Spectrophobia

17: Tangled Relationships.

The night was uncomfortable.

As dusk fell upon them, the only thing they could now do was sleep. The investigator wanted to return to fuck knows where to sleep there instead - Ray was adamant he should stay the night. He refused to stay in there alone anymore. The investigator gave in, only if he should sleep on the floor.

Ray - wide awake - watched the investigator lie on the floor, a simple thin blanket drawn over his thin body. It seemed to do him well, he was fast asleep. Poor boy must be exhausted after all that. Watching his chest slowly rise and fall, Ray's mind began to whirl uncontrollable.

The eternal thoughts of his dark childhood and his future relationships all seemed  broken to him now. He had no idea how he was going to hold them up anymore. This Doppelgänger had stripped him bare and buck naked, taunting his very existence and throwing it in his face.

He was scared. Scared of what would happen next.

He could barely sleep.

...

Knocks.

Raymond's eyes slammed open and he jolted upright - searching around the house for where the source of that God forsaken noise was.

It was just the front door.

He shifted out of the couch and peered in through the peep-hole to the other side. He saw her.

"Raymond? Are you there?"

Shit... he forgot she was coming today.

He looked around at the living room floor. The blanket was there, but no investigator. He had no way of knowing if he was still here or not.

She knocked on the door again. He flipped the lock and pulled the door open. The smile that was once rising on her face began to steadily drop all the way down.

"Ray?"

"Hi, Jane."

The girl sized him up, looking at him up and down.

"What happened to you?"

Ray bit the inside of his cheek. He was slightly ashamed of what he had now become. Of what was presented to his girlfriend. Though, he had no control over it anymore.

"Um.. a lot. Uh, you should come in.. so I can explain everything."

He stepped aside to allow her to follow him in. She took one look at the house and grimaced. She was obviously unimpressed with the conditions of the place. She turned back around to Ray. Her look of disapproval and worry mixing into one.

"Ray, what the fuck happened? I only left a week and a bit. It's trashed!"

"Yeah, that's all it took," - Ray retorted under his breath so she couldn't hear.

He sat on the couch he had attempted to sleep on that night. She sat beside him.

"Tell me everything. God, you look terrible.."

Jane went to touch his face. He gently pushed her hands back. He didn't want her to feel the ugly that had grown on him.

"I'm fine, but this house isn't."

"You're goddamn right. Tell me, now, what happened?"

Ray took a deep breath before he began his all too familiar summary.

"You know the mirror we kept in the house when we moved in," - she nodded - "well, something sort of went wrong with that. My reflection started acting up in it and started to... move on its own. Now it's alive, its a real thing. It hurt people. I called an investigator to get rid of it. It's called a Doppelgänger and its leeching onto my life energy. We tried to get rid of it yesterday, but we couldn't."