I forgot I had a cat.
It was his first night in the apartment. He was six months old, a tiny, terrified shadow that had spent the entire daylight hours wedged into some invisible corner of the house. He only materialized briefly to eat, moving low to the ground, before vanishing again. I had spent the day buying bowls, carrying litter, doing all the loud, practical things required to welcome another life into your own. But by the time I turned off the lights and got into bed, the exhaustion of the day had wiped the slate clean. My brain simply discarded the new data. I fell asleep as a man living alone.
Around 3:00 a.m., I woke up to a frequency. The distinct, primal sensation of being watched.
The room was pitch black. I opened my eyes and tried to adjust to the dark. Hovering roughly ten inches from my face were two massive, glowing green eyes. Just the eyes. Disembodied and perfectly still.
His name is Moris. He is entirely black. In a lightless room, he doesn't just blend into the dark; he becomes it. He had silently climbed onto the bed, stretched his neck forward, and was inspecting my sleeping face with intense, unblinking curiosity.
For three seconds, I experienced pure, unadulterated terror. My heart slammed against my ribs. I physically jolted, convinced the void itself had grown eyes and come for me.
On the fourth second, I took a breath. The void blinked, let out a tiny, inquisitive sound, and sat down on my blanket.
I lay back down, my pulse slowly returning to normal. He brought no narrative. He demanded no audience. He simply found a spot near my feet, curled into a tight shape, and went to sleep.
I stayed awake a little longer. The refrigerator hummed. A pipe somewhere in the building ticked once and went quiet. I lay there doing what I always do in the dark—sorting, rehearsing, replaying. Moris simply existed. He breathed—slow, even, entirely without effort—the way only a creature with no unfinished business breathes.
I listened to that rhythm for a while.
Then I closed my eyes and let the dark simply be the dark.