Sleep Magazine (Completed)

The Forest: 4

Ava entered the room more slowly in her mind than in reality. She looked down at her hand, thumb and forefinger wrapped around the doorknob, her other three fingers curled into her palm, and automatically, as if she were programmed to do so, thought about Matty. She had vivid memories of him twisting doorknobs in precisely the same way, while her sisters—she knew but acknowledged, subconsciously, that she did not know how she knew it—used all five fingers to turn a doorknob. 

She then became drawn, visually, to the white tips of her fingernails. They contrasted so brightly against the dark bronze tone of the knob and the smokey lowlight that seeped from the mysterious room through the narrow but widening opening of the barely-cracked door, that it appeared to Ava, for the quick flash of a fraction of time, that they had separated from her fingertips and had begun floating upwards into the dark air like five little crescent moons against a hazy sky. 

Instantly attributing this bizarre illusion to her drunkenness, Ava continued to push the door open until it was just wide enough to walk through in a way that would appear graceful to whomever might be watching her enter the room, and closed it behind her softly, allowing her hands to rest on the front of her bare thighs as she crossed one leg in front of the other.

She stood still, first taking a second to mentally identify the music that played softly from a folding table near the window, and kept her head steady as her eyes scanned the room, initially startled to discover that only two people were there, but retained an outward composure nonetheless. 

Dave—she could surmise without looking at him directly—was seated in the middle of an antique couch that looked like something from a victorian church, upholstered in a forest-green velvet over a thin cushion that had lumped very noticeably with age, the outline of thick coiled springs visible beneath the fabric in some spots. The carved legs of the furniture curved outward into four intricately designed, bulbous feet, giving the impression of some personification to the object. 

In her peripheral vision, Ava noted that Dave's figure sat, legs wide, on the very edge of the narrow couch as he hunched over the folding table in front of him, twisting something in his hands as he studied it.

Her direct vision, however, was locked on the figure in the matching antique chair just several feet in front of her, as she recognized instantly that it was Marcus. 

The boy sat slumped down into the chair, the worn boots on his feet spread apart widely on the pine floor, laces undone, while his arms splayed out over the tattered, velvet armrests of the great chair, completely motionless except for the fingers of his right hand which Ava watched intently for a few moments, curling and straightening repeatedly over the carved wooden inlay on the front of the armrest. 

The boy's head was tilted up slightly to rest against the padded upholstery that looked rather plush compared to that of the couch, but he was so tall that the cushioned backrest only reached as far as the base of his skull, leaving the back of his head flush with the ornately carved wooden frame of the chair. His thick beanie did not provide much for a barrier between his head and the wood, as it was placed so high above his ears that it barely covered the crown of his head.

"Thought you were in Fall River?" Ava spoke out at the boy as she took one step closer toward him.

"He can't hear you," said a deep voice from the end of the room.

Ava turned her head sharply to look at Dave. He was still seated in the same position, hunched over the folding table and seemingly so engrossed in whatever he was doing and so oblivious to her presence that Ava doubted, for a moment, that it was he who had just spoken to her.

She turned her head back to Marcus and, being hesitant to move her feet, leaned a bit closer toward him and eyed his chest to assess whether or not it was moving up and down beneath his thick sweatshirt.