Daniel awoke naturally, with his phone alarm blaring somewhere to his right. He got up, rubbing his eyes as he picked up his phone from the nightstand and checked the time. 7:00 am, the time he usually woke up. But that normalcy was now abnormal. Daniel turned to his bedroom door, expecting an ankle-height tap at any moment. But it never came.

  Frowning, the young man got to his feet and left the bedroom. Emerging into his apartment hallway, he cast a suspicious gaze around. The air was cold and crisp, but the sky was quickly brightening, the naked sun promising clear weather during the day. And just like the bare sky, his apartment was uncharacteristically empty.

  He had cleaned it recently, so there were no garbage bags on the floor. The dirty clothes had been dealt with, and the floor was vacuumed. Daniel was pretty proud of his work ethic lately, but the cleanliness of the apartment only made its desolation more apparent.

  The creature was missing.

  Daniel checked the cat cave, reaching into the shadowy interior. Empty. He checked the side of the fridge. Nothing but dust, and a plastic spoon he had forgotten about. The young man frowned as he looked around. There weren’t many places to check in his small apartment. He looked inside the bathroom and toilet, but they were devoid of even regular cockroaches, let alone massive ones.

  He walked further into the apartment, scratching his head. Where could the creature have gone?

  Suddenly, he felt the brush of air on his shoulder. Daniel looked up and saw the cardboard he’d taped in front of the window, flapping open in the morning breeze. The young man frowned. He’d taped it down as securely as he could, with several pieces of black duct tape. But some of those pieces had been loosened, somehow.

  A sneaking suspicion arose in his mind, and Daniel quietly opened the veranda door. There on the sunlit balcony, beneath the laundry flapping gently in the wind, lay the creature, gray and lifeless. It was a colorless husk of its former self, rocking to and fro in the cold air.

  Daniel stared at it in shock, feeling despondent. He was alone again, and there was nothing left for him in this world. Besides his laundry, the wind, and the creature that crept up to his side. It looked curiously into the balcony, as if it wanted to see what he was looking at.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Daniel slowly looked down towards the creature, and it looked up to stare into his eyes.

  The young man watched with equal parts awe and horror as the creature dragged its own molt towards the kitchen. Settling near its food bowl, it opened its strange mouth and began consuming the discarded skin, piece by piece. Daniel was quite reluctant to watch it ‘cannibalize’ itself, but he found himself staring at it intently regardless.

  The creature had changed since he’d seen it last night, in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Its flat body had thinned out a little and it was a bit longer, looking more like a fat cigar. Its proboscis was a little shorter, but seemed sturdier. The most significant change of all was the shrimp-like tail that curled under the creature’s behind. It seemed that all the prawns it had eaten didn’t go to waste.

  As Daniel drank the gel from the energy pouch in his hand, he wondered what had brought on the change. Did it really hate baths that much. As he mulled it over, he realized that it really did hate baths that much. But that only explained the shrimp tail, and not everything else. He supposed that a longer, thinner body was more suitable for flight, but he was no entomologist, so he had no clue.

  He stared at the creature for a while, so familiar and yet unfamiliar. For some reason, he found himself wishing it wouldn’t change any more. He could still recognize it easily, for now, but he wasn’t sure where it would stop. What would it be, 1 month, 1 year from now? Would it still be the creature he was familiar with?

  Daniel suddenly felt a tap on his ankle. Looking down, he saw the creature looking up at him imploringly. The look in its eyes reminded him of the dream he’d had not long ago, and he laughed. Some things never changed, he supposed, whether it was in a dream or in real life. But then he realized something and abruptly stopped smiling.

  “Shoot, I have to get to work.” He said, getting up from his chair.

  He laid the half empty energy pouch onto the floor and rushed towards the bathroom. He couldn’t miss out on work, there was so much to do. Behind him, the creature happily helped itself to his leftovers. After a quick shower and change, Daniel was by his front door, tugging his tie into place with his left hand while putting socks on with his right. He sighed as he put his shoes on. For the first time in a while, he wished the world would slow down a little.

  As he grabbed his keys from the side table and opened the door, he turned and spotted the creature, stretching its legs as it started cleaning them. He looked at it for a little while longer before nodding.

  “I might be back home late, alright?” Daniel said to the creature.

  It tilted its head in confusion before going back to its cleaning. The young man smiled. It was a little different, but largely the same, and that comforted him a little. Satisfied, Daniel shut the door and left for work.