"Well, I do not think I will be going into work tomorrow."

The sidewalk was empty, and Petre's head was full to burst. Four hours. He had spent four hours at the mall, and what did he have to show for it?

"New shoes, I suppose." And shirt and socks. A whole new wardrobe because some jacked-up mall officer and his lackey had stripped him (They may have even added his clothes to some perverse collection) and then lost the so-called evidence.

"Evidence! Hah!"

The elevator had broken, poof, and he had been stranded in some... warehouse. Not that there had been any employees.

"That's right!" Petre said, with a sudden rush of frustration. Because he had not wasted just four hours at the mall. He had wandered around that deserted floor for an hour, shouting and banging, before the two wannabe cops had hauled him into the cramped mall security office (The smell of cigarette and unwashed sweat had almost undone him) for four more hours of interrogation.

"No, no." Petre shook his head and waved his hands excitedly. "I will not go- "

An older man and his still older wife (She almost looked like a clown with all of the powder on her face) came up behind Petre, and he fell silent.

The old couple said nothing as they scurried past. They did not even sneak a look over their shoulders at the freak who had been muttering to himself because he had been muttering to himself.

"A bad habit," he said, and immediately smiled at the blunder.

But Petre was not talking to himself, which would be deranged (Not that Petre was very much well-adjusted) and sad. He was merely thinking aloud. His head was far too small a place for such an important conversation.

"My head is small then? Makes me sound daft."

But his mind was made up. No work tomorrow. Not after today's disaster.

They had taken his bag, his shoes, his wallet (There had not been much in the ragged old thing, but still). In the past ten years, Petre could not even remember the last time he had been naked outside the privacy of his bathroom (Aside from that one incident at the park, but that was not worth remembering) let alone in-front of two beefed-up, dumb-downed mall officers. The humiliation!

"And then to not even return my clothes! Tomorrow! Tomorrow I will make a call. Heads. Will. Roll."

Not. He had lost five hours of his life, but in return he had a new wardrobe, a new bag, wallet, watch. He had walked into the Solca Mall in thrift and had come out in...

"What is the opposite of thrift? Annnd the conversation has come full circle. Boy, I am dull."

A piece of faded yellow paper had been taped to Petre's door.

NOTICE OF EVICTION

He went inside without reading it. Or at least not the finer details (Those three words kind of summed up the important bits) scribbled in pencil beside a spew of black legalese.

"I made it back," Petre said as he shut the door behind him. His body shook with a spasm of relief. "Thank goodness, I made it back."

There was no excess to be found in his apartment, and he liked it that way.

He did not own a TV (Who needs a TV without cable or a console?) or even one of those fancy music boxes. There was no couch, no paintings or portraits. He had lived at the Bayksu Flats for three years, but if someone broke into his home (A robbery was far more likely than a guest with biscuits and tea) they would curse their luck. The would-be thief would either think the apartment was vacant or that the tenant was in the process of moving out.

Petre shrugged off his new coat and dropped his new bag beside the doorway. He would tidy up later.

"Some water."

He scuttled towards the kitchen, a claustrophobic room made cramped with a broken oven, a dusty microwave (Petre was convinced it was a refurbished IED with how much it sputtered and smoked), and the loudest refrigerator in the whole country.

"I am really talking smack about my kitchen. I am sorry, kitchen."

He patted the chipped countertop (It was about as dirty as a stray dog) as if it were some friendly animal's furry head. He took out a cup from the creaky cupboard over the broken oven, decided that he would tidy up later, and then stopped.

He did not move. He did not breathe. He waited.

"And it was nothing," Petre said as he filled the glass with some of the finest tap water in the Bayksu Flats.

For reasons that even the Landlord could not explain, his apartment was connected to some mystical underground well somewhere somehow. Safe to drink.

"But it is rancid," he said as he took his first sip. "At least it's free. Like everything else, I suppose, since I haven't paid rent in who knows."

Because the oven was still broken.

The Landlord had an obligation to fix that damned fire hazard, but both of them knew it could not be fixed. Petre needed a replacement, and the Landlord would sooner offer Petre the use of his own kitchen before he bought and installed a new oven.

"Aren't I blessed?" Petre said as he shuffled from the kitchen and towards his bedroom. He was not sure what time it was, but it seemed as good a time as any to take a nap. And then he would tidy up!

He had started to wonder about what he would have for dinner (Not beef, but some kind of meat after all of his travails) when he noticed the open window.

Petre stopped beside it, and his brow creased.

Because he knew he had closed all of the windows before he had left for the mall. He had actually reached the street below the Bayksu Flats shortly after lunch, had looked back up at his apartment, which faced the main throughway, and had realized he had forgotten to close the windows (As if he enjoyed the company of mosquitoes and flies).

He had ran back up the stairs, earning a few beads of a sweat and an elevated heart rate, and slammed them all shut.

And so Petre looked around his small apartment with a distant concern.

"Was I robbed?" he said after a brief look over his living room. Nothing looked out of place, but it was not as if there had ever been much in place either.

And then it struck him.

"The landlord! That slimy, slimy, slimy, slime!"

The Landlord must have come inside when he had put up the eviction notice.

"I need to sleep," Petre said as the day's horrors seemed to swell up in his chest.

He turned back towards his bedroom, his spirit flagged, and noticed the small pool of black sludge for the first time.

And then it struck him. Petre fell over as the weight knocked out his breath.

He cried as his face became wet with... blood? His thoughts were a blur of crimson confusion as he wrestled some foreign weight off his chest. His hands sunk into the obscured mass as if it wore a coat of swamp muck.

With a terrible squelch, he was able to throw it (Whatever it was) across the room.

Petre huffed and puffed as he blinked away some of his confusion and stared down at some weird black blob. It shook like gelatin (And not the sort Petre would ever eat) and had to be slightly larger than a bowling ball.

Before he had the chance to shout, or to even fall into dread, the black bowling ball blob popped like a balloon full of sludge. It formed a small puddle and then, just as Petre started towards the door, seemed to ripple and bounce back into a bowling ball blob.

Except there were two now. And after a moment...

"A head?" Petre said. He stood entranced by the strangeness, the door forgotten.

The alien (It certainly was not human or animal, which made a strong case for alien) black blob would puff up, deflate, devolve into a puddle, and then puff back up with still more shapes.

No more than two minutes could have passed, and Petre gawked at some sort of deformed animal (His immediate thought was of an unfortunate puppy that had been stung by a few hundred bees). There was a definite snout, four stubby little legs, two floppy ears, and- .

[ Yip, yip! ]

Petre jumped.

[ Yip, yip! ]

"It... barks? My goodness." Petre pinched his arm. "This is it. I have finally lost my mind. At long last."