When I say I wake up next to a daemon every morning with a dry laugh, men think that it's my wife and share a good laugh. Women call me a sexist pig.  I'm not a wide-bellied man who has a hard time getting a hard time. If I were a woman, I'd be pretty mad at a useless husband too. I digress. I am not married nor am I a woman. I literally wake up next to a daemon each morning and he's not some traditional ghost or a manifestation of my imbalanced mind. It's kinda crazy.

During the third day of my self-inflicted house arrest refusing all human contact, I managed to process that this lack-of-anything being is called Nimas. 

"Just help me out here, okay? I can't do this without your help," said Nimas with an impatient exhale.

I threw up into the bucket next to me. 

"Look, I made a PowerPoint to simplify things. You like PowerPoints, rights? You always make them."

My retching noises were covered up by the sound of a death metal guitar intro. Each letter appeared on my TV screen with gunshots. Nimas was smiling at me. I can't actually see it because, well, he appears as a dark man-shaped shape on my vision but I can feel his emotions and the way he looks. Let's not go there, okay? It's not nice feeling another dimension, let alone your alleged alter-ego from it.

"So here, is an apple. You see that? Yeah. I cut it into two, and we have this seed. This seed is you. The apple is your world," Nimas explained.

I looked up and I was facing a picture of an apple and superimposed on it was a seed with the apple's two halves next to it. All of this was drawn with colour pencils and then scanned with a phone. Nimas's face said he wasn't joking. 

"Now, look at this tree. This tree is… uhm… Let's call it The Dimension Maker Tree. It makes all these apple dimensions, and I'm from this apple. You're from this apple—"

The next slide showed the drawings all scrunched up with the tree barely legible. 

"And then all the apples collided with each other because The Dimension Maker Tree got f@!#!ed up. My apple dropped its seed into your apple. Here we are." 

For the first time in days, I sighed. My mind had left me. It's time to accept it. 

 I'd call my mother and ask about supernatural beings but I'm scared enough already as it is. I wouldn't want her to catch a flight here. She doesn't even know how to book a ticket let alone get on a plane. I was hugging my knees and crying. Nimas was explaining something to me about us being opposites. A key turned inside my apartment's lock and panic flooded my limbs. There's only one other person who has my key and I have no idea how to explain the mess I am in right now. How do you tell someone you've gone insane? 

"Baby, you haven't been picking up my calls and you haven't even gone to class, what's up wi—" She let out a long wail. 

Nimas was standing up and saying hi to her and she kept shrieking at the top of her lungs. I hobbled up from my chair but I stepped into my relief bucket and fell. Yasmin threw down her keys to my house and ran out the door. 

"Wow, your girlfriend sure likes drama," said Nimas while closing the door.

I blinked my eyes open and saw Nimas staring at me from the chair next to my bed.  

"You know, you're not a vampire and I'm not an attention craving sub-urban white girl," I said, yawning and reaching for my phone. 

"I could be if you're into that sorta thing. Can we do something fun today? It's a weekend!" Replied Nimas. 

"Like what?" I said.

"Like going to your landlady's house and setting it on fire. No one would know. You know I don't leave any prints. Hell, you won't even have to go with me," Nimas said excitedly, getting up from the chair and pacing the room.

I played with the idea for a while before deciding that the last thing I needed this morning was the lingering smell of old lady knickers settling into my nostrils. 

"No, thanks. I thinks it's better if you watch reality TV. You like it, Nimas," I said and went into the bathroom with a curt nod. 

I was shampooing my hair when the acrid smell of ancient underwear hit me. Don't ask me how I know the smell. Soon enough, the smell started to intensify. I ran out of the bathroom and was greeted by a pile of clothes that Nimas was trying to burn with an old Zippo. Thank the Lord for whatever the clothes were coated with because they refused 
to catch on fire.

Control your thoughts, Samin.