Proudly and deliberately, it placed the shirt – a pink button-down – folded nicely on top of the dresser. Now, it only had but to compile the rest of the outfit. It was completely oblivious to the ongoings across the room. Not even when Ben passed by to stand in front of the mirror to the right of the closet did the creature stop to pay attention to him. It wasn’t until he neared the mirror and caught a glimpse of his reflection did all work stop in the closet. Actually, a more accurate way to describe the moment was that all five tentacles twitched grotesquely and then froze. Khaki…

Quickly, without allowing further time for the beast to fight back, he pulled the jeans on and buttoned them. One tentacle was holding up an old pair of maroon dockers. No, these wouldn’t work, either. It grumbled, and in an act of concession, held up three different belts for Ben to choose from to wear with the dark blue jeans. Ben grabbed the nearest one – a black belt with a silver buckle – and snatched a pair of dress shoes form the closet. Frantically, the creature snatched them from his hand before he could scurry away, holding up two other pairs in exchange. thump-Thump-THUmp-THUMP-AHHGH!/THUMP-OHH!/THUMP-WAGHH!/THUMP The gelatinous metronome was up,…

Benjamin D’Amico didn’t want to start writing in his fancy notebook again. It had been months since his last foray into the depths of his soul, and some strange part of him suspected that the pages which had been written thus far were somehow perfect, and he didn’t want to fuck up the pristine, off-white pages that remained. By far, the worst imaginable outcome that he could think of would be to have his fairy-tale notebook and the fairy-tale first draft that it contained marred by the horrid black marks of “mistakes” written whist he was in an “uncentered”, “uninspired”, “unenlightened” state of mind. And so he wrote this paragraph,…

Ben looked down at the rear seat beneath him. The Thumper had vanished beneath his clenched fists. Quickly, he scurried back into his seat and pulled the lever to bring it to its upright position, and released the brake. A car a few rows back honked its horn. Ben sped forward, buckling his seat belt. Unconsciously, he lowered his head, peering briefly up through the rear view mirror, at the two drivers who still stared on with apprehension. He caught a short glimpse of a flash of bare flesh, darting in an amongst the parked, honking cars. A vicious grumbling sound drew his attention from the rear view mirror back…

“Ben,” a woman’s voice from the neighboring room called out. He hurried forward, hastening his last few paces through the open doorway. Once through, he was met by three disheveled-looking individuals, all scurrying about the room. He glanced around at the three tables, each of which, he knew, did have computers hidden somewhere beneath the gigantic, sprawling sheets of paper that had been laid on top of them – some of which had been printed from top to bottom with walls of text, and others with the compacted, neatly arranged architectural drawings of a residential building. Ben recognized the structure, and the project name that was typed in bold lettering…

BENJAMIN felt such an agonizing disdain for the work that was laid out before him. Mind you, it was only in the quiet moments in which Mara would emerge from her hidden spaces, to gnaw at his hands, his feet, so that he would simply have to get away from his desk. She would claw at his eyes, get in the way of his screen, move his mouse into the search bar, and then type any number of things that popped into her mind, “How to build a beehive,” or, “Flights from PIT to KEF.” When BEN was with his boss, then Mara would seem to behave, and things would…