He stayed in my apartment for a week, only leaving the couch for the bathroom and to raid my fridge. The whining never stopped and I barely kept myself sane as he nagged until I spent a good part of each day stacking, sorting, and marking books for removal. It was just like I always imagined having a bad marriage would feel like. By the time he was able to stand up without turning purple, I was more than happy to help him dress and get in his truck.

“You have to get the rest of those books sorted,” he nagged a final time before starting his truck.

“Yes dear, I know dear,” I mocked, really tired of his brand of encouragement.

“I mean it, you’re just going to regress back and you’re just getting to where I can stand being around you for long periods of time.” With that, he rolled up his window and drove off, not a second too soon.

I felt exhausted after playing nurse and housekeeper at the same time, the only thing I wanted was a hot shower and to crawl into bed. As soon as I got back up to my apartment, my cellphone stated to ring, it was my parents’ ringtone. They liked to call weekly and make sure I was doing well in the classes I didn’t have the heart to tell them I didn’t go to and while living in the apartment they paid for so I could work hard on my studies and not need a job. I always felt like a scumbag after talking to them.

“Hey mom,” I answered, “How’s things at home?”

“Hi honey, things are great as always!” she said cheerfully. “How were classes this week? I know it’s getting close to finals, are you going to need a care package to get you through?”

I stifled a loud sigh, how had I been taking advantage of them for almost two years and they hadn’t caught on? “They were fine and I’m okay mom, I don’t need anything more, really, I have plenty.”

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t be too much trouble, I could even make a batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to send you, they’re your favorite.”

“They are, mom, but I’m fine, things couldn’t be better. I just have a paper due and I’m confident that I’ll do well on the couple final tests I have.” If only my life was always half as good as I lied about, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been to a class, I wasn’t even sure if I was officially enrolled anymore.

“Well okay, we would like to come see you sometime soon when you’re not busy, it’s been a long time since we’ve been up there.”

It had been a little over a year since they had last visited and seen my apartment. I had been able to pass off the piles of books I had as research for my history degree, but there was no way I’d be able to explain my way out of the way things were now.

“When were you thinking? I need to make sure I don’t have classes or anything so I can spend time with you guys.”

“How about in a couple weeks? Finals will be done with and you’ll have the whole summer ahead of you. You won’t mind spending a little of it with your lame parents, right?” she giggled.

“Of course not, two weeks should be fine, just let me know when you and dad set a date, I’ll pick you up from the airport.” Two weeks to get all my books to storage, doable.

“Sure thing, I’ll send you an email when we figured it out, “she said happily. “Oh, and David, we’re very proud of you.”

“Thank you mom,” I sighed, “I’ll talk to you soon, I love you.”

“Love you too!”

The phone clicked as she hung up and the old, familiar feeling of being the scum of the Earth washed over me. I was the worst person in the world taking advantage of their ignorance of the real situation. How much of their money ah I wasted on the apartment and classes I never really took? They were going to find out eventually, especially when graduation never happens, and when that day comes, I would have no good excuse other than I was chasing a werewolf. I would be lucky if they didn’t just outright disown me. I would.

Trying not to think anymore, I threw my phone in my nightstand where I wouldn’t hear it if it went off and took a long, hot shower to try to wash the feeling of filth from me. I let the water run over me until it went cold, then lazily toweled off and sunk into bed. The sun was just beginning to set, the warm red and orange tones painted across my ceiling. I should have started planning how to get all the books moved or how to once again dupe my parents into thinking I was a decent human being, but my thoughts kept going back to magic and how it worked. Maybe Daniel was right, deep down I was a lost cause with no hope because I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I fell asleep wishing that I would wake up and be a completely different person, one who had a life they would be willing to own up to.

