Clack click clackity click clack click clackity click clack click clackity click clack.

The same repetitive noise of fingers scrabbling over the keyboards in the office filled the air, and Robert took in a deep breath before taking another swig of his morning coffee. He resumed his work, mentally crunching a few numbers and tapping away at a small calculator, glancing down at it every now and then.

Resettling his glasses more comfortably on his button nose, the middle aged man dove into yet another file to cleave away at his workload for the day. The accounting firm Robert worked for paid a decent salary, and he was already putting aside a little nest egg. Things were quiet, for the most part; just the way he liked it.

“Yo, Bob-man!”

Mostly quiet, anyway.

Robert turned slowly in his swivel chair, fingers forming a steeple together as he faced his daily antagonist with a blank face.

“Good morning, Dick.” Robert’s thin face might as well have been a mask, for all the expression he showed. His monotonous voice sounded a little off in his own ears, as if he hadn’t spoken all morning. He hadn’t, coincidentally.

“Got your shit done, man?” Richard Flay, his cubicle neighbor and evident escapee from Hell asked cheerfully in his thick Californian accent. The portly man toted about a small, brightly colored blue briefcase with a rainbow colored lightning streak on the side, and his overbearing grin was already frustrating Robert.

“Obviously not,” Robert pointed out with a deadpan. It wasn’t as if his face could become any straighter, though. “And I won’t be done until next week if you keep interrupting me.”

“Bwah!” Richard waved the sour man off, plopping down noisily in his own cubicle to begin work. Late. Again. “You don’t gotta be so tsundere, dude.”

“I… do not know the meaning of that word,” Robert confessed in a bored voice, turning back to his glowing computer screen.

“Malarkey!” Richard cast a finger defiant finger into the air, earning a titter from one of their other coworkers. Darlene, from the sound of it. Pleasant enough woman, but terrible breath.

“Hush, already.” Robert groused, hunching slightly as he continued with his work. It was bad enough that the idiot lived across the street from his apartment complex – it was even worse that he had to work with the eternally-chipper man. He was too loud, too rambunctious, too… everything. He wasn’t normal.

Robert ran a hand through his short brown hair in irritation, slightly ruffling the even part down the middle. Obsessively, he stopped long enough to fix it before getting back to work. Every time he even thought about something being out of place, it bothered him. After all, Robert’s plain grey suit was nice and normal looking, just like everyone else’s. Why did Richard have to adhere to casual Friday every day?

And more importantly, why hadn’t he been fired yet?

Robert pushed the thoughts from his mind grumpily, backspacing repeatedly as he accidentally typed his thoughts instead of numbers. That didn’t happen very often, but ‘not very often’ was still too often.

Clack click clackity click clack click clackity click clack click clackity click clack.

“Sure thing, Sue. Tomorrow at seven?” Robert asked, although it was more to reassure himself that he had indeed written down the correct time. Twice.

“Yes, already!” Suzanne giggled on the other end of the phone, her soft voice filling the car’s interior like velvet. “Just don’t be late, okay, Bobby? I really want to see this play, pumpkin.”

“Of course, Sue.” He spoke blandly, one hand on the steering wheel as he drove at a safe speed, ensuring that everyone behind him was steadily growing more agitated that he refused to go any faster than five miles under the speed limit. “I’m never late,” Robert said with confidence.

Suzanne, his girlfriend of five months, tittered again as she ended the call. The short blond woman had been a boon to him ever since he’d first bumped into her by accident at the bookstore. It was almost like it had been predetermined, if Robert believed in such things. Sue, though, most certainly did; and the lightly freckled young woman had insisted that it was highly romantic.

Of course, at her every advancement, Robert had callously turned her down. He simply felt as if things were moving too quickly.

A bit like the angrily honking people driving around him, actually.

Chewing on his tongue, Robert thought heavily. He hadn’t even gotten the poor woman a gift yet, and he was positive that she was expecting one.

Spotting a quaint little bookstore, Robert pulled away from the road carefully and slowly rolled to a stop. The packed parking lot made it a little difficult to find a decent spot, but he hadn’t really expected much else from Chicago.

Besides, he had a few dollars to spare. Normally, Robert frowned heavily upon breaking his frugal habits, but for Suzanne, he supposed he could make an exception now and then. Besides, she had a thing for cheesy (and cheap) romance novels, anyway.

