I’m pretty sure my roommate’s goldfish is the head of a pet syndicate trying to kill him.

I’m not sure when I first noticed it, it might have been when I caught the parakeet watching me in his tiny mirror, following my every move around the room, or when I woke to find Max, my gray tabby cat, watching me sleep from the top of my chest of drawers at 3 AM.

But I finally realized something was wrong when I opened the bathroom door to find Ralph the mastiff, Max the cat, and Penelope the litter trained, lop-eared rabbit, all sitting right outside the bathroom door, seemingly peering under the gap between the door’s bottom and the hallway carpet. They scattered and pretended to be interested in bits of fuzz or beams of light, but I know what I saw, they were watching me.

It was a Thursday, so I had a late start day, which meant catching up on my Netflix que and having a leisurely breakfast, then heading to the office around 10. I grabbed the raisin bran and a quart of milk, tucking a large bowl under one arm and clamping the spoon between my teeth. I managed to leave one hand free for a quart-sized tumbler of freshly squeezed OJ, perfect.

I dumped my breakfast on the coffee table and reached into the “remote drawer” in the end table, only to find that the aptly named drawer was not currently home to the control for the Roku. I scanned the room, and there, peering out from behind one chair, was Penelope, eying me suspiciously. I tossed over the chair cushions, discovering a long-lost sock, but no remote.

I quickly scanned the higher surfaces in the room, the mantle, the bookshelf, the entertainment… and there was the mastiff, peering around the corner from the kitchen. What the heck was going on? Finally, I spotted the remote sitting squarely in front of the goldfish bowl, pointed toward the TV as if Benedict Cumberbatch, the evil eyed gold fish my roommate had arrived with, had been using it. Weird.

I shrugged it off and sat, hitting my tailbone on Ralph’s denta-chew, which he knew did not belong on the couch, and clicked on the TV and set top Roku streaming box, waiting for it to pick up a Wi-Fi signal while I poured cereal and milk. I positioned myself just the right distance from the arm of the sofa to make the reach to the coaster, holding my OJ tumbler, just right and sank back.
About two clicks into my normal content scrolling routine, I noticed a change.

I checked the user account, but it was mine, but I knew for a fact I had not watched nearly this quantity of police procedural documentaries. I turned and eyeballed Benedict, who, quickly looked away and pretended, nonchalantly, to lap his bowl, looking for food flake crumbs.

Must have been the new roommate, or so I convinced myself, and settled in to catch up on Fear of the Walking Dead. It was a successful morning. I’d been able to cram in three episodes. The milk to cereal ratio had been perfect, and the three cubes of ice in my OJ, were just enough to keep it refreshingly cold, without watering it down. Other than the stronger than usual scent of the almond milk, a nearly perfect breakfast.

I scraped the breakfast fixings up in an armload, grabbing the empty orange juice glass and clicking onto my morning news feed, as I went to the kitchen.

I froze.

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