Some days, sparking up from beneath the usual haze of indifference, Roman felt amazement that he had not yet lost his mind.

After all, he had read plenty of studies on Reddit about how ceaseless repetition could cause people (and even animals) to lose their minds. It could even be considered a form of torture in some cases, like the crank machine in those old British prisons, and the penal treadmill. Yet here was Roman, doing the same exact things in the same exact order, day after day, month after month, for the past year without aberrance or break. And he felt just the same. Fine. Just fine.

Take this evening, for instance. He had finished his shift, a long blank day of driving around the city picking up trash, and had just walked into his apartment. The following steps proceeded in orderly fashion: ten-minute shower, sweatpants, take-out on the couch and scrolling through feeds featuring terrifying news and beautiful, damaged people until they all blended into vague shapes and colors, then a glass of whiskey carried to an unmade bed, switching on the TV to the same handful of reality cooking and baking competitions, watching and drinking until he slipped into dreamless sleep.

He felt halfway to that sleep just about now, slouched in bed as some lady with Chinese letters tattooed up her arm bemoaned the fate of her cheesecake. He blinked at the screen with a yawn. Her cake looked like The Blob. Of course, Roman wasn’t in any position to judge appearances. He didn’t dare look at any older photos of himself. For one, they tended to have Lena in them. For another, those versions of him were a stranger now. That Roman didn’t have dark circles perpetually hanging below his eyes. That Roman didn’t need his unruly brown locks cut. That Roman even had clearer skin, and shirts without wrinkles. The only thing Now Roman had over Then Roman was that he was much thinner, which added to his new scarecrow aesthetic. He probably looked older than his twenty-seven years. Like a hundred, maybe. He wasn’t a Roman that Lena could love, that was certain. But it wasn’t as though she’d really loved the old one, either.

A commercial flickered on. A beleaguered mother doused the innards of her oven with vinegar. Her head was all the way inside as she did.

“How often do you clean your oven?” asked a disembodied voice.

“Never,” Roman answered, and took a sip from his glass.

“How would you like to bump that number down to never? With the Thermi 2, you—”

The audio jolted as the television shuddered on its stand, a loud bump sounding from the other side of the wall he shared with his neighbor’s apartment. He’d met the guy here and there over the last two years, exchanging pleasantries at the mail room or in the hall. Alexander Something or Other. He’d never asked what his last name was. Roman never let the conversation get that far.

Roman sank deeper into the bed.

New commercial. An exercise bike, this time, with an automated voice that commanded your lazy ass to keep cycling with chipper platitudes.

“Come on, you’ve got this! You’re a go-getter, you’re stronger than you believe, the blood of the ancient Aztec warriors flows through your veins, and you can buy the Excaloriebur today and have it delivered right to your—”

Again the audio went fizzy as something bumped against the other side of the wall again, harder than before. Then another bump, this time so hard, the television almost fell over. Roman sat up, annoyed.

“Hey, can you knock it off?” Roman called out to the wall. “You’re gonna break my TV!”

The bumps and commotion on the other side continued, rocking the stand and the television. Roman got up, seething. What was this idiot doing? Rearranging his whole living room in the middle of the night? Roman had been this close to passing out, the best part of his day, and now all this noise had him strung up like a live wire.

Roman steadied the TV with one hand and pounded his other against the wall. “Did you hear me? I said quiet down!”

The noise only got louder, as though there was a twister raging in his neighbor’s apartment. In the undercurrent of all the bumping and slamming was some other noise Roman couldn’t identify, something like water rushing or sand falling. Roman pressed his ear up against the wall to hear better, but the strange sound was quickly swallowed up by a far louder one. Screaming.

“What the f—hey, are you alright in there?” Roman knocked on the wall again, face flashing hot as the screaming grew louder and more agonized, the sound of a man being murdered or ripped apart. Roman stood for a moment, dazed. This was not the way things went every night. This was not something that was supposed to happen to him.

But the screaming was still going, and he couldn’t exactly ignore it.

“Christ. Damn it. God fucking damn it, son of a bitch.” Roman hurriedly threw on a shirt and grabbed his cell phone, rushing out of the apartment. When he got out the apartment door, the neighbor from across the hall was already peeking out her own door, staring at Alexander’s with concern.

