Solomon King could not sleep. Every night this week, at two in the morning, someone had been turning on his bathroom light. His dog Munchie, although capable of flipping the switch, was afraid of the dark, and wouldn’t venture out of Solomon’s bed until dawn.
	“Munchie go check who that is,” Solomon said one night.
	“No. If he’s here to kill us, then let him come and do the deed, because I’m not leaving this bed. It’s scary out there Solomon.”
	“Then bark at him you mutt. You’ve only one job in this house and you’re lousy at it.”
	Not true. Munchie was very good at barking at people passing by on the floor, as well as the floor below, the floor above, people passing on the street, really anything that seemed to move.
	Once, Solomon returned from work to see his neighbours crying in the corridors.
	“They stole everything! How am I gonna get it back? A thousand dollars, how am I gonna make back a thousand dollars?”
	Solomon squeezed past the wide ladies hugging and crying in the corridor. One of them reached out an arm like a linebacker and dragged Solomon into her sweaty, talcum powdered bosom.
	“In this time we ain’t got nothing but each other. I know we haven’t been close as neighbours, but today we’re family. Each of us is a victim under this five hundred room house we call home.”
	An equally wide and sweaty man, who smelled like he had pizza for lunch, came over and hugged the two of them. Yet another large woman doused in fruity perfume came over and threw her arms around the group as well. Solomon suffered silently between three sets of girthy arms and tits, slowly suffocating in a melange of sweat, talcum, garlic dipping sauce, and cherry perfume, as his neighbours cried to a higher power; asking how they were going to pay for a new television set in the middle of the fall schedule.
	Solomon took the time to review all the valuables in his house. He had a television, but no cable. That was really it, except for his precious dog. When he realized Munchie might have been kidnapped, Solomon’s heart snapped, and his mind followed. A torturous howl, started in his heart, drilled through his throat, and drowned the self pity of the people around him. They let go of him in fear, and he dashed to his door, fumbled with his keys till he found the right one, unlocked, and threw open the door.
	There, on the couch in the living room, was Munchie. Munchie looked up and said,
	“Hey Solomon.”
	Solomon ran over, got on his knees and buried his face in Munchie’s fur, like you would a soft pillow. Outside his neighbours crowded around the apartment which mysteriously was not robbed. Days after, Solomon thought he could feel a malicious presence watching when he’d go to throw out the trash, or go for a walk with Munchie. If eerie and inexplicable feelings could be weighed with smell, he’d have thought it smelled an awful lot like talcum powder, garlic sauce, and fruit perfume.
	Munchie let out a bark, a proper throaty bark fitting a watchdog, but there was no response from the washroom. Whoever was in there had started flicking the light on and off. At around three, the flicking stopped, but Solomon and Munchie had fallen asleep. Three hours later, Munchie’s bladder woke him on cue, and in turn he woke his pal. Dogs seem to fall asleep and wake on a whim, humans, not so much. Solomon was messed up. Nightmares of an invisible force dragging him into the bathroom and beating him bloody tormented him.
	Solomon threw on a sweatshirt over his pyjamas, and left the house with Munchie on a leash. In the corridor he saw a wide lady leaving for work. He smiled and said good morning but didn’t get one in return. On the way down in the elevator, he felt like he was being drowned in a sac of potpourri. He thought he felt a finger running up and down his spine, and Munchie started to whine and claw at the elevator door.
	Outside, Munchie squatted in the bushes, while Solomon mused.
	“You feel it too don’t you Munch? It’s like a sixth sense has gone off that can feel sinister plots conspiring against me. Like someone is plotting to steal something from my soul. Something immaterial and ephemeral, like my smile or that cheeky glint on my eyes.”
	“Solomon, you don’t have a cheeky glint in your eyes, and your smiles are awkward and forced.”
	“It’s the principal Munchie. I’m a happy-go-lucky, free wheeling bachelor, with my life ahead of me. I am the figure of optimism in this cruel conspiring world.” said Solomon, as he bent down with an inverted doggie bag.
	“Tonight Munchie, we will stakeout the bathroom, and we will put an end to this evil haunting our home.”
	“Do you think it’s really a burglar Solomon?” Asked Munchie as Solomon straightened the bag. “I can’t smell anything when the light starts flicking on and off.”
	“We’ll find out.”
	They returned to the apartment after a stop at the trash bin, and Solomon went to the bathroom and flicked on the light.
	“Good morning Solomon” said the lightbulb.
	“Lightbulb, who’s been switching you on in the middle of the night?”
	The yellow incandescent lightbulb, glowed with a tinge of pink for a second, as it replied,
	“Gosh Sol, you know you’re the only one who turns me on.”
	“Listen you two-timing skank, someone has been flicking your switch in the middle of the night, I’m a witness and so is the dog. I know you’re lying, there’s no talking your way out of this one so fess yourself up, before I mess yourself up.”
	“You hurt me Sol, you really do. Why would I lie about a thing like that? You’re the only one who’s turns me on Sol, in the morning, and at night, and in the evenings when you come from work. I only light up for you and only you Sol.”
	“Solomon, I think the bulb is telling the truth,” said Munchie.
	Solomon turned the light off. He showered and brushed his teeth in the dark, irritated that even his friends were suspects in this conspiracy of bad mojo that was hovering over him.
	That night Solomon King sat in the living room, watching reruns of Everyone Loves Raymond with a baseball bat, a flashlight, and his dog at arms reach. On cue, as the clock hit two, a light came on in the bathroom. Solomon grabbed his baseball bat, and his flashlight. He poked Munchie, who pretended to continue sleeping, turned on his flashlight, and walked towards the corridor leading to the bathroom. He primed his hand to swing the bat and turned the corner.
	In his bathroom, Solomon King saw a translucent man standing naked, and from his translucent corpus shone the yellow light which had been waking Solomon for the past week. The man faced Solomon, with wide unblinking eyes, and raised his arms in front of himself. His hands formed into claws, he floated off the ground, opened his mouth, and screamed like a belt grinder on metal He flew at Solomon, his hands outstretched ready to clamp Solomon’s throat, and Solomon fell backwards screaming in fear and swinging his bat wildly. Munchie broke from his fake sleep and started barking raucously. The translucent man desperately tried to latch onto Solomon’s eyes and tear them out while Solomon kept them shut firmly and swung his bat like a maniac.
	“Useless!” shouted the translucent man, and he got up and tried to smash his head against the wall in frustration, but failed as his head went right through.
	“Get out of my house!” yelled Solomon. He tried to get up, but fell as he slipped on some liquid on the ground.
	“No! I cannot leave! Not after what you did to me Solomon King! This is vendetta! This is revenge! This is Edmund Dantes back from the grave! This is…! This is…!” and the translucent man swung his fist at his own head, only to find that it too went straight through, “a cruel and horrible joke!”, and he fell on his hands and knees crying.
	Munchie came over to the sobbing translucent man. What once was a trespasser, was now a human, baring his soul luminously on the floor, and what was a watchdog, out of empathy for his brother species, came and nestled himself inside the crying man.  The man sniffed his nose, trying to suck in the translucent mucus trickling down his face, and turned to stroke the little dog who had come to make friends. Solomon watched jealously on the floor as his wet pyjamas stuck warmly to his thighs. He went to go change, and when he returned, he found the translucent man sitting on the floor trying to pet Munchie.
	“The last thing I saw before I died,” said the man “was your stupid face, looking me straight in the eyes.”
	“What the hell are you talking about?”
	“One week ago, 2 a.m., a body sailing past your window?”
	“Oh shit, that was you? You’re the guy from a few floors above?”
	On the night after the robbery, Solomon had gotten hungry.