My dreams were filled with Big Bill slowly lumbering around my neighborhood, poking his head into windows and doorways, and showing around a picture of me hoping to figure out where I lived. I watched from my apartment window nearly pissing myself out of fear as he got closer and closer to my building, but dream-me felt like lead and I found that I couldn’t tear myself away to run or hide. I silently watched in horror as he held out the photo to my neighbor who nonchalantly pointed up to my window. I could perfectly make out every single line in the hillbilly’s face as his gaze met mine and I could hear his uproarious laugh in my ear. I opened my mouth and tried to scream, but only the smallest of whimpers escaped and still I could not pull away. The floor trembled beneath me as he thundered his way to the entrance of my building and I knew it was only a short elevator ride away before he got to me. As soon as I lost sight of him my legs could suddenly move again and I sprang into action, my mind screaming nonsense in panic as I ripped open my front door and dashed to the exit to the elevator.

I didn’t know what I was doing, but I placed my hands upon the elevator button and began muttering over and over, “Fall, fall, you are not welcome, fall and be gone” under my breath while straining to focus on the image of the elevator’s cords severing. I could hear the grinding of the elevator coming closer to my floor and my mutters became more frantic, my body shaking with sweat pouring down my arms. With a final scream of “be gone” the elevator groaned loudly followed by the sound of two loud pops. The building shook as the elevator car broke free and fell down the shaft, landing with a thunderous boom.

I woke with a jolt, covered in sweat and trembling. My throat felt tight and soar as if I had been yelling and my hands were cramped into fists around my blanket. I took a deep breath and waited for my heartbeat to slow back to normal before uneasily standing and shuffling my way through the dark to the kitchen for a drink of water. After chugging several glasses I felt somewhat normal again, the terror of the nightmare was slowly fading as I realized that it was just a dream and there was no way that Big Bill had a picture of me.

I shuffled back and plopped back into bed. I was still exhausted, but found myself curious of what the time was and dug my phone out of the nightstand drawer. I checked the time and saw that it was four a.m., but nearly screamed as my phone beeped that I had a new text message as I was just about to toss it back. The only times I got texts were when Daniel needed a designated driver and I was fairly certain he still wasn’t ready to go out partying again just yet.

I uneasily turned over my phone and saw a number I didn’t recognize, the message said, “It wasn’t just a dream.” My heart fell to my feet and cold fear began to creep up again. “Oh and this is Alan, lol” said the next. At this point it really didn’t matter who it was, no one should be able to know when or what I was dreaming about.

I texted back “Not cool, way too creepy for the middle of the night.” Then added, “What do you think I was dreaming about anyway?” I waited while trying to calm myself again, but it was hard while imagining Alan watching me dream.

“I’m honestly not too sure why you had a redneck trying to kill you, but I won’t judge who you know or what you do in your free time,” he replied. Great, more proof that magic was real and all the more likely that I would get sucked into it, how else would he have known?

“Look it could just be a lucky guess,” I sent, hoping to leave it at that.

He responded with “Lol, then how would I have gotten your number?”

I sighed and tried to think of anyway he would have gotten my number, I intentionally left it unlisted to keep my privacy and, let’s face it, people who frequent supernatural chasing forums are usually weirdos. “Maybe Daniel.”

His next text was a long line of laughing emojis followed by “What I did to him with that potion was all sorts of illegal, I’m just lucky he didn’t try to press charges.” He had a point, there was probably little chance he would have gotten that information from Daniel. “Look,” he continued, “If you don’t believe me, you will over the next few days. Once the magic dreams start, they never really stop, though you’ll get better at controlling them.”

I put the phone back in the drawer, not wanting to continue the conversation. I was creeped out and the dream combined with Alan tracking my dreams made me feel more paranoid than I liked. I didn’t know any logical way to explain what was happening, but a small part of me wanted to hold on to the idea that it was all just one big prank or coincidence and that the next time I went to sleep it would be normal dreams.

It took quite a while, but I managed to coax myself back to sleep and found myself in Daniel’s apartment. He was badly baking a cake while telling me all about a new biker bar he had found. I was just about to tell him that it was a bad idea after everything that had just happened when the oven burst into flames. The fire was quickly, too quickly, spreading out of the oven door and onto the counters next to it. Looking closely, I swore I could make out smirking faces in the flames, growing brighter and more sinister as they spread.

