+ MARK +
Lindsay was sitting in the other room just as I'd left her, her saucers for eyes fixed blankly on the screen presented. She didn't decide to react in any way, shape, or form upon catching me propped up against the living room's doorway in the reflection of the TV – she just kept staring, as if her soul had abandoned her entire body, leaving nothing but a shell, a lifeless corpse, in its trace.
"Babe?" my voice wandered into the open room, my light foot somehow making a thunder clap as it tapped against the wooden floor.
Again, she refused to turn. I called out her name again, and again, and again, but she never seemed to listen closely enough to truly register the words that'd spewed free from my lips. This urged me to take another step forward, and then another; one after the other, I crept closer and closer to her.
Eventually, after footstep upon footstep of slow repetition, I found myself right behind her, close enough to whisper in her ear and make her jump (although, in this state of mind, she wouldn't hear that, either). She couldn't hear me, so, just as anyone would, I decided to communicate with her through a different method – perhaps touching her would get her attention, or maybe even turning off the TV.
I reached out my arm to feel her, only to pause seconds after the decision had been made. For some reason – or, rather, no real reason at all – I couldn't do it, couldn't touch her when she was acting like this. It was as if there were some sort of unbreakable force field keeping her from me, keeping her from contacting anyone in the outside world, anyone outside of her. Touching probably wouldn't work – but, nervousness aside, I needed to try.
I tapped her shoulder.
Nothing.
I stroked her arm.
Nothing.
I even toyed with her hair.
Absolutely nothing.
I ran a hand through my hair, at a loss for what to do in such a peculiar situation. Maybe it was just the wrong time of day, or maybe she'd just woken up on the wrong side of the bed – I know I'd pissed her off yesterday with that entire fit I'd thrown over her questions towards my "newfound friends," but she didn't have reason to completely neglect me. She needed to get over it, needed to wish to make amends just as badly as I did, unless she wished to show to me how little she cared for our relationship in the first place.
Finding it to be the only thing left to resort to, I circled around the couch and plopped myself down next to the TV, clicking the power button without turning to see her face beforehand, to see her lifeless expression I'd been expecting from my view behind. And, as I turned to face her, I saw the same expression I'd pictured; only, unlike I'd expected, something changed.
It was something in her eyebrows, how they went from that "Huh?" kind of look to a stern, furrowed grimace. She licked over her lips in an attempt to soothe how chapped they were, only to quickly make them pucker back into her mouth, invisible rather than easily apparent like the straight line they usually were. Her eyes, though, were the most terrifying part – within milliseconds, her pupils seemed to transform, as if their big, brownish-black holes were fighting against the whites of her eyes for victory, as if she were becoming possessed by a personality even more frightful than the one that'd been watching the screen. Her eyes soon became just as dark as the night sky outside, the usual twinkle in her eyes no longer there to play the moon. She was soulless. And terrifying.
"Turn it back on."
She was staring me down, although it was hard to tell. Between the way her eyelids flickered, the hair blocking her face, and the very blank stare itself, I couldn't decipher what or who she was accusing of turning off the TV. Seeing as I was the only person nearby to perpetrate the crime, though, I felt her eyes staring daggers into my own.
