Thirty minutes later, I burst into my apartment.

“Zac!” I yelled. “Zac! I’ve had the most magnificent afternoon!”

The apartment was silent. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Zac!” I banged on his bedroom door. No one answered.

I turned around and strode into the living room. Our two huntsman spiders, Jemima and Juan Carlo, were walking up the wall next to the house plants on the fireplace mantle. “Where’s Zac?” I demanded. I couldn’t hear their response over the sound of my beating heart.

Wait.

Was that my beating heart?

No. The sound wasn’t in my chest.

The soft rhythmic thumping was coming from behind the couch, near the bookshelf. As I walked towards the sound, the thumping got louder and louder — like tribal drums lulling me into a trance. I climbed on top of the couch, leaned over the headrest and looked down at the source of the noise.

"What the fuck?!" I yelled as I scrambled backward and fell against the glass coffee table. Did I imagine that? The thumping sound continued to reverberate across the floorboards.

I rubbed my sore shoulder, stood up, and looked over the couch again.

There, looking up at me, was a white rabbit. He was banging his foot against a book — The Art of War by Sun Tzu — which lay on the floor by the bookshelf.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. I had no idea how an animal could have made its way into my apartment.

The rabbit just stared at me, drumming its paw against the book. Then, after a few seconds of locked gaze, it hopped around the couch and made its way towards the study.

"Where are you going?" I asked, half expecting an answer from the creature.

The rabbit paused, looked back at me, then continued hopping past Zac's didgeridoo and through the study doors.

I ran my fingers through my hair, mind racing. What is happening right now? Why is there a rabbit in my apartment? Should I follow it? Am I mad? Fuck. Maybe I should go to sleep? Maybe if I go to sleep, the rabbit will disappear, and everything will go back to normal.

Before I could turn towards my bedroom, the thumping sound started up again. It was so rhythmic, so deliciously hypnotic.

Curiosity got the better of me. I slowly walked towards the study and found the white rabbit bouncing his foot against a loose wooden floorboard. He stared at me with an unflinching gaze.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

The rabbit looked down at the floorboard, then back up at me. He continued to thump his foot against it.

"You want me to open the floorboard, don't you?"

The rabbit nodded. He fucking nodded! I didn't even know rabbits could nod.

"I can't just rip up a floorboard!" I said. "I'll make a mess."

The rabbit stared at me. His eyes felt like lasers — like they could see right through me. He continued to thump his foot against the floor. The board wiggled beneath him, betraying its loose screw.

"Fine." I turned around, strode into Zac’s empty bedroom, and found what I was looking for: his toolkit.

When I returned to the study, the rabbit was silent. He hopped to the side as I jammed all kinds of implements into the floor, hoping that one of them would rip open a hole in the fabric of spacetime.

I eventually got the board loose and pulled it up. Light shone inside the hole, softly illuminating a black marble staircase that descended into the darkness.

I ran my thumb along the first step, collecting decades of dust on my fingertip. What is this place? I wondered.

The white rabbit brushed past my leg and began thumping his foot against the next floorboard.

"No," I said sternly. "I am not ripping up this entire floor just so I can descend down a marble staircase into some dark, scary, unknown location where I'll probably be murdered by giant spiders or some shit. No. It's not happening. This is expensive flooring, anyway. I'll get into so much trouble."

The rabbit stared at me. He continued thumping.

I cringed as the screwdriver remained poised in my hand, ready to attack the second floorboard.

Go back to bed, Nikki, my ego cooed. Go back to sleep. Stop chasing rabbits. Stop making a mess.

But Nikki, Wisdom whispered. There's a marble staircase down there. A marble staircase! Aren't you just a little curious? Aren't you just a little tempted? Of course, you are. I know what you're like. You can't resist a magical marble staircase, can you? Come on. Have some fun.

"Damn you, Wisdom," I muttered as I leveraged the screwdriver underneath the floorboard and began ripping a hole in the center of the room.

The white rabbit calmly watched as he sat on top of a throne of books.

Forty-five minutes later, the job was done. Loose floorboards lay scattered around a large portal in the floor. A black marble staircase descended down into the darkness.

The rabbit seemed pleased with my work.

"Happy now?" I asked as I put the last tool back in Zac's toolkit.

The rabbit leaped off his pile of books and onto the top step. As he descended down the staircase, into the unknown, he kept looking back at me, beckoning me to follow.

And so, I did.

My feet hit the marble. I took a step forward, then another, and another.

This is such a stupid idea, my ego snapped. I have no clue where I'm going or what I'm doing. I'm probably going to die in a dark hole by myself. Wouldn't that be a way to go?

And yet, I kept descending down the stairs. Step by step by step, the darkness grew more intense. I could vaguely make out the shape of the rabbit as the light from the study above me began to fade.

Down and down and down we went. Further and further and further. Deeper and deeper and darker.

I gasped as my feet suddenly splashed into numbing cold water. I looked down to see the freezing liquid dancing around my lower calves. I could barely see a thing. Complete silence suffocated my ears. All that could be heard was the distinct, slow drip of water trickling off a ledge somewhere.

Where am I? What am I supposed to do? I didn't know.

I stepped forward. The water wrapped around my legs, sending shivers down my spine. For all I knew, I was standing in a pond full of piranhas or crocodiles or some other monster that would attack at the slightest movement. I was scared.

But I was also curious. A soft glow was emanating from beneath the water, about ten steps in front of me.

A moment later, I found myself staring down at the handle of a sword that subtly protruded above the liquid. The handle was gilded with an elaborate golden design — a dragon emblem inscribed at the base of the blade. The weapon was deeply lodged within the stone floor.

This is some King Arthur shit right here, I thought to myself. The sword in the stone. Well done, algorithm. Such a subtle metaphor.

I leaned over and grabbed the gilded handle, tightly wrapping my fingers around the leather grip. A bolt of energy ran up my arm. The sword's blade immediately shone with a brilliant white light. I began to pull, half expecting the blade to remain stuck in the unforgiving ground. Instead, it slid through the stone like a hot knife slicing through butter.

The sword's luminance was magnificent. The blade was heavy — much heavier than the plastic toy swords I used to play with as a child. I turned the weapon over in my hand and examined its craftsmanship — the sharp angle of the edges, the symbols carved along the shaft, the Latin inscription near the handle:

Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate

"Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity," I whispered under my breath. "Very clever. You're William of Ockham's weapon, aren't you? You're his famous Razor."

I swung the heavy blade through the air and listened to the sound of slicing silence. The sword fit me well. I was glad I'd done those months of Muay Thai training. The daily boxing had noticeably strengthened my arms and shoulders.

"Where to, now?" I asked the silence. My feet splashed in the water as I turned around, holding the glowing sword in front of me, hoping it would illuminate a path or pull me in a direction. I wasn't sure where my little bunny guide had gone. He'd just left me alone in the dark.