Possessed Roommate

          I’m on the phone with my therapist when I hear a commotion in the kitchen and, looking up, discover my roommate, possessed by a demon. He has returned early from work. I’m at the opposite end of the apartment, near the living room window, the only place in the apartment where my phone works. Service is bad, I suspect, because the walls are lined with lead paint. Sometimes, even beside the window, I have trouble making out what my therapist says—a potentially hazardous situation for me. Suppose I tell him a story about my week. A story about how I didn’t sleep for three days and on the third day, a pizza crust I was gnawing on clamped down on my cheek with all the ferocity of a cornered animal, biting me back. My life has been in a tailspin ever since, I conclude, and I don’t recognize my own thoughts.

          Suppose I tell my therapist this story, and in response I hear him say, “Sounds like you’re dying. Death.” Now, what he actually said was, “Sounds like you’re trying your best.” But it’s too late. The misinformation is a part of me, changing me in nameless ways, at a molecular level, with no going back. Something like that has almost certainly happened. Probably more than once. How should I know? Unfortunately, it’s a risk I have to take because there is nowhere else for me to make the calls. I can’t very well sit down in a coffee shop and start making strange utterances about my mother, or pizza. The private rooms in the library are always occupied. The apartment has to do, bad service and all. Except now my roommate has come home from work early, possessed by a demon.

          “Hold on,” I tell my therapist.

          “I’m talking to my therapist,” I say to my possessed roommate, “Can I have the apartment for another twenty minutes?”

          “Oh, sure. I’m sorry. Take as much time as you need,” says my roommate, possessed.

          “Thanks,” I say.

          “No problem. I totally forgot about your appointment on Wednesday nights.”

          “That’s OK.”

          He leaves.

          “I’m back,” I say to my therapist, “and I think my roommate is demonically possessed.”

          “What makes you think that?” he says.