“What’s all that noise?” Mrs. Grant said, clutching her door frame.

Roman ignored her and pounded his fist on the door. “Hey, Alexander! You okay in there?”

The noise and screams cut off abruptly. Silence hung heavy in the air as Roman’s fist hovered over the door. Jesus, that couldn’t be good. He wasn’t sure if he ought to call the cops or try to break down the door. He was leaning toward the former when finally a voice spoke to him from the other side of the door.

“Sorry for the noise,” Alexander said, his voice muffled. “I’m fine.”

Roman glanced back toward an equally baffled Mrs. Grant, exchanging looks before he turned back to the door. “You, um, you sure? Because I heard a lot of screaming.”

“Again, so sorry about that.” Alexander spoke with a sort of supernatural calm, his voice missing the expected inflections and hitches. It sure sounded hoarse, though. “I was moving my couch. Something fell under it. I hit my foot. That’s all.”

Roman stood before the door, still twitchy from adrenaline. “Okay. Well, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Thank you for your concern. Good night.” Footsteps padded away.

Roman turned again to Mrs. Grant, but she was already shaking her head and retreating back into her apartment. Roman did the same, the panic from earlier giving way to annoyance once more.

Weird. Weird night, weird dude. Roman didn’t care for weird.

He scrambled back to his bedroom as fast as his legs could carry him, once he’d poured himself a new glass. The people on TV were carrying on just the same as if he hadn’t left. They were judging the final cake. The Blob had been saved by a layer of gilded frosting, all its misshapen bumps and cracks hidden behind decorative flowers.

Thanks a lot, Alexander, Roman thought sourly. I missed half of the finale.

Roman burrowed back into his bed. The sheets desperately needed a wash, but that could wait.

He finished off the glass. The TV voices sounded farther away. The world was blurring in that pleasant way it did minutes before sleep. Half-lidded, Roman’s eyes caught on a peeling bit of wallpaper in the top corner of his room. That could also wait.

All of it could wait.

*     *     *
“Are you living in a fog?”

Dawn rays filtered in through the blinds as Roman slowly pried open his eyes. The TV was still on. The people in the screen frolicked in fields of green and wildflowers.

“While everyone else is getting out in the sun and stopping to smell the flowers, you’re battling drowsiness, sneezing, headaches, and congestion.”

Roman forced himself out of bed with all the energy and agility of a slug, stumbling to the dresser.

“And isn’t that so unfair? Why can’t you revel in the blooming rites of spring like everyone else? Why do you alone have to be a walking snot fountain whenever you walk out of the house? Why do you alone suffer when everyone else seems so happy?”

Roman yawned as he threw on his uniform. As the daze of sleep began to clear, memories of the night before bubbled up unwelcome. Roman didn’t particularly want to care, but a quiet unease was tickling in the back of his brain. Had he handled that right? What if it was more serious than Alexander had claimed? Hell, what if Alexander was some sort of nutcase and had killed a guy in there? Should Roman have called the police? Should he tip them off now?

“Wouldn’t you like to be free of the fog?”

No, no, he wouldn’t call the police. He was overthinking things. Everything was fine.

“Wouldn’t you like . . . clarity?”

Roman, remembering the TV, grabbed the remote.

“With Clirways Daytime, you can—” the voice cut off abruptly as Roman switched it off, chucking the remote onto the bed and walking out.

One disruption leads to another, a domino cascade of events causing further divergence from hallowed routine. Sure enough, as Roman stopped to lock his door behind him, Mrs. Grant stepped out of hers, bursting with thoughts on last night’s disturbance.

“Weird business last night, hm?” she asked Roman. She was swaddled in a green bathrobe, her white hair flattened in the back.

“I guess,” he shrugged. “I was actually about to head off to w—”

“You know he’s a little odd himself, that one. Or eccentric, I think, that’s probably the better word for it, and you know, there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, nothing at all, and everyone’s entitled to mind their own business and live their own lives as they see fit, but when you’ve got half the building up at night, well, you’ve got to wonder . . .”

And so Mrs. Grant proceeded to hold Roman verbally hostage. He kept nodding and waiting for a break in her words, for just a single breath of space to politely excuse himself. Mrs. Grant didn’t take a breath. She was too busy popping out increasingly creative ways to politely call Alexander a freak.