As he approached the brand name bookstore, a glint in the shop opposite caught his dull brown eyes. A bit curiously, he tilted his head to see what had sparked just so in the bright sunlight. However, the further he leaned to the side, the less he could see through the sheen. Forgoing his attempt to enter the bookstore altogether, Robert peered through the surprisingly dusty glass at the object that had caught his attention.

Oddly enough, there was nothing there.

Frowning, Robert peeked in through the front door. It took him a moment to realize that no bell or alarm had gone off, signifying his entrance like most other places did; the plain oak door creaked open quietly.

His eyes alighted when he saw what was inside, however.

Antiques.

His one weakness. Robert had always had a small obsession with antiques. He loved the aged feel of worn leather on an old sofa, the sanded wood of a rocking chair made before he was born. Kept pristine, and sustaining through time, antiques always seemed to catch his attention the most.

“Good afternoon!”

Robert nearly leapt out of his skin.

“Jesus!” he gasped, clutching at his heart. His eyes widened so much that they resembled terrified golf balls. Robert glared up at the much taller man in a plain brown suit, garishly yellow shirt beneath it sticking out at the collar. Seething and a little embarrassed that he’d been caught off guard, he regained his composure quickly.

“Looking to get someone a gift, eh?” the tan haired man with almost yellowed eyes grinned widely, revealing a row of shining white teeth. One of which looked nearly fang-like, but it must have been a trick of the light.

“No, I’m getting a gi-“ Robert began, only to stop short. “I mean, yes. I’m… gift shopping.” He cleared his throat, frustrated that he was having difficulty shaking off his feeling of unease.

The man had a lucky guess, is all.

What happened afterwards felt a little hazy.

Robert remembered looking around in the small shop for a bit, the bubbly man always at his shoulder. It made it a pain in the neck to focus on getting anything for Suzanne, but as long as antiques were involved, it was mostly for himself.

He vaguely recalled paying for the odd looking ‘antique walking stick’ he held in his hands on the way out to his car. The peculiarly topped wooden staff felt both light and oddly balanced, as if weight were unevenly distributed. The top was decorated with a strangely shaped skull, with an antler and horn. The entire length of the thing felt… cold, somehow, as if he’d left it in the freezer for a few hours.

Shaking his head blearily, Robert focused his thoughts and shrugged off the weird, uncomfortable feeling as he made his way through the empty parking lot. He was missing some of his favorite shows right now-

He stopped, clutching the stick in the middle of the empty parking lot.

Empty.

Robert could have sworn he felt his heart stop.

It had been jam packed with vehicles only minutes ago. His watch told him exactly how long he’d been wandering the shop – about six minutes. Spinning on the spot in confusion, he spotted his shined tan car, sitting in the same spot he’d left it in.

Shaking his head at how he must have been imagining things, Robert carefully placed the walking stick in the trunk and started his car, listening to the familiar hum of the motor.

It had to have been a coincidence that the sky was completely clouded over, in contrast to the bright day it had been just a short while ago.

Complete coincidence.

Those were normal.

“Mrow.”

“I know, Garfield,” Robert patted the old fat orange cat on the head as he dropped into his sofa. The pompf of air startled the tabby, but not enough to keep it from curling up on the arm of the couch and going back to sleep.

Robert yawned, meticulously changing into more comfortable silk pajamas and house slippers as the neighbors across the hall bickered. Turning up the volume on the television solved that problem pretty quickly, though.

“-nd in other news, Patricia Evans, missing for two weeks now, has been discovered beneath a local bowlin-“

“-for Oxi-clean! It scrubs, it cleans, it-“

“-of what your life is missing? Pepperidge Farms remembers-“

Robert tuned out the noise of the city and his neighbors as he steadily sank into the couch, scratching the placid cat behind the ears. Maybe his life was missing something, but for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what.

“-with the recent weather anomalies in both Maui and Honal-

“-ame is Twilight Sparkle-“

He clicked the television off, rubbing his eyes. Checking the time only gave rise to the need to check it again, and he attempted to rearrange the lonely remote on the coffee table to give it a fuller look.

It didn’t help.

There was nothing else he could do at the moment aside from rearrange his spice rack for the fourth time that week, and his relentless pacing only served to make him more restless.

Maybe you just need a little nap.

Robert’s heart skipped a beat as he jumped nearly a foot into the air, head whipping wildly about. He grabbed a dull butter knife from the kitchen drawer, scrabbling viciously with it as he flicked on as many lights as he could (much to the dismay of the sleeping cat).

“Who’s there?” he called out, sweat pooling on his back. The silence of the apartment was his only reply, and his thorough search of the carefully organized rooms and tidily cleaned spaces revealed that he was alone.

