Field Notes: On New Beginnings (and Why They Rarely Feel Like One)

  Every new place started the same: a box of important things, a quiet corner, and a promise not to get too comfortable.

  Eli had done this six times now—maybe seven, depending on how you counted the sublet above a flower shop in Calgary. That one only lasted four months, but it still got a box in the Important Things.

  Now it was Vancouver. Mount Pleasant. A duplex with a narrow driveway, a shared hedge, and a chipped garden gnome hiding behind the porch steps. The basement suite smelled like fresh paint and someone else’s detergent.

  His parents were upstairs, talking with the landlord. Eli slipped inside and found the back bedroom—the one with the small window near the ceiling and the faint, steady draft. It was cold. Quiet. Good enough.

  He didn’t unpack. He never unpacked on the first day.

  Instead, he found a corner—far from the window, near the heater—and opened his shoebox of goodbyes.

  A movie ticket stub from Winnipeg.

  A doodled napkin from a ramen shop in Edmonton.

  A friendship bracelet from Grade Four, long since broken.

  A flattened pebble. A folded origami fox.

  He laid them out in the same order he always did. Lit the wax stub with a match.

  “Thanks,” he whispered. “I won’t forget you.”

  A knock on the door broke the spell.

  “Dinner’s ready,” his mom called. “We’re doing breakfast-for-dinner tonight, okay?”

  Eli blew out the flame. “Okay.”

  The table was cluttered with boxes, but they’d cleared enough space for three plates of scrambled eggs, toast, and cut fruit. His mom was already chatting about someone she met online in the neighborhood Facebook group. His dad mentioned a new project manager starting next week.

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  Eli nodded where appropriate. Chewed quietly.

  They were trying to make it feel like a new beginning.

  He just didn’t say he’d stopped believing in those two moves ago.

  After dinner, he brushed his teeth in the tiny bathroom with the warped mirror. There was toothpaste already hardened in the corner. He stared at it instead of his own reflection.

  When he came back to his room—the cat was there.

  Black. Small-ish. Curled up in the center of the bed like it had always belonged there.

  Eli froze. The cat opened one eye, stretched, and blinked at him.

  “…Hello?”

  It blinked again. Slowly. Deliberately.

  He tried clapping. He tried rustling the blanket. He even picked up a corner of the mattress and jostled it gently.

  The cat yawned.

  Eli sighed.

  A minute later, he was curled into the narrowest edge of his own bed, blanket bunched under one arm, the chill from the wall pressing against his back. The cat didn’t move. It had annexed the center of the mattress with regal indifference.

  It wasn’t the worst night’s sleep he’d ever had.

  But it was far from comfortable.

  The warmth of the blanket was uneven. His shoulder hurt from the way he was curled. The cat’s tail flicked now and then, tapping softly against his leg. Just enough to remind him it was still there. Still watching.

  That night, his dreams were strange.

  He kept seeing flashes of movement—sleek shapes darting through shadows, too fast to catch, too quiet to follow. Whispers that sounded like purring. A weight on his chest that grew heavier the longer he tried to sit up.

  And falling. Always falling.

  Down staircases with no end.

  Off rooftops wrapped in moonlight.

  Through windows he didn’t remember opening.

  Every time, a pair of golden eyes followed him down.