I stood looking out the window of my apartment, stroking my beard. "What the hell?"

A rainbow Bug had just pulled into the driveway and lurched to a stop a few feet away from the stairs leading up to my apartment. I watched in mesmerized silence as five brightly clad clowns piled out of the car and went into the vacant apartment below mine.

"No fucking way," I said to my cat, a tabby who seemed just as curious about the new downstairs neighbors as I was, "What do you think, girl?"

She glared up at me, her bright eyes flashing in the dwindling twilight and meowed her disapproval.

"Yeah...me too," I muttered.

The dreams started two nights later.

I would wake up, screaming, but unable to remember anything more than the occasional image. A squirting flower here, a sense of being packed into an enclosed space there. Tabby Girl would wake up, startled, to make sure everything was ok. Then she would snuggle closer to me and I would pet her until we both drifted off to sleep again.

But as the days dragged on, I noticed that I was changing. At first, I had been annoyed and disgusted by my new neighbors. But now I found my disgust replaced by intense curiosity.

Ever since they moved in, the smell of corned beef and cabbage had closed in on the apartment complex like a heavy fog. One day I realized that the smell wafting up from downstairs was no longer offensive to me. In fact, much to my chagrin, I had started to enjoy it.

At least the nightmares had stopped.

I found myself trading in my formerly healthy vegetarian lifestyle for the freedom to lay around watching TV while holding a bag of pork rinds in one hand and a Big Gulp in the other. I fantasized about corn dogs smothered in mustard, as well as cotton candy and funnel cakes. I gained fifteen pounds before the end of the first month.

I went from being a fastidious dresser to lounging around in baggy trousers with red suspenders and white t-shirts. I'm not sure that it would have happened had I not started gaining weight, but my new figure nearly begged to be clad in comfortable, no-nonsense clothes.

"It's a good thing I'm a bachelor," I said to Tabby Girl, while giving her chin a quick scratch, "No woman in her right mind would put up with this."

Despite my initial unease, I felt totally compelled to give in to all of my new habits. After a while, my sense of resignation was replaced with fascination. Almost like watching a beloved child come into his own, wondering what this new creature is going to do next.

I had almost forgotten that the changes in me coincided with the clowns moving in downstairs. I mean, once I got used to the corned beef smell and the weird merry-go-round carnie music that they played all the time, they faded into the background of my awareness. Every now and then I would see them drive up in their tiny car and start piling out of it all at once, but that was about the extent of it. They kept to themselves.

At least that is what I thought.

I rolled over in bed, attempting not to disturb Tabby Girl as I got up to take a piss. As usual, it didn't work.

She opened her eyes slowly, yawning and stretching like a devout yogi. Then her eyes fixed on me and as I bent to rub her belly, her eyes went wide. She jumped to her feet and ran out of the room, hissing and twitching her tail as she fled.

"What is it, girl?" I called after her, confused and more than a little hurt by her reaction.

I was about to go after her to see what was wrong when the fullness of my bladder reminded me why I had attempted to get out of bed in the first place.

I made it to the bathroom and relieved myself. I shuffled over to the sink and had just finished washing my hands when I happened to look up and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

"Oh my God," I yelled, my trembling hands reaching up to touch the huge bulbous red thing that had parked itself in the spot that used to be reserved for a normal, if not slightly uninteresting, nose. My hands stopped trembling long enough for me to confirm that this red thing was indeed attached to my face. "Holy shit," I muttered to no one in particular.

I saw Tabby Girl's reflection in the mirror, staring at me from a safe distance.

"Uh, girl, it's ok," I reassured her, hoping that by doing so I would manage to feel better about it myself, "Daddy is just...different."

She pawed cautiously into the room and looked up at me. I poked at my nose and was relieved when it didn't make any hirunk-hee noises like I had half expected it to. Then I leaned over and patted Tabby Girl on the head.

"I'm sorry I scared you, girl... I wasn't expecting it either."

She raised up on her hind legs and clawed at me gently, reassuring me that I wasn't suddenly too hideous to love.

I went back to the bedroom and got dressed.

I picked up Tabby Girl and said, "Sorry, girl, but you're coming with me for moral support."

I held Tabby Girl close to my chest and walked downstairs. I knocked on the door to the apartment below mine.

"Hey, glad to see you. I'm Charlie," said the man who I supposed was the lead clown. As he reached out to give my hand a hearty shake, he added, "We were wondering how long it would take you to join us. Come on in and meet the others. We've been expecting you."