When I wake up, we aren't lost in the throes of passion. Instead, he's off to work and I'm hours behind him. He forgot to change the laundry over, so I have to restart it and put off my shower, I have to wear yesterday's jeans. My coffee got cold while I was waiting for the dogs to do their business and I forget it in the microwave when I reheat it. I find two pieces of the puzzle we do together but not together, it's still 12 hours until I see him again. Our cat throws up on the carpet, and despite my emetophobia, I'm the one who has to clean it. It rains when I drive to work, too much for level 1 on my windshield wipers, but forcing it to squeak across the glass on level 2. The CD in the CD player skips, and my phone falls out of its place in the holder. I get to work; I'm forced to work alongside my least favorite coworker.

I wake up next to the person I love, and he thought ahead to start the laundry. My coffee is sweet and iced and I got to spend time outside with the dogs. My jeans are comfortable and not at all starchy. I add some pieces to the puzzle that grows even when we aren't together, I confront a fear. The rain smells clean and feels good on my skin, I play a new CD I haven't heard in a while. I learn to glace at my phone less while I drive. At my dream job, I get to learn from a person whose perspective I often disagree with.

I forgot to change the laundry over.

I would simply consume ungodly amounts of knowledge, and an equal amount of time laying in bed with my partner. I would book a trip to Paris with his mom, and to Australia with my sister. I would paint the empty swathes of time with all of my favorite colors. I would catch p on all of the things I've been working too hard to be behind in. I would catch up on my reading, my writing, and the milestones people my age have already long accomplished. I would loose weight, get laser hair removal, and a wardrobe of things I've chosen. I would buy a big house and fill it with cats from my local shelter. I would get the dental surgery I can't afford. I would drive and drive and drive with my Jonah in the passenger seat and my hand would never miss his again.

He only left his house once a week. At first when I had finally caught onto the pattern, I could forgive it because of the pandemic. "He's just being cautious." I'd think, reminding myself not to be so judgmental. That invisible illnesses are illnesses, and I wasn't in a place to judge. If anything, I should find his dedication to precaution admirable, respectable. I could learn something from a man like that.

We lived diagonal from one another. If I look out of my living room window, I can see into his living room at an angle. He left his curtains open all year round so I could see his pale-yellow walls and his floral blue couch. I could see the mail piling up on the end table next to his recliner, torn envelopes in one pile, content in the next. I could see the pile shrink and start over every Sunday. The piles being the only thing amiss about what I could see of his home. The light always turned on at sundown, the TV always turning on at exactly 9pm.

I know you think I'm nosy, which is fair enough. But I've lived across the street and one house down from that man my entire life, aside from a brief few years I spent going to college. As a child, I would glance from my own TV to his. I knew that if it was off, I still had time before I had to go to bed. As soon as I saw his TV turn onto the evening news, I knew my mother wasn't far behind. It wasn't until I came home from school that I noticed how oddly it was timed. It took me another year before I noticed the pattern.

Sunday, his end table was cleaned, ready for mail to stack up again.

Monday, he was off to the shops.

I was ashamed to be at the store that day. It was the first time since coming home that I'd needed to buy a box of condoms. In the medical supply Isle, I'd contemplated the number of things I'd have to buy to seem a little less like the person wearing the condoms was at home waiting for me. Then he rounded the corner.

I recognized him immediately, but I didn't acknowledge it - both because despite what I knew about him I didn't know him at all and because I was holding a box of condoms in front of a man who's home I'd walked past to get to kindergarten all those years ago. I turned my head away from him. I wasn't sure that he'd recognize me, but I didn't want to take the chance. He grabbed several items, tossing them haphazardly on top of several cans of bright colored cat food and a dull-in-comparison birthday cake.

Baby oil, adult diapers, baby powder, gauze-- I tear my eyes away, my cheeks flaring. Outwardly, I didn't want to see him, inwardly, I was ecstatic for my neighbor. He'd been alone all the years I'd known of him, and he'd never had a pet, let alone a friend over. in one fell swoop, it seemed as if he'd acquired both, even in his later years. As a 20something it gave me hope to see that it was never too late to live.

"Mr. P Has a friend!" I wrote in my journal that night, next to a doodle of a birthday cake and a cat attempting to swat at it's candles.

That night, when the clock hit nine, I glanced over to his TV as a force of habit. I Smiled, as he was watching the same thing I was. The news anchor spoke over flashes of pictures of happy looking people in a sorrowful voice. I changed the channel, feeling very adult for being up passed my bedtime, watching the same things that the most adult person I knew watched-- but not so adult as to commit to something as boring as the News.