“. . . and I mean, why not just go by Alex like everyone else? It’s so overly proper, not that I get the chance to call him much of anything, he can’t be bothered with a simple hello when we bump into each other in the hall . . .”

Roman just kept nodding and waiting. This was curtain-twitcher talk at its finest. It made him feel even more ridiculous about his worries from earlier. Alexander seemed nice from the few times they’d spoken. Better than nice, in some ways.

“. . . Do you know what he actually does for a living? I sure don’t, I don’t think anyone does, I spot him coming home at all hours of the day and night all throughout the week, so what sort of respectable job would even fit a schedule like that . . .”

Roman remembered when he’d first moved into his apartment and noticed Alexander from across the hall, two years ago. Roman didn’t think many men were what one might call beautiful, but Alexander was definitely among the few. He had a face like a Greek statue, all chiseled and symmetric, with doe-eyed mournfulness. Black hair, gray eyes. He was tall, lithe, a nice dresser. Roman was still tethered to Lena at the time, so he wasn’t technically allowed to notice any of this. He kept his distance and loyally shoved the inconvenient feelings down to the depths of himself. This fidelity was a waste in the end, but there was no doing anything about that now.

“. . . No girlfriend that I’ve seen in the last few years either, which is odd for a man in his twenties, I’m sure you agree, so one has to wonder what it is that’s chasing the girls away—”

“I think he’s fine,” Roman interrupted forcefully. “Look, I hate to be rude, but I’ve really got to go.”

Roman’s words were punctuated by the soft ding of the elevator at the end of the hall. The silver doors parted, and a lone figure stepped into the hall.

“Speak of the devil,” Mrs. Grant muttered to Roman, but the grin on her face faded as Alexander came closer.

He wore a collared shirt and silk tie, and carried a stack of antique books, one of which he was thumbing through as he walked. His hair was tousled from the wind outside. He walked their way with a bounce in his step. None of this particularly fit Mrs. Grant’s Portrait Of A Weirdo.

But the mask did.

“Oh! Roman, Edie! Good morning!” Alexander chirped once he looked up from his book. His voice rang out clear from behind the mask. It was similar to a theater mask, an empty expression frozen in blinding white. The only hint of color on it was the black paint that filled in the mask’s unmoving lips.

“Good . . . morning.” Roman could barely get the words out. Mrs. Grant said nothing at all, merely stared transfixed by the blank visage Alexander wore.

“I’m glad I ran into you. I was going to stop by later today, actually, to apologize for the noise last night,” said Alexander. His eyes landed on Roman, intense and piercing. “I don’t know what I was thinking, moving things around that late. I’m really sorry for the disturbance, and it won’t happen again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Roman said. He pointed to his own face. “You, uh, you sure you’re alright? What’s with that thing?”

“Oh, I’m fine. My foot’s already feeling better,” said Alexander, as though he hadn’t heard the last question. He shot them each a pleasant nod before walking past them toward his apartment. “Well, I’ve got some work to do. See you two around!”

“See you,” Roman said weakly as Alexander disappeared behind the door. He and Mrs. Grant shared a look.

“I told you,” she said, then left for her own apartment.

It was such a small quirk. A mask, who cared. Yet all the rest of that day, as Roman drove block by block to collect the refuse of the city, he was shadowed by the memory of Alexander’s eyes looking out from the mask.

*     *     *
The wallpaper in the top corner had peeled a little more.

It was the first thing Roman had noticed when he’d dragged himself back into his bedroom, still stinking of the city. He kept that bit of wallpaper in his thoughts as he stripped out of his uniform, as he showered, as he did every item in his evening ritual right up until the glass was in his hand and the TV had sparked to life. So long as he kept the wallpaper in his head, it would keep less welcome things out. Think of the wallpaper, think of the paste needed to smooth it back to normal, think of where to buy the paste, not of the painted black lips, the smooth porcelain skin, the gray eyes.

Roman emptied his glass, already sure it wasn’t going to be enough.

Tonight the challenge was pies. In the screen, a cherry pie bubbled red along its edges as one of the judges yapped to the lady with the Chinese tattoos.

