“You are the chosen one.”

Casimir sucked on the cigarette in his mouth. His expression was perfectly blank as he stared past his interlocutor.

“The covenant has been upheld. Ten thousand generations weep in happiness. The Age of Gods returns.”

Casimir’s face remained tranquil like the surface of a lake. In this instant he was Buddha reincarnated. Not a single twitch of his facial muscles would reveal he was in any way aware of the talking chinchilla sitting on his desk.

“So was foretold and so it happens. The promised one who will bring us deliverance. I hail thee, messiah.”

Casimir continued to pull on the cigarette in his mouth without saying anything. His habit had long reached its pinnacle, that is to say, smoking brought him no pleasure whatsoever.

In a way, he thought, it formed an antithesis to buddhist teachings. Instead of seeking enlightenment by abstaining from passions, his way involved creating new ones. Nicotine addiction was like nurturing a new sort of hunger that needed to be regularly sated. It expanded your senses, connected you closer to life, made you more.

It could also be compared to putting a small pebble in your shoe for the purpose of these five minutes of relief when you took it out.

His mind appeared to be particularly active today, easily conjuring various topics of investigation for him to consider. That was fine by him. In fact, he was ready to participate in a four hours long seminar on Alcuin’s influence on the Latin grammar in the middle ages. The issue was, his mind was a little too active.

“Ye shall accede the tower and break down the chains. The darkness shall be banished and freedom returned to all kinds,” the talking chinchilla declared solemnly.

Right, what were the rules? Avoid interacting with the delusion at all costs. Every interaction will just strengthen whatever remodelling my nervous system is undergoing. Just ignore it. No need for any aberrant signals to form new pathways in my brain, no, no, no.

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Despite his best efforts, Casimir’s thoughts couldn’t help but steer towards the unwelcome guest occupying his desk.

He took a wary look at the rat. The creature was a bit larger than a chinchilla actually. Its height approached close to a meter. It had large eyes. A bushy tail. Hmm… is it because I don’t know what a chinchilla looks like? No, that doesn’t make sense.

One of its paws was crushing a fresh pack of cigarettes. It is interesting how this phantom seems able to interact with physical objects in the world. Casimir thought, purposefully acting detached, trying to assume the position of a doctor rationally analyzing a subject.

He sucked out the last puff from the cigarette in his mouth and crushed the stub in the ashtray on his desk. His hands instinctively reached for the pocket in his jacket to fish out another one from the pack, but...

It was empty.

Casimir’s gaze returned to the pack of cigarettes laying under the chinchilla’s paw.

To reach or not to reach. If I reach for the pack, I’ll have to pull it out from under it. Which means I’ll have to interact with it. But If I don’t reach for the pack, I’ll already be well on the way of ceding a part of reality to my imagination.

The time was ticking. In fact, the chinchilla seemed to have caught onto Casimir's distress and was now scrutinizing him with renewed interest. This could not continue.

In the end, Casimir opted for what he hoped to be the most surreptitious approach. He shifted his eyes to the left, studying with great intensity the stain on the wall of his apartment while at the same time his hand reached for the pack of cigarettes and gently pulled.

Surprisingly, the apparition was quite hefty, because the pack didn’t move an inch. He could exert more force, but then the creature might be thrown off balance and fall, crushing the monitor, cups - or worse - fall on him.

Casimir was not ready for that. So long as it simply sat there on his desk, he could still cope. He could cover it with a blanket. Or relocate to another city. Sane things. But if the creature started moving around it would be all over.

At the same time, he couldn't spend the rest of his life staring at the wall with his arm extended towards the desk. It was time for Plan B.

He looked straight at the creature, meeting its gaze for the first time. In a perfectly measured tone that bore absolute certainty of someone declaring that water is wet, he said:

“You are not real.”

The creature twitched. Its large eyes flashed with excitement as it revealed a toothy grin.

“I knew you could see me!”

…

…

…

Fuck.