The house greeted us with silence.

  Not the usual kind—not night silence, not evening silence—but the kind in which sounds seem to be postponed. I closed the door and stood there for a few seconds, pressing my back against it, as if expecting something outside to still try to get in.

  Nothing happened.

  My glasses were lying on the small table by the couch.

  The very ones I had forgotten to take with me in the morning. I picked them up with a trembling hand and put them on.

  The world snapped into sharp focus.

  I looked closely at my unfortunate neighbor.

  Phil looked bad.

  Too bad.

  His skin had always been pale, but now it was almost white—like a wall that light had not touched in a long time. His green eyes were bulging, motionless, frozen in a single expression. A smile stretched from ear to ear—wide, unnatural. His whole body looked stunned, absent.

  A Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.

  Nothing less.

  A shiver ran through me.

  I have to do something, I thought.

  I grabbed my phone and started dialing for an ambulance. My fingers were shaking, the screen swimming before my eyes.

  Stop.

  No.

  I canceled the call abruptly.

  They wouldn't believe me.

  I barely believed my own eyes.

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  They would think we were insane. Or that this was some kind of nervous breakdown. What if that technician had put something in the water? What if all of this was a hallucination? What if I looked just as strange as Phil?

  I bolted toward the mirror.

  A disheveled girl stared back at me, with light brown hair that had been braided in the morning.

  The braid was no longer a braid—strands stuck out in every direction. My face was just as pale as Phil's, but without the smile. Confused, frightened—and yet sane. I saw fear, but not madness.

  I slapped myself on the head.

  Then harder—on the nose.

  It hurt.

  I hissed and squeezed my eyes shut.

  I'm not asleep.

  This is not a hallucination.

  I'm here.

  Phil is on the couch.

  So what do I do?

  The doctors would think I was crazy. The police too. Panic rolled over me—thick and sticky, like fog.

  I went over to Phil.

  Slapped his cheeks.

  He stirred.

  He can feel, I thought.

  I pinched his leg. He reacted again. I poured a glass of cold water over him—and at that moment, it seemed like his smile only grew wider.

  I felt deeply uneasy.

  I had to change his clothes—he might catch a cold. Though he already was...

  unwell.

  He was so heavy.

  It was very hard to turn him over, pull off his wet clothes without dropping him or hitting him. I was out of breath, my hands shaking. In the end, I put him in my one huge T-shirt with a paint stain—the one I wore when I painted. I threw my oversized pink robe over it. His pants, thankfully, were dry, so I didn't have to change them.

  That was all I could find that fit him.

  He's tall. And quite a big guy.

  Phil lay quietly.

  Smiling.

  And worst of all, I had the feeling that he was content.

  For several hours I tried to bring him out of this state.

  I shook his shoulders, blasted him with hot air from a hair dryer, waved his arms around, tickled him, clapped my hands loudly. I banged a spoon against a pot, hoping the sharp noise would pull him back—anywhere. Into anger. Into irritation. Into a scream.

  Nothing happened.

  Phil lay there, smiling, as if none of this concerned him.

  As if he were occupied with something else.

  I was exhausted.

  My hands were shaking, my legs giving way. At some point I simply sat down on the floor next to the couch and couldn't get up again.

  It was already evening.

  Phil lived alone.

  Surrounded by his flowers.

  He collected plants, and his home truly looked like a garden. Not a neat, curated interior, but a living space—leaves, stems, pots, vines, the smell of damp earth. And the garden around the house was magnificent—a real paradise, where everything grew as if no one controlled it, only understood it.

  I hadn't known Phil for long.

  Just a few months earlier I had moved to this town and met him completely by chance.

  One day, a live donkey wandered onto my property.

  It simply came in. Stood there. Started chewing grass.

  I was confused, and then I saw Phil coming out from the other side of the street. He helped me find the animal's owner. It turned out the donkey often escaped—somehow untied itself and went wandering. That's how we met.

  After that, we talked occasionally.

  But it seemed to me that Phil hardly talked to anyone else. I had never seen him chatting warmly with neighbors or talking on the phone. Maybe his friends were his plants.

  Maybe something tragic had happened in his life.

  I didn't know.

  And why does he limp?

  Life is strange and unpredictable.

  I closed my eyes.

  Suddenly I imagined that I had grown shimmering pink wings. I spread them, took off, and began to hover over Phil's house. From above, everything looked different—softer, quieter. I thought that if he had wings too, he could fly among his flowers and plants, breathe in their scent, and smile broadly with happiness—for real, not like this.

  And suddenly—

  a man's scream.

  "Lactimols! Lactimols! He took them!

  They burned them! Burned them!

  Lactimols!"