The Expansion of the Universe

Two | "No one's looking."

"The world is terrifying," Liza murmured the following morning, her face pressed so closely against her living room window that her breath began to fog the glass.

Milo grunted from somewhere inside the kitchen, licking what remained of the scrambled eggs that had been on her breakfast plate.

"Will you tell Whitney if we don't go outside today?" She asked the dog absently, a tiny smile tilting her lips when she spotted a middle-aged woman going on a walk with her three children.

Liza loved children, but only from afar.

Up close, they were just as scary as the rest of the world and its population.

And their screams—

Milo's nose was in her neck suddenly, and she fell away from the window, laughing at the ticklish sensation and falling onto the couch she'd been perched on. Her dog pulled away, his tail wagging and his brown eyes gazing at her with nothing but affection.

Liza smiled. "At least you're not scary, Milo. I don't where I'd be if I thought you were scary." She held up her hand and he immediately sat his head on her palm, closing his eyes happily when she scratched at the underside of his chin.

Her eyes danced from his content face to the window, where her flowery curtain had fallen back into place and was letting in the sunshine but refusing any wandering eyes.

But no one was watching her, because there was no evidence to support such a thought.

Right. She just had to remember that.

"We shouldn't lie," she mused, dropping her hand from Milo's chin and watching as he shot her a curious, hopeful look. "Yeah," she confirmed as she stood from the couch and dusted off her sweatpants—the same pair she'd been wearing for the last five days or so. "We're going on a walk. We'll try to make it longer than last time."

She didn't change her T-shirt, an old blue thing from college, and left her sweatpants on as well, even though they were decorated with holes and the right leg had a decently sized coffee stain over the knee. These were her comfortable clothes, and, once she left the house, these and Milo would be her only armor.

Her hair, which was a dirty blonde, frizzy mess, was falling out of the braid she'd tied it in last night, but the most she could handle doing with her hands shaking was to release it from its confines and allow it to shield her face.

Peeking outside once more, she let her gaze wander up and down her street. She'd had enough foresight when moving into her condo to choose one of the older ones, hidden at the end of the private community and with only a total of ten units total, counting her own. The thought of owning an apartment had terrified her, but owning a house meant more maintenance, and her ability to be outside or speak with and hire workers was nonexistent, leaving a condo as one of her only options.

Thankfully, her social worker had managed to handle the communication aspects of purchasing the condo, and Liza hadn't even seen the place until she'd holed herself up inside the first day she was able.

Living inside a hospital for over a month had been hell, what with all the strange sounds and people and still having fresh memories from the accident that kept her from sleeping and being at all comfortable.

Pulling herself from her thoughts, Liza absorbed the now-quiet street, thankful that the mother and her children had moved quickly and were back inside their own home. Checking the clock, she turned to Milo and declared, "We'll have to do it now." Most people would be at work until the late afternoon, but she needed to get out and back inside before the mailman and delivery drivers started passing through.