Minor Detail – BLUD *

January 3, 2026

This morning I woke up with a fishbowl for a head. Full of water. A single goldfish circling where my thoughts used to be. I tried to speak but only bubbles came out. My wife didn’t seem surprised. She rubbed lotion into her shoulders and said, “Just don’t get any on the couch.”

The kids came down the stairs in pairs. Twins I don’t remember having. One set wore garbage bags. One set had fox tails. All of them were wet and humming a low tune that somehow made the lights flicker.

When I opened the front door, it wasn’t outside anymore. Just another hallway. Carpeted. Identical to the one behind me. I stood in the middle and screamed, and the walls politely waited for me to be done.

In the kitchen, the blender was running with nothing in it. The dog barked once and turned into a pile of clean towels.

Later, when my wife sat beside me, she said, “We should host dinner again. People miss us.”

I nodded, the goldfish in my head doing lazy laps around my temples.

“But you’ll need to fix the house by then,” she said.

I didn’t ask what was broken. I already knew it was everything. The floorboards kept rearranging. The fridge only had keys in it. The shower water came out like oil.

When I finally sat down, the chair whispered, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

I nodded. Of course, I knew that too.