Instead of running for the extinguisher like a normal person, I raised my arms and began chanting, “Douse, rain, steam, smother” as if I had practiced the act a thousand times. The faces in the fire opened their mouths into piercing screams of rage, but I kept going, repeating the words louder and louder until my voice boomed and I drowned them out. A faint hissing slithered into the kitchen and the fire began to twist and writhe in pain as water started to seep between the cracks of the oven and the counters, slowly falling to the floor as the entire kitchen wept.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, unsure of what to think or feel. Another magic dream, of course it would happen, though maybe it was because the idea was put into my head. A very soft beep alerted me to another text from within the nightstand. I knew I should ignore it, but curiosity got the better of me and I dug it out. It was Alan again, “Told you.”

I let out a deep sigh and threw the phone on the floor halfway across the room. It looked like it was going to be difficult to ignore the whole magic thing, but part of me wanted to desperately believe that if I just got back to sleep one more time it would stop and everything would turn out to be just one long nightmare. Determined to make that happen, I sprung out of bed and retrieved a bottle of sleep aids from the medicine cabinet. I honestly could not remember when I had bought them, but the expiration date seemed unimportant at the time. I took four of them, not caring to read the dosage instructions and hopped back into bed, screaming in my mind for all my thoughts to shut up and wait for all of this to blow over.

I awoke in the late afternoon feeling slightly hungover from the sleep aids, but I was pleased that I didn’t remember any more dreams and my phone was still where I had thrown it. I was displeased to see that the texts were still there, but it was much easier after a nice long rest to convince myself that it was all just come prank or coincidence. I was certain that despite Alan claiming otherwise, Daniel had given him my number and just got lucky by trying to creep me out and plant the idea of magical dreams into my head. I didn’t like that he seemed to know about the redneck, but if Daniel had been willing to give him my number, it wasn’t really a stretch to assume that he would have taken the time to brag about his near death experience.

After thinking about the situation a bit, it seemed obvious to assume that I would be having magic-based dreams seeing as the idea had been tantalizingly introduced to me. The more I thought about it, the better I felt and more convinced that I was probably having all sorts of dreams like that, but I hadn’t been remembering them because I wasn’t being woken up immediately from them and being reminded. For all I knew, I had been having intense, involved dreams and forgetting them just after waking up.

I ordered a pizza to quiet the loud protests of my empty stomach. The same pizza girl I had previously terrified was working delivery, at least I assumed it was her. It was hard to tell due to how fast she snatched the money from my hands and shoved the pizza through the door. Before I could even get out a “thank you,” she was mashing the down button on the elevator.

Pizza in hand, I set to work marking and organizing more books for removal, I had to get a move on to have them all gone by my parents’ upcoming visit. I sent a text to Daniel to tell him that I would be taking his truck the next day and started researching the price and locations of nearby storage units. I probably should have just chucked them all into a nearby dumpsters and saved the money and effort, but this was my attempt at meeting true adulthood half-way. I made calls to the different storage centers in between devouring pizza and finally settled on a unit just a couple blocks from my apartment that was fairly cheap and climate controlled so I wouldn’t have to worry so much about mold and other environmental hazards, plus they assured me that every unit also contained a security camera. I wasn’t sure who would want my books and journals, but knowing there would be a camera watching still made me feel better.

The next two weeks’ nights passed mostly dream free, thanks to the sleep aids. The murky, garbled mess I could remember by the morning felt eerily too real, but I chalked up the unsettling fractured dreams to weird medication side-effects. Most importantly, I couldn’t remember anything about magic or doing magic in any of the dreams; it was becoming much easier to pass off Alan’s creepy middle of the night texts as nothing more than uncanny coincidence. It still ate at the back of my mind, but I knew that I couldn’t afford any more distractions while I tried to piece some kind of a normal life back together.

