You stand outside in utter disbelief for a while. You're not entirely sure how long. You barely perceive the seconds as they melt into minutes and blow past you on the breeze. You shiver. There's a chill in the air, and you're standing on the cold, rough gravel in your bare feet. The sun is beginning to dip low on the horizon, and the thought of staying in that house at night is making your stomach turn. But..perhaps you were just hallucinating. Maybe you just imagined it all... the more you try to convince yourself, the more you almost begin to believe it. You feel your heart slowing, and you feel yourself beginning to calm. You decide to look through the house just to prove to yourself that it was indeed just a figment of your imagination, whatever it was that you saw. So you take a breath and re-enter the house.
Inside, everything is just as you had left it. You grab a knife from the kitchen and look through each of the rooms, even poking your head into the attic just to prove to yourself that you're being ridiculous. There is nothing there; there was never anything there at all. You repeat the phrase to yourself over and over like it is some kind of mantra. Something that, if you put enough faith in, would manifest itself into reality for you. You return to the living room and set the knife down atop the small coffee table. You look at the imprint it left on your hand, from how tightly you were clutching it. You try to laugh at the absurdity of your situation, but you don't like the way it comes out. Loud, mirthless, and all wrong, almost like screaming. You don't think you'll be able to fall asleep tonight on the couch comfortably. Your neck still aches from having curled up the way you did last night. You decide to head to the bedroom, trying to ignore the bathroom door as you walk into it. You left the knife on the coffee table if only to prove to yourself that you truly did believe that everything was fine. You climb into the bed, and slide under the red duvet with a sigh. You're still clutching the glasses in your hand, and you haven't set them down once this whole time. You want to badly to just set them down on the nightstand, to close your eyes and fall asleep. But you know that there's no way you will be able to fall asleep until you try them on, just once more, just to prove to yourself that nothing will happen if you do. As badly as you want to believe the mantra you repeat to yourself under your breath, you know that it is the only thing that will actually bring you any real sense of peace. The only way you will allow yourself to truly rest. So you take a deep breath and slide the dark sunglasses over your eyes once more.
