At 5:02 a.m., my reclusive neighbor hammered on my door and whispered, “Don’t go to work today—by noon, you’ll understand,” then vanished like he’d just broken every rule keeping me alive

grabbed the sweatshirt from the chair beside my bed, and pulled it over my head as I stumbled down the hallway. My feet were bare on the cold floorboards. Every ordinary object in the house seemed wrong in that hour: the framed watercolor above the hall table, the umbrella stand by the door, the bowl where I dropped my keys every evening after work.continue reading …