It wasn’t until the day before my parents were due to arrive for a visit that the last load of books got loaded into the back of Daniel’s truck. We were soaked in sweat, smelled awful, and I was pretty sure that the whole apartment building knew who I was and hated me for hogging the elevator for several days in a row, but I could now pass as just your everyday, average, slacker college student for my parents.

“I am never doing this again,” Daniel wheezed while dramatically pulling himself into the driver’s seat of his truck. “If I ever hear that you buy any other book again, I’m going to personally set your apartment on fire.”

I wiped away the sweat burning my eyes and climbed into the passenger seat, looking forward to finishing the last run, lock the storage unit, and hopefully forget about the books in there for a good long while. “Remember, you were the one excited about me getting rid of everything. You could have said you didn’t want to help at any point.”

“You never would have done it then, I was your one hope, your salvation. A messiah, if you will.” He started the truck, but turned to me with a clever glint in his eye. “Yes, a messiah, that sounds about right.”

“I’m not calling you Jesus or messiah,” I said flatly, “the only nicknames I’m willing to call you are not appropriate for mixed company.”

“Come on, I’ll call you my disciple. I thought you were into this whole weird cult thing?”

I shook my head and motioned to the exit of the parking lot. “Let’s just get this done with, I still need to go grocery shopping. My parents will have nothing to eat if I don’t.”

“Lame.” He pulled the truck out of the parking lot and towards the storage unit. “The correct way to play this, by the way, is to look pathetic and starving when your parents visit so that your mom feels bad for you and brings tons of food next time, or better yet, buys it while they’re there. Trust me.”

Daniel’s mom was just like him, only slightly more mature. She didn’t visit often, but when she did it was a wild ride. Try imagining that one parent you know who wants to be seen as their kid’s best friend, make her bleach blonde, then add a hefty dose of functioning alcoholism, and you have Rhonda. She spoiled Daniel, making sure that he was never without food or booze money. Her life philosophy was that the party should never have to end and that everyone deserved to find a nice, rich spouse, and live it up. I could never figure out how she figured that would work when someone was going to have to work in order to bring in the cash, but she was good at deflecting questions and smoothing it over with nice, shiny new things. After all, this was someone who un-ironically wore rhinestone studded tank tops that said “trophy wife.”

“Not everyone has a mom like yours, plus I’d like to think my parents won’t see me as pathetic. I hope they’ll be able to see that I’m holding my life together and will be proud.”

“So you’re lying to them, got it.”

“Hopefully less so now.” I grumpily admitted.

We rode the rest of the way in slightly awkward silence. He never could apologize or admit when his jokes accidently hit a sore spot or went too far. Not that I held it against him for long, it’s not like he really meant half the things he said, not in the way they tended to leave his mouth. At least that’s what I told myself to stay friends with him.

The last load was slow going and required us to find unique ways to get the last twenty or so books to fit into the unit, but the wave of relief that washed over me as the last musty tome slid into place was well worth the past couple weeks of agony. I wasn’t sure how I was going to afford the new monthly payment for the storage unit on top of the apartment rent I barely scraped by with since I took the bare minimum from my parents to cover it, but it felt good to have a fresh start.

After a short shopping trip, hard to buy too much when your typical food budget for the month only took into the account the price of ramen, I found myself standing in an apartment I barely recognized. The ever rare, fleeting feeling of new hope you get when you move to a new place or start a new job washed over me as I scanned my domain, clear for the first time in over two years.

The space felt both like home and foreign to me. I could step in any direction, not just the carefully carved paths outlined by books. I found myself setting the bags of food directly into my fridge and making my way to the couch. I had not been able to comfortably lay on it since the book hoarding began, it had been one of the first pieces of furniture to be consumed once the bookcase had been filled. It was dusty and smelled like old books, like it had lived for decades in the back of an old used book store, the smell intensified as I sat down, making it feel like not much had changed for a moment. I knew it would need to be deep cleaned and the smell removed or it might lure me into dragging my books back, but a short nap amongst the scent I found the most comforting was too much to ignore.