An imitation of an author I've never read

“Makudo, Makudo,” the tiny cartoon characters chanted. A spaceship then took off and struck the blank space on a red and yellow menu, exploding into a picture of a taco. “McDonald’s Taco!” a voiceover said as if a world had turned on its head by the new menu item. Everybody in a real-life McDonald’s seemed to agree and could not do anything but celebrate. The commercial seemed to go on for almost half an hour. I turned off the TV, and in the darkness I realized I need to get some sleep. I searched for the stairs as my eyes adjusted. When I could not find them, it occurred to me there were none.

For someone new to a house’s floor plan, travelling in a dark room full of unpacked boxes can be a hazard for one’s toes. As I traveled through the gray-lit hallways and rooms, a sudden thought erupted in my head: I knew someone was sleeping on my side of the bed. I felt this presence as someone who senses a specter or an inexistent home invader, sneaking around to kill me in my sleep or worse, to take advantage of my loved one. The presence’s location, if true, alerts me to the latter, and that he is posing as me, perhaps, to take advantage of my partner as she slept. If this situation were true, how could she not tell it wasn’t me? I would not blame her, but I would take swift revenge on him. “I will kill anyone sleeping on my side of the bed,” I concluded with no precision as to how. “I will kill whoever I see.”

I slide the door open and creep toward the bed a few feet away from the door. I saw her on the far side, sleeping with such a peaceful air that I could not help but become affected by it. The lump on the side closest to the door startles me a bit, but enough television has shown me that blankets and pillows can form a human shape if laid a certain way. The lump then moves. In a rage, I pull back the white sheet. The human figure is now obvious—the curly haired nude, the right side of his face made plump by his arm underneath it. I did not hesitate to realize that the person lying there was me.