I watched his window more frequently, waiting to catch a glimpse of the cat. I knew from my own cat, Molly, that cats spent most of their time perched in the window. The kitty never came, even after weeks of watching. I watched him come home with the same cans of colorful cat food every single week, I heard them, empty, clank around in his garbage bags when he came out.

Then, about a year later, he came home with a birthday cake. I smiled. maybe I'd gotten it wrong the year before. Maybe he was celebrating his own birthday. Even if he was alone I was comforted by the idea that he was with his cat. So comforted, in fact, that I decided to buy him a "Catio" For his window. I wanted to see the cat, and I also wanted him to know that someone, somewhere cared enough for him to buy him a present for him and his best friend on his birthday.

This was what caused the pit in my gut to begin to fester. I watched from my living room, with my phone in my hand as the delivery driver pulled in front of his house and left the package, my phone chirping happily at the package I'd ordered being delivered. I watched him open the door, confused. He carried it inside and placed it on top of his mail piles and opened the gift. Instead of smiling, instead of putting it up right away, he gathered it up, held it close to his chest and began scanning the neighborhood frantically. I looked down at my phone, bewildered, making sure I got the address right, that the item I ordered was, in fact, the item I intended.

By the time I looked up, his curtains were closed for the first time I could remember.

The next time I saw him with a grocery bag in his hands, it was filled with brightly colored.... dog food cans. No, that can't be right. Poor man must be getting senile in his old age. The poor cat. I begin to wonder who keeps up with the-

My heart drops.

Who keeps up with the litter box? Had I ever seen litter being discarded? A litter box, even? Had I ever seen a carrier, a cat tree, a cat at all?

By this time, it'd been over years since I'd found out about his cat. I go back into my old journal and read.

"Mr. P made a friend!" The drawing and messy scrawl written under August 8th. I check back into my order history, and see that my initial purchase order for the catio was also August 8th of a year later. The same day I saw him come home with a birthday cake. I make a note in my phone to watch him on August 8th of the next year.

He throws away his empty cans and the catio right on schedule. I watch him bring home dog food cans without ever seeing any sign of a dog. I never see his cat. I wait for August 8th. I google him, his name, our town, and I find nothing.

But I know there's something. I know it in the same way I know he doesn't have a dog. I know it in the same way I know he thinks someone is onto him as he keeps his curtains partially drawn now. In the same way I know he will being home a birthday cake on August 8th of next year.

He does. For the next 3 years, he brings home cans of pet food every week and a birthday cake every August 8th.

The birthday cake has stopped bothering me, I'm more concerned about the invisible pets. I call animal control a couple of times, telling them about my concerns that seem to be central to me.

"Unless there is inarguable evidence of neglect of an animal, we can't waste resources. You said you've never seen a cat?"

On August 9th, Three years after the Catio incident. I'm coming home from work and My street is blocked off by shining emergency vehicles. They don't need to tell me who they're here for, but I ask anyway when the officer makes me roll down my window.

I can see Mr. P's window over the officer's shoulder, I can see flashes of a large camera. Of course the officer doesn't answer me, telling me to turn around. I tell him where I live point out the house.

"Do you know Thomas Preston?" I shake my head but say "I grew up walking past him to school."

The man nods, "Stay home, be prepared to answer a few questions."

Inside, I take my usual spot in my living room. Watching as Mr. P is taken in handcuffs by a screaming police car.

All of the vehicle's flashing lights turn off. I watch as every man in sight disappers into different cars, and all women enter the home and exit with a frail middle aged woman huddled up between them.

That night, I watch in horror as my neighbor, Thomas Preston's face fills the screen.

"Awful story tonight as breaking news reveals a local man is being charged with multiple counts of unlawful imprisonment, assault, assault of a child under the age of three, and murder. 75-Year-old Thomas Preston allegedly chained his own daughter in his basement for the last 40 years following the disappearance and suspected murder of his wife, Eileen Preston in the year 1983. Eileen would have been 64 just two days ago on August 8th."

The trees are too close together, the branches too jagged, and your toes catch on every root in the path. Vines wrap up around your ankles to slow you down and every time you see a light, a way out, you stumble towards it with everything you have; Only for it to be transformed into the glowing eyes of a predator. You collapse onto the forest floor for a final time, You do not plan on getting back up.

Your skin is scarred, your hope has been shattered and your heart cannot take another second of this pain. When those vines make their way around your neck you find yourself hoping that they squeeze harder.

But then, you're free. You don't know how it happened or when you stood up again, but you are on the edge of the wood now, and a single vine remains wrapped around your right ankle. The medow you find yourself in now is not perfect, it is not the escape you'd imagined but you're free. The path forks a dozen times leading in every direction possible, but chosing one is how you got hurt in the first place.

So, what's your move?