Out of Sight

Black Magic is Next Semester

Author's note: Sorry about the confusion. When my main character is confused and is the narrator, I suppose it's pretty hard to avoid confusing the reader as well...Also, I now have a closet dream to try out an industrial-grade sander to my feet. And I wish my favorite webcomic author would update every day too. Alas.

The old apartment my mother and I used to share hadn't changed from the day she had died. The dishes from dinner the night before still sat in the sink, her bed had been left unmade, its blue sheets that I still used back to their usual dark navy vibrancy. Though how I could see her bed and still stand in the living room should have been impossible. There was a wall in-between me and it. And yet see it I could, along with my pink, My Little Pony comforter and a slew of stuffed animals. Then my eyes would flicker, just like when they seemed to shift while I was looking at Gene, and instead of our bedroom, I looked at the old fat tube TV. The glass coffee table framed with chipped brass legs. The old green couch.

I stepped around the corner to see the room again, only to find another door across from it. I opened it, expecting to find the closet, but instead found an entire other room. I hesitated, looking at the other two doors which were open enough for me to see the bathroom and bedroom, then stepped through.

It had the same stained, old baby blue carpet that needed to be replaced. Blinds covered the window, painting the room in stripes of sunlight.

I made it out as I focused on its bits. There was a short leather couch. A brown and black dressed full-sized bed. A tall, heavy wood dresser, one that looked as though it came from the era when furniture was made to last lifetimes rather than the next few years.

"Oliver?" Even as I spoke his name, I could make out the tribal African masks on the walls. I thought I could smell his leathery musk.

He lives with us? In our closet? Our...really big closet...that had grown a window.

"Mai."

The sound of the voice made my heart jump. I twisted around.

Takigawa stood in the doorway, his face tragically long.

"Why would you lie?" he whispered.

But before I could think of what to say, or even remember what he was talking about, he slunk back into a darkness that had encroached on the rest of the hall.

I followed after him, driven by the need to explain, what, I didn't quite have a grasp on.

Just to find myself standing once more in the living room with the green couch, which had grown to curl around the wall like a massive multi-sectional beast. The tube TV had shrunk.

And Chance leaned against the wall next to the front door.

"Are you ready?" he asked, giving me his wide, beautiful smile—the one that made his brown eyes glow and spoke of the beautiful man he'd be once he grew into those lanky limbs.

"To face the end," he said.

I blinked and his face seemed to age, to change, but then I blinked again and it was the same broad, bright smile.

And he lifted a black handgun. The same one I had used to save him. Professor Davis's gun.

Fear, as I had never known, froze my insides as painful as the worst brain freeze and knives.

I lifted up my hands, but the fear closed off my throat with an iron fist.

"Someone seeks to judge you," he said, cocking it. The click sounded like thunder. "They want to see the true you."

"Are you honest?" Takigawa sat up from a corner of the elongated couch I had somehow missed. The tiny tube TV must have hidden him.

"Are you friendly?" Chance straightened from the wall. "Are you good?"