When Phil woke up, I was asleep.

  He woke in someone else's house, on a couch, and must have been surprised at once—why he wasn't at home, why there were no plants around him, none of his familiar smells of soil and leaves. We live in houses across from each other; the path to his garden is only a few steps.

  He left quietly.

  I didn't hear him.

  In the morning, the house was empty.

  I understood it immediately—not by sound, but by absence. The mug in the kitchen had been washed. The blanket was neatly folded. The front door was closed, as always.

  Phil was gone.

  I didn't call him right away.

  From time to time I glanced out the window at his house. It was windy outside; leaves tore free from the trees and spun in restless circles. Phil was nowhere to be seen.

  The phone was silent.

  When noon struck, I grew anxious and tapped his name in my contacts. The line rang. Then—his familiar voice.

  "Hi, dear."

  "Hi, Phil. How are you?"

  "Moderately miserable," he said. "This morning I woke up on your couch and remembered how we spent the whole day yesterday looking for that damned part..."

  He coughed.

  "Forgive me—I must have fallen asleep at your place by accident. It's embarrassing. You were sleeping, so I left quietly. Flowers don't like being alone for too long."

  He coughed again.

  "I'm not feeling very well today. Probably caught something at the bazaar. Everything feels like it's wrapped in fog. And my wallet was stolen—can you imagine? I didn't even notice yesterday. Documents, money... all of it. I'm terribly upset. I guess I was already sick yesterday. How about you? Are you feeling okay?"

  "Probably," I said.

  Though I wasn't sure. Since morning my left shoulder had been aching, and my head felt heavy.

  "You should probably call the technician," Phil said. "Tell him we never found the part. Maybe he'll suggest something..."

  He coughed again, apologized, and quickly said goodbye.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Silence hung in the receiver.

  I was surprised.

  And I didn't remind him of his words. Of what he had said during the night. Of how he had said it. It seemed to me that if I touched that now, something might shift again in the wrong direction. And he already felt bad—stress, exhaustion, illness.

  I decided—later.

  The house grew quiet again. The dripping of water sounded clearer than before, as if it now had the right to exist. I went over to the sink and stood there, listening.

  Then I picked up the phone again and dialed the technician.

  Ring.

  Another ring.

  "Yes," he said.

  "This is Molly," I said. "About the part. We didn't manage to buy it. Yesterday didn't work out... And Phil got sick."

  "Got it," he replied. "I'll stop by myself and take care of it. Tomorrow morning."

  "Okay. Thank you."

  "I'll call you," he said, and hung up.

  I slipped the phone into my pocket.

  The water kept dripping.

  Unhurried.

  As if it were waiting.

  I stood in the kitchen for a long time, listening to the house. The dripping gradually became background noise—like breathing you grow accustomed to and stop noticing. I caught myself waiting not for a call or footsteps, but for some inner click, after which everything would become clearer. The click didn't come.

  I was tired.

  Yesterday came back to me not whole, but in flashes.

  I thought of Phil. Of how he had first screamed wildly, and then—tears in his eyes, yet absolutely calm—spoken during the night. How he talked utter nonsense. His catlike smile. How I dragged him home. And all of it had really happened yesterday.

  I shivered.

  How easily he explained everything today as exhaustion and illness. He said we had searched for the part for a long time, even though we never even reached the right row. Did he really remember nothing?

  I threw on an old sweater and went to the studio.

  It was at the back of the house, with large windows and a cold floor. I loved this place because it demanded no explanations from me. Paintings tolerate pauses. Paint can dry as long as it needs. The canvas asks no questions.

  I went there not because I wanted to paint.

  I needed a place where thoughts could be kept at a distance. Where they don't all collapse on you at once.

  On the easel stood a piece I had been working on for several weeks. I didn't approach it right away. First I simply sat on a stool and looked. The painting was almost finished, but something was missing. Not a detail—a direction. As if I had been painting around the core all this time, afraid to approach it.

  I picked up the brush.

  Then put it back down.

  The room came back to me again.

  At first—empty.

  Old furniture, half-light, nothing extra. That was what had calmed me then: emptiness felt safe. I even remember the relief—there's no one here. And only afterward, seconds later, the space seemed to... open. Not change—manifest.

  Why?

  I tried to remember whether there had been a moment when someone appeared. Or whether they had been there from the very beginning. And if they had—why didn't I see them?

  Poor eyesight is a convenient explanation. But an insufficient one. I saw the furniture. I saw the walls. I saw Phil and that man. So it wasn't my eyes.

  Then what was it?

  I remembered the glint. That brief, almost blinding white flash in his hand. Either paper. Or something pretending to be it.

  He took something.

  Before, I thought—from the wallet.

  Now I wasn't sure it was only from there.

  Who was he, anyway?

  Not a man, as Phil said. But he looked human. Spoke like a human. Understood our world well enough to offer to break a bill, to know the rows at the bazaar, to behave naturally. Too naturally.

  Serus.

  The word surfaced on its own, without explanation. I didn't remember anyone saying it. But it was there—like knowledge you don't ask where it came from. Maybe he introduced himself and I forgot, but his name remained somewhere underneath.

  If he took something, what exactly was it?

  Money? The scrap of paper with the part's name? Or... Phil's attention?

  I remembered his smile—happy, almost enamored. As if he didn't resist because there was no need to resist. As if everything happening felt right to him.

  Hypnosis?

  Too simple a word. Hypnosis implies external influence. But with Phil it looked different—as if he had simply been let into a place where he already could be.

  Then who were the others?

  The larva.

  The woman beside it.

  Those who cared for it.

  Others—small shadows, fluffy, soft. I hadn't had time to examine them.

  And the enormous flowering plants—vines everywhere.

  I shuddered.

  If these were aliens, why was everything I saw not about invasion, not about threat, not about superiority?

  Aliens don't look like that.

  That's what... inhabitants look like.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the canvas.

  My hand reached for the brush on its own.

  It suddenly occurred to me:

  what if that room wasn't a "place" in our sense at all?

  What if it was a layer? And it seemed empty because we weren't fully in it yet.

  Then Phil might not have been "under hypnosis" at all.

  But halfway—there.

  I remembered his words:

  I'm not here. But not all of me.

  I shivered.

  I didn't know what frightened me more: the thought of aliens—or the thought that they might be much closer to us than we are used to believing.

  I made the first stroke.

  And suddenly I understood why I didn't want to ask Phil questions yet.

  Because if he answered—

  I would have to decide what to do with it.

  And I wasn't ready for that yet.