I was a master of self-delusion until the day the evidence became impossible to ignore. I returned home from work to find my living room subtly, almost imperceptibly, rearranged. A book on the coffee table had been moved three inches to the left; a throw blanket was folded with a precision I didn’t possess. The realization that my private space had been curated by an invisible hand turned my blood to ice. Fear finally outweighed my capacity for doubt, and I dialed the police.
The officers conducted a thorough sweep of the ground floor. They checked the closets, peeked under the beds, and looked behind the heavy velvet curtains. Finding nothing unusual, they began to pack their gear, chalking it up to a potential “unauthorized entry” where the intruder had already fled. But as they headed toward the front door, one veteran officer paused in the hallway. He looked up at a faint rectangular seam in the ceiling that I had always assumed was just a structural panel.
I felt a hollow pit open in my stomach. “I didn’t even know there was one.” Continue reading…