“What you have to be mindful of if you’re going to make it in this competition is that presentation is just as, if not more important than taste alone. You can get away with a lot so long as you know how to make it look beautiful . . .”

On the other side of the wall, a soft bump sounded. Roman sat up, staring at the wall. He grabbed the remote and muted the TV, listening. No other sound came.

Probably nothing.

Just like the mask.

Given everything that had happened last night, wasn’t another nighttime sound odd? Given the circumstances, it was something worth investigating, wasn’t it?

Before Roman had even finished arguing with himself, he was already grabbing a t-shirt and tennis shoes. He would just knock, check up on Alexander, like any decent neighbor would. It was nothing.

Roman looped justifications in his head as he walked out of his apartment to Alexander’s and knocked on the door. After a moment, the door swung open to reveal Alexander. Still in the mask.

“Roman!” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised. With the mask’s unchanging expression, the only other thing that betrayed any sort of emotion was the slight widening of his eyes. “What brings you here?”

“I, um, I heard a noise again . . .” Roman’s voice wobbled as he glanced away.

“Really?” Again the eyes widened, and Alexander tilted his head. “Huh. I was just reading on my couch.”

“Oh. Well, you know, I heard it, so I thought maybe you, I don’t know,” Roman scrambled for the right words. “Hurt your foot again. Worse, or something.”

Alexander lifted his foot in the air and wriggled it around playfully. “Good as new. Thanks for the concern.”

“Oh. Good.” Roman lingered for a painful moment, not sure what else to say. Alexander watched him, tilting his head again.

“Say, you want to come in for tea or something? I’ve been holed up in here all day working, and I could really use some good old fashioned human conversation,” said Alexander.

Roman hesitated.

Tea with a neighbor. This is what neighborly concern had earned him, yet another divergence from the evening ritual. He ought to stop the cascade here and say no.

But the word felt impossible to summon with those eyes boring into him from behind the mask. If he left now, curiosity would only continue to plague him as it had all day.

“Sure,” said Roman, and stepped inside.

“Excellent!” Alexander clapped him on the shoulder and led him to the living room. “Here, take a seat wherever you like, and I’ll put the kettle on.”

Roman nodded, eyes roaming the space as Alexander walked to the kitchen. Alexander’s apartment was another world. Every inch of space was crowded with books, the old antique kinds bound in leather or with faded titles, with gilded pages, stitched binding, some held together by a few frayed threads. There were stacks on the couch armchairs, circling the coffee table like a fortress, crammed in so many shelves that Roman couldn’t see the walls. Some were merely stacked in pillars by the corners of the room, as tall as Roman himself. All together they imbued the air with a musty, vanilla-tinged scent.

Unable to resist, Roman picked one of the leatherbounds up and flipped to the opening page. The script within was completely foreign, from no language that he could guess. Letters curled and collapsed in on themselves, spiralling in patterns that made Roman’s head ache. He put that down, picked up others. In one, instructions for a ritual to forget the dead. In the next, a dozen iterations of the same fairytale, each one ending with the Prince walking through a magic doorway, never to be seen again.

The last one was a book of illustrations. Every page housed an intricate picture, packed with minute gruesome details. Decapitated hands used as candles, glass prisons crammed with the contorted bodies of prisoners piled atop each other, hideous beasts with features that couldn’t exist in nature, and a vast, dark planet that grew larger with each illustration. Roman closed this one as well.

In addition to the books, there was a myriad of strange antiquities peppered throughout the room. A silver spyglass lay on the windowsill. An automaton head blinked from a bookshelf, rhythmically smiling, frowning, or weeping in turns. Even a grail carved from bone. Everywhere Roman looked, an obscene wonder was eagerly awaiting his attention.

He wanted to be freaked out. He was freaked out. This was the den of a headcase, clear and simple. But deep down, against his own will, something inside Roman was . . . delighted.

“I hope you like dandelion,” Alexander said from behind Roman, making him jump. He held out a mug to Roman.

“Ah! Um, yeah, sure.” Roman took the mug with a shaky hand, trying not to let the discomforting jumble of emotions show on his face. He took a sip of the bitter brew and looked down at the figure on his mug. A white Snoopy mug. As if something this normal had any right to be in here.

