Knocks, Diners and Stolen Cats.

Date: 10/15/2025

It was the dead of night when the knock came — loud, deliberate, and far too confident for the hour. I shot upright, my pulse racing like a siren in the dark. “Who the hell would be knocking at this time?” I thought, half whisper, half prayer. I crept to the window, peeling back a sliver of curtain as though unwrapping a secret I didn’t want to know. A man stood there — tall, dark-skinned, his shape outlined by the streetlight’s yellow haze. I couldn’t make out his face, but something in his stillness unnerved me. He didn’t move, didn’t call out, just waited. “He’ll go away,” I told myself, retreating under the covers as if the sheets themselves could ward off danger. Wishful thinking. The second knock came harder — angry, insistent. It rattled through the house like it knew where I lived long before I did. I ran downstairs, heart hammering against my ribs, and cracked the door open just enough to speak. But before I could, he pushed his way in, nearly taking the hinges off. “I’m here to see Maxi!” he said with the bright, excited tone of a child on Christmas morning. His grin was wide, his voice oddly innocent, mismatched with the intrusion. I stared at him, completely thrown. “Who is this man-child?” I thought, still gripping the doorknob like it might anchor me to sanity. “It’s okay, Mum!” Maxi’s voice echoed from the top of the stairs. “He’s my friend!” Apparently, that was all the reassurance I needed. In dream logic, that made perfect sense. The man bolted up the stairs, laughing as he followed Maxi into his room. Their voices faded, swallowed by the house. When they came back, both looked suspiciously pleased with themselves. One held my iPad — or what used to be my iPad. It was now covered in strange metallic things that pulsed faintly, like mechanical insects clinging to it. “What the hell is this?” I muttered, tugging at them, but they wouldn’t come off. The boys just snickered, the sound of guilty children who knew they’d outsmarted an adult. And then the room melted. Now I was in the car with Mum, speeding through a maze of motorways that spiraled like a giant’s bowl of spaghetti. The road rose and twisted into a monstrous loop-de-loop — the kind that belonged to rollercoasters, not reality. Mum’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. She wasn’t built for roads like these; even a wrong turn onto the motorway sent her spiralling into despair. And this — this was a death wish paved in tarmac. The loop rose up ahead, its top unfinished, the track severed halfway through, like someone had given up mid-creation. “Oh crap!” we screamed together as Mum yanked the wheel, veering off onto a slip road that spat us out at a lonely service station. Inside was an old American-style diner — glowing neon signs, red booths, chrome edges, the faint hum of a jazz tune from another decade. The air smelled like bacon grease and nostalgia. I was oddly thrilled to see a self-serve coffee machine. “They’ve got caramel lattes!” I said, grinning like a kid. Mum wasn’t impressed. “I’ll just have a regular latte,” she said, as if normality could still be found here. On the way out, I noticed a man sitting cross-legged by the door. For a moment I thought he was homeless, but as I got closer, I saw it was Karl. My friend Karl. He looked perfectly at ease, a cardboard box by his side. “What’s in the box?” I asked. He lifted the lid and revealed a small ginger cat. Its fur shimmered under the diner light. It looked exactly like Monkey — my Monkey. The same curious eyes, same slit through one ear. As I walked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was him — that somehow Karl had stolen him, or the world had duplicated him, and I was supposed to choose which one was real. And just like that, the diner dissolved into the low thrum of music and chatter. I was in a bar with my colleagues, squeezed into a booth too small for so many bodies. “This is a bit cosy!” I joked, forcing a laugh. Everyone else seemed unbothered, jostling, drinking, spilling over one another. Hannah sat beside me, knocking back her drink, her laughter growing louder and brasher with each glass. I watched the scene blur — faces melting into noise, laughter echoing off walls that didn’t quite exist. I felt myself shrinking, wishing the seat would just open up and swallow me whole. And then, from somewhere beneath the noise, came a sound — faint at first, but unmistakable. A knock. Not from the bar. From somewhere deeper, older — the same knock that started it all. I turned, but there was no door. Only the sound, growing louder, as if it wasn’t coming from anywhere but for me. Maybe it had always been there — the knocking, the intrusions, the endless loops and incomplete roads. The strangers who walk in without asking. The things that look like what you love but aren’t quite the same. Maybe the dream was reminding me that life itself does that — barges in, uninvited, tears down doors, hands you broken versions of what you thought was yours. And maybe all you can do is keep opening the door, even when you don’t recognize who’s on the other side.