The Mirror Realm

04.

Murmuring voices are scattered throughout the diminutive diner. Some souls sharing a milkshake with two straws stuck into the melting ice cream. Others having an iced tea, the glass cup sweating, water scurrying down the cup and dampening the cardboard coaster colored red with "Susan's Diner" printed across the top in white cursive.

Oliver and Amy are seated three booths up from the door, cold blasts making their way into the charming diner every few minutes. Oliver fiddles with a mint, running it back and forth between both hands, the green and white striped candy still in one piece inside the wrapper.

The silence between the two is uncomfortable, unbearable, awkward if you must call it that. It has never been like this before, ever. It's as if something is different  as if something has changed in less than twenty-four hours between the two lovers.

"So, um..." Oliver opens his mouth, breaking the silence with a sharp knife, the silence walking away from their table as if it has its own set of legs.

"I was wondering, since tomorrow is Sunday, if you would like to go with my family and me to the county carnival for a few hours, but we don't have to stay with them, we can go off and do our own thing and-" Oliver continues to ramble on and on, like a rhetorical speaker stalling to persuade the audience, to which, Amy is not even remotely  paying attention.

Instead, her eyes are focusing on a single being other than the desultory boy seated across from her. This being is stuck in the corner, an eerie corner with a flickering light. No one seems to notice this being though, nor do they notice the meteoric light, acting as if an adolescent child keeps flipping the switch on and off repeatedly.

Amy watches this being, covered in black, their face masked with a hood. It seems as if the pulled hood has nothing underneath as if there is no face or no personality hiding underneath the sewn cloth of the drawstring hoodie. Their body is rested back against the booth, their feet kicked up on top of the table  as if they own the place.

She scrutinizes this person, curiosity and a small sliver of fear making its way into Amy's mind. Her staring contest with the soul is soon broken by Oliver's nagging voice.

"Amy?"

"Amy...?"

"AMY?!" She snaps back like a slap on bracelet being straightened, then bashed against a wrist.

Discretely and subtly, Amy shifts her hunter green eyes to meet Oliver's penny brown irises.

"There's someone in the booth back there...watching us," she orates in a hushed tone, averting her retinas as she speaks, making it less obvious what she is trying to claim.

Oliver gives a questioned glance to Amy, who is facing away from the acclaimed stalker sitting four booths away from theirs in the corner that no one ever sits in. Reluctantly and slowly, not composing the gradual movements to be too obvious to the mysterious being, he turns to sneak a glance.

With a sigh of relief and confusion, he turns back around at a normal speed to stare at a semi-frightened Amy.

"There's no one there, Am's, no one," he says, but Amy doesn't consider this new said fact.

"He's there, just watching, t-the light's flickering on and off," she pauses to stare at Oliver's facial features. "How can you not see it?" She grills, deadpanning her words.

She breaks her sight off of her boyfriend, and instead expeditiously lays an eagle eye on the corner booth...but no one's there, not anymore.

The rambunctious light that seemed possessed is back to normal, the fluorescent light illuminating the polished wood making up a circular table.

Amy - just as Oliver had - let out her own sigh of relief, her heartbeat lowering a few bumps per minute. But all is instantly changed when she glances out the window. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she realizes that the being from the corner, is standing right in front of the window, peering down at her with its head tilted down at a forty-five-degree angle. Staring right at her. Her startled movement launches her body backward off of the bench, her sweaty skin ripping from the merlot red dyed leather. The pain receptors lining her back legs bite at her nerves, their teeth sinking in a little too deep.

Oliver is soon to his feet to retrieve Amy from the intricate black and white patterned floor, the tile shrieking as the soles of his shoes rub against the polish harshly, leaving a skid mark.

"Amy! Are you alright?!" He rapidly questions, but doesn't receive a response.

Befuddled ganders glance down at the two on the floor, children's wide smiles drooping just a smidgen and the couples putting their food aside to take a look at the scene unrolling.

Amy's heavy breaths fan across Oliver's face, her heartbeat almost audible. Beads of sweat gather on her forehead, creating a crown.

"Amy, come on, it's alright, everything's alright," Oliver coos, as a weak attempt to calm her down, and it's effect slightly works. He reaches his hand up to caress her cheek to wipe away the single traitor tear that had dropped from her tear duct.

Amy reaches her own hand up to her face, balling her fingers into fists and rubbing away at her closed eyelids. Rubbing away the sight in front of her that almost caused her a heart attack.

The figure, gone.

Oliver helps Amy back up and onto the bench, everyone else returning to their muffled conversations. She sucks in a deep breath but stops mid-gesture of grabbing her drink when her gaze meets a "three" drawn onto a napkin in front of her that wasn't there before.

  "Are you alright?" Oliver asks, staring at Amy with a severely puzzled expression.

  Amy pulls her gaze away from the inked napkin, his question not fully registering in her mind, "What? Yeah, I-I'm fine."

Oliver gives off a wary glance, but disregards her response and goes on as if nothing ever happened. "So...about the carnival tomorrow night, you in?"