“People like to demonize dandelions as ‘just weeds’, but they’re non-invasive and have a lot of health benefits.” Alexander sat down on the couch and leaned back. He nursed his own cup of tea, but there was no opening in the mouth of the mask. The black, immobile lips were frozen shut. Roman waited for Alexander to lift the mask to drink, but Alexander merely set his cup down on the table.

“Right,” Roman said distractedly, staring at the mask. He took a breath. “Uh, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I can’t help but notice the—”

“Oh, I already know what you’re curious about,” Alexander said with a light laugh. He reached over the coffee table to one of the book stacks and picked up the book of illustrations Roman had been looking through.

Roman flushed red. Damn it. He’d put it back in the wrong spot. “Sorry, I picked it up on impulse.”

“No need to apologize! I don’t keep my library just to hoard. Books are for reading, sharing, talking about. I’d be happy to lend it to you, if you like.” Alexander held the book out to Roman.

“Thanks, but no thanks. It’s a cool book, it’s just . . . a lot.” Roman grimaced slightly as the macabre pictures flashed in his mind. “I’ve never been a big horror buff.”

“Ah, I understand. It is a lot.” Alexander flipped the book open and looked through the pages as he spoke. “It’s not a horror book, though.”

“Jesus christ, that’s not horror?” Roman nodded to the illustration Alexander had landed on, a man taking off his face as though it were only a mask, revealing the raw workings beneath. “What the hell else could it be?”

“Illustrations made by a coal miner, back in the 1920s. Jonathan McGill. He suffered an accident down in the mines. Some sources say blunt force trauma to the head, some say a mutant version of black lung disease, some say both,” said Alexander. He turned the page. There was the dark planet again. “All agree that he was never the same after. He was bedridden for the short remainder of his life, and he spent those final days making these drawings and paintings. An acquaintance of his wife was the head of a minor imprint and found McGill’s pictures so entrancing that he had them published in this collection. They didn’t sell many copies, as you can imagine. They lost quite a bit of money on the project.”

“Sounds deserved. That’s fucked up, trying to take advantage of a mentally ill man.”

“McGill didn’t think of himself as mentally ill, for what’s it worth.” Alexander idly traced the inky whorls of the planet. “He claimed, in the foreword, that he was seeing things clearly for the first time in his life, and had created the pictures so that the world could see things clearly too. Here, read it yourself.”

Alexander turned to the foreword and pointed to a passage for Roman to read.

“I realize now that I was in a dream all my life, and have only just now woken up. My gift to you all now is the gift of wakefulness, the gift of clarity. Look without fear. Only when you realize you are dreaming can you wake, and wonder how you ever thought the world could have been thus.” Roman lifted an eyebrow. “Freaky.”

“I would have thought it might resonate with you.”

“Why would you think that?”

“You’re a trash collector, aren’t you?” Alexander tilted his head as he shut the book, placing it on the table. “You must see the things people hide all the time. The debris of their secrets, thrown into the dumpster in hopes of being forgotten. The stuff they don’t intend for the rest of the world to see. But even hidden, it’s all still the truth.”

Roman paused at that. “I . . . guess I have noticed weird things, over the years. An urn full of ashes. Empty guns. Weird porn. One time, one really rotten time, we even found . . . we found a d— well, we found something we really didn’t want to find. Had me messed up for a while.”

Alexander nodded. “It’s not so different in my line of work. I’m an antique dealer.”

“Oh!” Roman looked around at all Alexander’s things again, feeling a little more grounded by the revelation. “That explains a lot.”

Alexander tipped his head back and laughed. “Yeah, that’s how I ended up with all these things. I know people probably think I’m a hoarder, but you never know what might be useful or worth more than you initially estimated, so you end up holding onto things longer than you should.”

“So I guess you stumble over weird things too. Difference is I chuck ’em out, and you hold on to them,” said Roman.

“Pretty much, though I sell a lot. It’s the hidden information that I’ve found more valuable than the objects themselves, though. I’m good at finding what’s hidden. Things the average person wouldn’t even dream of. It’s been like McGill said.” Alexander glanced back at the book. “Like waking up from a dream.”

For a moment, they were both silent. Roman caught himself staring at Alexander, filled with the sudden, desperate urge to reach out and rip off the mask. He curled his hands into fists to stop them from reaching out.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask. Why are you wearing that?”

