Oswald Says Hi

By Zoé Mahfouz:

Image by lecates - octopus's garden

“Why is it that you let tenants put their stuffed octopuses in the apartment pictures on your

website? It’s a bit distracting and doesn’t allow us to see the space,” my mom said to the real

estate firm on the phone while we were looking at the amateur photos of the listings.

Dirty kitchens covered with degreasers, disinfectants, and dishwasher tabs of all shapes and

sizes lying around. A big gray octopus overlooking the mess. A bathroom that looked like one from an abandoned psychiatric hospital in the thirties, with another gray octopus partially hiding in the corner, waving at the camera. A living room that looked like a yard sale, with a million tiny porcelain figurines everywhere, and two gray octopuses sitting on the couch.

Now you might wonder why we reached out to this real estate firm in the first place.

Well, it was a recommendation from an antique dealer who came to our place a couple of

times to buy odds and ends we were clearing out as we were stripping our apartment of

unnecessary objects—including those haunted lockets from my racist grandmother—in

preparation for selling it and moving on to new horizons.

I even got rid of my latest childhood toy: my Pet Shop house with all of its accessories and the little magnet-pawed animals, tucked away in an old Petrossian caviar box. Just like my mom said, I wouldn’t take it to my grave.

I loved all my Pet Shops.

There were no marine creatures in the Pet Shops, and certainly no octopuses.

Octopuses have always been one of my biggest fears, ever since I learned how intelligent they were and saw that video where a giant red octopus attempted to drag a surfer to the bottom of the ocean to drown and eat him. They are carnivorous and sticky, and we don’t know where their eyes are or where their body ends. And they have a gelatinous consistency that keeps reminding me of the Jell-O that the clock from Beauty and the Beast got stuck in during the song “Be Our Guest.”

I didn’t want to be an octopus’s guest.

“The tenants didn’t put the stuffed octopuses there. We did,” said the high-pitched, commercial-sounding voice from the real estate firm at the other end of the line.

My mom gasped. “I beg your pardon?”

We sat frozen in front of the speakerphone, holding our breath for whatever was coming next.

“Yes. We put octopuses in all our photos. That’s our signature touch.”

“You already have hoarder apartments, so why add to that with a stuffed octopus?” my mom

asked, as though expecting a rational explanation.

“So that people know it’s us,” she squeaked back, as though it were a stroke of genius.

“It doesn’t explain why,” my mom gruffly replied.

“It’s our boss’s way of showing his sense of humor.”

My mom took over the conversation and declared in a patronizing, almost mocking tone, “Miss, I don’t know who your boss is. But he and I don’t have the same idea of what a sense

of humor means.”

The high-pitched voice immediately got defensive. “Well, lots of people really enjoy our octopuses and find that we—”

My mom cut her off. “Miss, no one wants to see your octopuses. People want to buy apartments. It’s a life-altering decision. They get scammed into bank loans they’ll end up paying back for the next thirty years of their existence, with interest, all in the hope of improving their circumstances with an extra room for their kids. If I were to sell my flat with your firm, I wouldn’t want you to put your dirty octopuses everywhere.”

She replied on the spot, anxious not to lose the client. “But we don’t have to put them in if you don’t want them! What we usually do is this: if we don’t put the octopuses, we put chairs instead.”

“Chairs? Is that a joke? Are you making a bit right now?” huffed my mom, glancing at me as

if asking me to witness it. “Is that why I spot these ugly, bright-red, furry child-sized chairs in the middle of every room in all of the other photos? Can’t you see that it just adds up to the clutter of the apartments?”

As I folded my laundry and listened to that odd exchange, I couldn’t help but burst into

laughter.

The laughing goose was back.

I buried my head in the bed sheets, standing up like a pink flamingo, then collapsed with my

feet in the air like a goat playing dead.

My mom saw the whole thing and couldn’t stay cool as a capybara anymore, while the hyena-like real estate lady fed her so many outrageous lines.

She told the piercing phone voice she had to think twice about who she was working with. That her boss seemed cuckoo, but not in a good way. That she knew a whole lot about cuckoo because she was in the movie industry. That she knew even more about humor, because humor was literally her job and had been for over thirty years. That she needed to rethink the meaning of everything.

She ended by wishing her good luck and hanging up.

She then turned to me and told me that, that day, she may have been the whistleblower who

helped that poor girl change the course of her life.

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Zoé Mahfouz

Zoé Mahfouz is a French bilingual actress, screenwriter, and writer. A London Film School graduate, her playful, offbeat style has earned awards and festival recognition. Her work appears in 80+ literary journals worldwide. She is the author of ADHD in D Minor (North Meridian Press, 2026) and Borges Must Be Rolling in His Grave (Dancing Girl Press, 2025).