I wasn't alone.

A warm, solid object was pressed to my side.

I stopped breathing. My heart started pounding. I continued to lay motionless.

What the fuck had crawled into bed with me?

It wasn't very big. Maybe a cat. But I didn't own a cat. The neighbors did though, so maybe it had got into my apartment. But how would it have got in? I had locked the doors, my windows all had screens, and besides, my place was small. I would have noticed before I'd gone to bed if a cat had snuck inside–there was nowhere for it to hide. So what the fuck was in my bed?

I took slow, deep breaths. Finally I held my breath and listened for any breathing from the object pressed to my side. I couldn't hear anything. I waited for any movement. None came. I decided that whatever it was, it was sleeping.

My mind went into overdrive. It was wintertime. It was cold out. Something had gotten into my apartment to get warm. Something had gotten into bed with me to stay warm. But it couldn't be the neighbors' cat. It was wintertime. They kept their cat indoors. Maybe the cat had gotten out, though. If it had, the neighbor kids would have come over and asked me if I'd seen it. They hadn't come over. So if it was a cat it wasn't the neighbors' cat.

I was getting anxious. I shifted my weight ever so slightly against the object. I was hoping that the object was nothing more than a part of the covers balled up from me rolling over in my sleep. The object didn't budge. I shifted more weight against it. It still didn't budge. It definitely wasn't just my covers balled up.

My heartbeat quickened even more.

What the hell was laying next to me?

Two minutes passed. Then three. Still no sound or movement from the object in bed with me. From the pressure against my side I decided that the object was smaller than the neighbors' cat. How much exactly I wasn't sure. I was only sure that it was smaller. And then I had a sudden flashback.

A few weeks before this moment I'd been awakened to scratching noises coming from the wall. There had been a few scratches, followed by silence. Then more scratches, then more silence. I'd immediately jumped out of bed and flipped on the light, but there was nothing. The scratching from the wall stopped and I never heard it again. I decided the next morning that a mouse had somehow crawled up underneath the apartment and made its way into the walls. It had probably just been passing through on its way to other business.

Apparently now the mouse was back. But this time it wasn't just in the wall passing through. It was in my bed sleeping next to me. What was this mouse thinking? I realized then that it was probably insane.

At the same time, it was a smart mouse. It had figured out how to get into my apartment when I couldn't figure out how it did. I asked myself finally, If I was a mouse how would I sneak into the apartment? After a few moments an answer came–I would come in under the sink in the kitchen where there was a large hole next to the pipes. But the landlord had stapled down a plastic covering over the hole. So if I were a mouse I'd just chew through the plastic. Once under the sink I'd just push open the counter door and be in the kitchen.

But a mouse wouldn't be strong enough to push open the counter door. Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the object in my bed was bigger than a mouse. Much bigger. But it was smaller than the neighbors' cat.