Alexander turned his head to look at Roman, pinning him with his gaze. “Would you like to hear a story?”

“Story? Like, related to my question?”

“I found it hidden in McGill’s book, and a few others.” Alexander picked up McGill’s book and bent the spine, holding up a single page to the flickering ceiling light. With the light, so faint Roman nearly couldn’t read them, were words. “It takes place on one of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede. You can see Ganymede, actually, if you look out your window.”

Roman’s eyes flicked to the window behind them. He saw nothing but the dark.

Alexander leaned closer. “It starts with a vast city of billions, living in Jupiter’s shadow. They are a brilliant species, having mastered all the arts and sciences, and crafted every little cog and gear in their civilization to work flawlessly. They have eliminated sorrow, disease, death. They believe themselves to be breathing gods, masters of the universe. Until one day, they discover they are not.”

Roman soon found himself completely lulled into the story as Alexander continued to weave the tale. It was a strange story, wherein the characters realize that the beautiful moon on which they live has been rotting from the inside without their knowledge, secretly falling apart and threatening their existence. So, the people of Ganymede must quickly find a drastic solution for their self-preservation. Roman saw it all as the story spiraled deeper and deeper, with hundreds of unique characters springing up and dying, with civil wars and shattering discoveries, apocalyptic cults and heroes sacrificing themselves in vain attempts to save the city, of mass reincarnations and transformations, of prophetic visions and doomed loves. As it went on, Roman found himself starting to believe that he himself was a Ganymedean belonging to the story, that his life on Earth had only been a dream.

It was only when he glanced at the window and saw the sun that he realized he’d been sitting on Alexander’s couch all night.

“Oh my god!” Roman sprang up, spilling some of his tea. “What the hell, what time is it?”

Alexander shrugged and checked his watch. “Six AM. You’re not late, are you?”

“There’s no way it’s six in the morning. I’ve only been here, what, an hour?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“I’ve got to go.” Roman set his mug down on the table, his hands shaking furiously. He felt sick. Undone at the seams. He had never lost time like that, never in his life. Not even when he’d gotten roaring drunk.

“Too bad. You’ll have to come back to hear the ending.” Alexander winked. “It’s a good one.”

“Yeah, thanks. Maybe,” said Roman, inwardly vowing that he’d never step foot in there again. He hurried to the door. “I’ll see you around.”

“Sure. Oh, and Roman?”

Roman, hand gripping the doorknob, turned to see Alexander a few feet away, leaning against the kitchen entrance.

“Two years ago, when you’d first moved in?” Alexander paused, tilted his head. “I noticed you, too.”

Roman said nothing. He only rushed out the door breathlessly, certain that Alexander had been grinning beneath the mask.

*     *     *
Work was unbearable that day. Roman was exhausted, unable to keep Alexander’s story out of his head as he and his coworker did the rounds. It wasn’t the strangeness of the story that bothered him. He could explain that away, and even the lost time if he really tried.

But he couldn’t explain why the story felt almost familiar, as though he had heard it before, ages ago. He couldn’t explain why something in him longed to hear more, to close his eyes and return to the vast darkness of the city in Jupiter’s shadow. He couldn’t explain why he longed to sit beside Alexander again, or the feeling that the last two years had been a waste, that his time with Lena and his time alone weren’t meant to have been spent so, and that he had always belonged in that strange living room, listening to Alexander’s stories until he could figure out just what it was in them he was reaching for.

And worst of all, he couldn’t explain the small, dark object in the sky, hanging just behind the sun as he drove through the city.

Roman had promised himself he wouldn’t so much as speak to Alexander again. He was too out of sorts, too affected. It was all he could think about as the workday wound to an end and he returned to his apartment building. Once the elevator had delivered him to his floor, he forced himself straight to his door, not allowing himself to even look at Alexander’s as he fumbled for his key.

To his left, Alexander’s door creaked open.

“Hey, Roman. I’m glad I caught you. Feel like some tea?”

Roman turned to look at Alexander. He was still wearing the mask. Roman shivered.

“I, uh, can’t. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”

Roman started to turn the key when Alexander spoke again.

“Don’t you want to know how it ends?”