“… Goddammit,” he chuckled nervously, putting away the butter knife and laughing a little at his own folly. Of course, it was late. His mind was starting to play tricks on him – it had since he’d stopped taking his medicine, but the doctor informed him that he no longer needed it.

Just his imagination.

Stupid imagination, he swore silently as he padded down the hall, rubbing his temples. He could deal with his doctor in the morning.

At least, this is what he told himself as he clambered into his small bed, relaxing beneath the quilts.

Until he felt something poking his foot.

“Cut it out, Garfield,” he grumbled flatly. “I will not hesitate to put your fuzzy behind back outside.”

The cold nose of the cat pushed against the bottom of his foot, and he nudged the cat back in order to push him off the bed so that Robert could sleep peacefully.

Or he would have, if the cat hadn’t been sitting with his head cocked to the side in the doorway.

“… Garfield?”

“Mrow.”

Robert yanked the blankets back, accidentally jabbing himself in the toe with the jagged antler on the end of the staff.

That he’d bought earlier that day.

And left in the car.

Peekaboo.

Robert tumbled in a panic out of the bed, trying to keep his breathing steady.

Not normal. Not normal. Not normal.

The same two words bumbled stupidly together in his head as he vainly tried to make sense of the situation. Obviously, he must have brought it in at some point; he must have forgotten it. That was it.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it,” he reassured himself out loud, running a hand down his face in denial. When he pulled his hand away, he discovered that he was covered in a cold sweat. “I forgot that I brought it in. Ha ha!” he laughed forcefully, as if he could make everything seem more normal that way. “That’s all it is. Silly me.”

“I concur,” Garfield answered him while preening one paw.

It took Robert a moment to realize that he wasn’t breathing.

“… What?”

“Agree. I have settled on it, decided, come to an agreement on a particular topic,” the orange tabby said lazily, the words flowing like honey from his mouth. “And other such synonymous things that will doubtlessly give you nightmares for years to come.”

“… What?”

The tabby leapt up onto the now-messy bed, pawing mindlessly at the staff before it. Garfield smacked it playfully a couple of times, and promptly darted out of the room.

“… What?”

Robert could only repeat the same word over and over again as he sat in confusion against the wall, mouth hanging agape.

That didn’t happen.

Of course it did!

Jerking away from the wall as it spoke to him, Robert whirled around to face… solid wall.

Awfully slow, aren’t you?

The voice wasn’t coming from inside the wall.

It was inside his head.

“Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god,” he whimpered in disbelief, leaning against the wall as he tried to keep his heart rate in check. He fumbled for his cellphone, panic clawing in his chest as he fumbled with the buttons.

They’ll send you back… a tiny, niggling voice in the back of his mind whispered. Of course he didn’t want to go back to the institute. He was all better now, of course. He was normal.

Boy, you’re about as far from ‘normal’ as they come.

“Stop it!” Robert dropped the phone, almost crying at this point. “Stop it, stop it!” his hands clutched his temples as he tried to cover his ears, and he squeezed his head as hard as he could. The ache and pressure in his head built as the thrumming of his heartbeat pounded in his ears, until it was all he could hear.

He couldn’t tell how long he’d been doubled over like that, breathing heavily. Robert finally stood, and he was shaking slightly. The sweating seemed to have stopped as he calmed down. He listened intently, thinking while he rubbed his scalp.

Just his imagination. That’s all it was. He was obviously still sick, and he needed to go back to the doctor. It was his imagination.

Of course it is, the voice snidely responded.

And just like that, Robert’s resolve shattered as he collapsed in a miserable pile against the wall. As he slid down it, he spotted the accursed thing.

The staff.

It glinted at him as he slipped, and he grappled it on his way to the floor. This thing.

It wasn’t normal.

It was possible that it had something to do with… this.

Clever girl! The voice echoed behind his ears, much more loudly. Robert gasped in surprise as he let go of the staff; however, it adhered tightly to his hands, and he couldn’t drop it.

“What do you want?” he asked shakily, staring at the stick. Maybe he’d finally lost it again – maybe he’d just gone mad.

Oh, PSHAW. You make it sound like there’s something WRONG with being completely mad, the voice quipped cheerfully from behind his ears, and the lights above him flickered.

“… Oh, god,” Robert said aloud for what felt like the hundredth time. A peculiar pink light seemed to be seeping from the eye sockets in the strangely shaped skull. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”

I SUPPOSE you can call me that, the answer came back immediately. But I prefer ‘Discord’.