “Oh, I did that, too,” Binsa said, plopping onto my couch, dismissing my accomplishments.

  “I’m glad your date went well,” I assured her, moving aside some empty boxes I’d stacked on the couch that were now threatening to topple onto my sister. “You going to call her again?”

  “Oh, god no. I like her too much.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Does too. What if the second date sucks? It negates the first one.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not agreeing at all.

  “Listen,” Binsa said, “do you have some orange juice or something? I feel depleted. And, oh, that gray cat’s still out there on the lawn. Maybe it’s one of those dogs.”

  “Cats aren’t dogs,” I said, feeling pretty confident.

  “No, I mean, like those stories you read where somebody dies, and the faithful dog just sits at a bus stop or something, forever waiting for their dead master to come home. I think that’s what the cat’s doing.”

  “I’m fairly certain the cat just likes the sun and it’s lazy. And it’s not always out there. I saw it last night in the hall.”

  “Whatever. You should adopt it. Can you have pets here? Hold on. I just realized how badly I need to piss.” She strode toward the bathroom, a woman with purpose.

  I went into the kitchen to get Binsa a glass of orange juice and mentally prepare myself to hear every embarrassing detail of sister’s date, but I’d barely opened the fridge when Binsa yelped from my bathroom. I leaned out of the doorway to see her stride out quickly from the bathroom, give me a wink, and head for the door.

  “Whoa, Josh!” she said. “First night in the new place? Congratulations! Maybe I was wrong about this place being bad luck? Anyway, high five!” She pantomimed a high-five from distance, grinned as she opened my door and then again as she closed it, adding a wink just before it slammed shut.

  “The hell?” I said. Hurrying to my front door I opened it and looked down the hall, but my sister was already gone.

  “The hell?” I repeated, standing in my doorway.

  Closing the door, I stood in my living room, wondering what Binsa had meant. It was several seconds before I thought to check the bathroom to see if I’d left anything weird in view.

  Stepping through the door, I had brief moments of believing everything was normal. I mean, the toilet was there. And the sink with its fake marble countertop, the bathroom mirror and its cabinet made up to resemble an ornate picture frame. There was the Sailor Moon bathroom mat, a gift from my sister, who enjoys embarrassing me.

  So far, everything was normal. There was the window where I used to spend so much time looking out on the neighborhood. In the old days I’d had a clear view of Fern Park, but now a new apartment building cut that view in half. I’d have to get curtains.

  All normality was banished the moment I looked to the tub, which was filled with warm, steaming water. There were flower petals and a scent like sunlight and honey. And there was an entirely naked beautiful woman, half-slumbering, trailing her fingers in lingering fashion through the water, causing ripples in the surface, sending the flower petals trembling along with the trailing strands of her long dark hair.

  It was the same woman I’d seen in the stairwell the day before, when I’d been carrying a heavy box and she’d been wearing clothes.

  And once again the sight of her reminded me of Salena, of the time I’d seen my childhood babysitter fresh from the shower, brilliant and alive, wearing nothing more than a sheen of water. The woman in my tub had the same full lips, the light brown skin, the heavy eyebrows, and the strangely green eyes that used to stare at me whenever my babysitter told me she was a witch.

  “Um,” I said to the woman in my tub.

  She looked at me. Frowned. She took a huge breath that rose her nipples above the surface of the water, then let out a sigh that sank them below.

  “Shit,” she said.

  We stared at each other.

  “Seriously?” she questioned in a feminine rumble of disgust. “You’re some sort of zero level dweeb?” She stood up out of the water, which dripped noisily into the tub and ran with even more noise along her beautiful skin.

  I hurriedly stepped backward, quite a few times. I closed the bathroom door and left my apartment entirely, hurrying all the way to Fern Park, where I sat on a bench and stared blankly at an ice cream vendor who was just setting up for the day. I focused very hard on him and his exacting routine, his every move practiced with everything falling into place. I tried extremely hard to avoid looking to my apartment building, where I could see my bathroom window.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-