Roman froze. He couldn’t make himself unlock the door. He wanted to say no, to leave all this strangeness behind, to forget the story and forget about Alexander, but—

But actually, no, he didn’t want to.

“Just a few cups,” said Roman, taking his key out the lock and walking to Alexander’s apartment. “Just until you get to the ending.”

*     *     *
As it turned out, that night wasn’t enough time for Alexander to make it to the ending, nor the night after, or the one after.

Roman would come every single night after work. The door would be left unlocked for him, and Alexander would be waiting with dandelion tea and new secret pages from his antique books. He was always wearing the mask.

Hours would pass in minutes as the story of the Ganymedeans was told. And the story became more brutal with each passing night. Now there were bloody sacrifices, mass suicides, cosmic-scale tortures, and city-wide hallucinations. The Ganymedeans were falling into the darkness, and Roman couldn’t look away. He was there with them, every night, falling too. He could see the spires crumble. He could hear cries from their windows. He could feel their sorrow and terror coursing through him in rivers. He also saw their unnatural and hideous beauty, their surreal brilliance. Eternally warped. Blooming and writhing. Incomprehensible. In his mind’s eye, they looked like no creature he’d ever seen, beings too stunning for Earth. And they were just on the verge of finding a solution, he was sure of it.

Work became increasingly less feasible. Roman was exhausted from his nighttime visits, since it was always morning just as they were getting to the height of the story. Roman couldn’t bear his coworkers, or the people on the street, watching him pass by with their empty eyes. He couldn’t stand watching them pretend to be perfect, put-together people while he saw the ugliness they hid away day after day. Mountains of food wasted by the ungrateful, toxic chemicals by the careless. He began to feel that all of them, the whole city, were nothing but automatons without souls of their own. Nothing but shells. The only real people in the whole world were him and Alexander.

Finally, when he caught himself beginning to doze off at the wheel, Roman called in all his sick days and vacation time so he could use the days for sleeping. He had to keep the blinds closed, to block out that dark thing looming in the sky, and the TV on, to block out the soft noises from Alexander’s apartment. The sheets still needed changing, and the wallpaper in the corner had peeled off even more, but all that could wait. He’d burrow under his blanket and dream. Sometimes he dreamt of the city, and of getting lost in its labyrinth of streets. Sometimes he dreamt of the things in McGill’s book. Always he dreamt of Alexander. Finally Roman had a dream that he was lying in bed next to Alexander, and Alexander wore nothing, nothing at all except that god-awful, blank, cruel mask. Just as Roman reached out to rip it off, he woke up.

And when he did, he realized he could no longer remember Alexander’s face.

*     *     *
The night after the dream, Roman didn’t go to Alexander’s. He instead sat at his kitchen table, staring down at the wood and waiting.

Waiting for what, though? To feel normal again? To know what to do, or where his life was heading? He felt as though he’d been unmoored. The routine that had sustained him was broken now, and replaced by something alien. The comfortable numbness of before was out of reach.

“I should have stuck to my cooking shows,” Roman mumbled to himself, then started laughing. Perfect. He was now the breed of weirdo that talked to himself.

Roman rose from the table. For the first time in a long time, he poured himself a glass of whiskey and headed for the TV. He needed a break in this new routine with a return to the old one. Just one night, just to feel like he was still the master of himself. To prove that he didn’t need the story, didn’t need Alexander. He slouched in the bed and switched to his favorite show.

He was surprised to find the same crop of contestants were still competing. Chinese tattoo lady was in the middle of fumbling a tier cake. Her back was to the camera. A judge came by to inspect her progress.

“Hiya, so how’s it going, hon?”

“Bad.”

“Oh, well I’m sure it’s not that—”

“It is. And it’s too late now. I can’t put it back the way it was.”

“Well, with some expertly applied frosting—”

“I’m tired of doing that. And I wouldn’t be able to expertly apply anything now, anyway.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to see in this thing.”

The contestant finally turned to the camera, her face obscured behind a mask.

Roman stared in shock. Outside his window, a low rumbling sounded, but he couldn’t move or take his eyes off the TV. The contestant looked directly into the camera with an eerie calm in her eyes.

“When are you going to wake up already?”

The woman continued to stare as the TV flickered wildly, a static buzz filling the air. Then, so soft Roman nearly didn’t hear it, a knock at the door.

Roman set his drink down, his every nerve on edge. He slowly made his way to the door, steeling himself before opening it. Waiting outside was Alexander.

“There you are!” Alexander said lightly. “Haven’t seen you in almost a week. I was starting to worry you might be avoiding little old me.”

“A week?” Roman blinked, shook his head. “I was just over yesterday . . .”

“Not that I can recall. You must’ve overdone it with the whiskey or something.” Alexander patted Roman’s shoulder, then walked inside. “You know, I’m always hosting you. It’s about time you returned the favor.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea tonight. No offense, but I don’t feel like hanging out with you right now.”

Alexander paused in the living room, turning to look at Roman.

“Come on, Roman,” he said. “We both know that’s not true.”

The low rumbling outside sounded again, louder this time.

Roman shut the door behind him. “I . . . I just don’t understand what’s happening to me. Ever since I went to your apartment, everything’s changed.”

“Yes.” Alexander nodded. “You’re afraid of it?”

“Of course I’m afraid of it. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

“Would you rather go back to the way you were before?”

“I don’t know.”

The rumbling again now, even louder. Alexander seemed to take notice, turning his head toward Roman’s bedroom before beckoning Roman to follow him there.

“You say you don’t know, but you do, you’re just afraid of the answer,” said Alexander as he stepped into the bedroom. “You don’t want to return to being that animal again, I promise you. I could hear those braindead shows and commercials through the wall, lulling you into keeping up the same meaningless cycle. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Pathetic comfort, fake safety. Too scared to look at the world. You barely existed.”

“You don’t know anything about me!” Roman snapped. He rubbed his eyes furiously, as though trying to wake himself from yet another dream.

Alexander looked up at the bedroom wall, pausing at the peeling wallpaper in the corner.

“I know more than you think,” he said, moving toward the wallpaper. “You can change the surface however you like, but what’s beneath stays the same. I’m good at finding what’s hidden.”

Alexander then reached up, grabbed the wallpaper, and peeled it all the way down. Beneath, formerly concealed behind the wallpaper, a black, tarry mold glimmered and bubbled along Roman’s wall.

“Oh my—” Roman bent over and gagged. He looked at the mold with wide eyes as it pulsated and simmered, so shiny that Roman could see his own haggard reflection in it. It was like he was seeing himself for the first time. He looked too thin, too tired, but so strangely alive, like a coyote freshly caught in a steel trap. And he wanted to run just as badly.

“I need air,” he said, one hand pressed over his mouth. He went to the window and yanked open the blinds, only to find the sky completely blocked by the dark, scarred surface of a moon. Just like in the dreams and the story.

Roman stared at it, slowly opening the window. It was close enough to touch.

“Am I still dreaming?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Alexander. The mold, now freed, began to inch its way to the floor and adjacent walls.

“Then what is this?”

Alexander came to his side, watching the moon with him. After a moment, he said, “It’s the ending.”

Alexander turned to Roman, gray eyes brighter even than the white of the mask. He took Roman’s hand in his and laid it on the side of the mask.

Roman’s heart skipped, so surprised that he nearly took his hand away. The mask was unearthly cold to the touch. It didn’t feel like porcelain after all, but like some smooth stone, both dead and alive.

“Can I?”

Alexander nodded.

Roman tightened his grip on the mask and tore it away from Alexander’s face.

The original human face, the one Roman couldn’t remember anymore, was gone. In its place was something warped, something blooming and writhing, unnatural and hideous and so beautiful it made him sick. A million colors and configurations fusing and unfusing, like nothing Roman had ever seen. Too stunning for Earth. And he couldn’t explain why he felt like he’d seen it before, ages ago.

The room was shaking around them now, the moon crushing closer. Those soft sounds that Roman hadn’t been able to recognize before came through crystal clear now. Voices, calling from Jupiter’s shadow.

Alexander took the mask from Roman’s hand and threw it to the side. He leaned in close to Roman, blinding as he spoke.

“I knew you’d remember. Now we can go together.”

Exquisite pain blossomed across Roman’s face as it began to shift and change, caving in on itself, twisting into something else. Ganymede closed in, and Roman screamed in ecstasy.