Free-write...3:00 in the morning. I don't know where the characters came from. ...Thoughts?
“I probably could,” said Kevin, “Probably.”
Quiet, glazed eyes drifting into the reflective glass, he was too far somewhere else to know what else was far. He saw the glass, a window, saw the shifting shade. He knew he ought to see through it, a garden maybe beyond, a vision of an outside world of thought and noise slobs. But it reflected. Vague, drifting, a shadow of a face sat in the pane. And Kevin looked through it without it seeing, looked past into his own thoughts.
“D’you know,” he murmured, “I might.”
“Probably,” hissed a voice, pained.
In his window, movement glanced across the pane; a pale face, frantic hands.
“Probably!”
Kevin gazed dully at the glass, and nodded heedless. He didn’t think to turn and look, nor to be surprised by what he knew was there. Though the distorted refraction of his face cast doubt a pall through his listlessness. What was - was not in the window. A crooked, sallow visage, drowned by hollow eyes…
“Probably,” said Lis thickly from behind.
“Lis,”
“You know, you,” she faltered, “you…weren’t crazy, weren’t crazy, Kev, not…a long time ago.”
“I probably could.” murmured Kevin, searching for the light in the empty eyes. It was just a picture in a glass, a shadow, a light…but maybe he was the same to someone else. He wondered if another young man might be looking through a window…was he sitting on the other side? Was he an ugly shadow, cluttering up the window-pane?
But Lis was there as well, a thin, frenetic blur of darting eyes and drawn face white as sleet.
“Why don’t you look at me, dammnit?”
“I am,”
“What, in there?” she swallowed in her tears, and swore again, wiping a blurred arm across her pallid face. “In a window; window looking out into the dark…’can’t see anything,”
Kevin faltered in his thoughts…they went with the light sometimes, and skewed away into cracked mirrors and voices he didn’t know. Quietly, he hated it. For now and then, the frantic words wormed into his mind would sound like pleas. Pleas, he knew, voices he knew from somewhere where windows looked at a garden reaching to trees…and faces had eyes that sought.
“I am,” he said at last, faintly, “I…I am,”
“You’re what?” snapped Lis.
“…there,”
“You’re where, Kev?” Lis broke with her voice. In the flickering glass, she vanished, sunk down below its sill. But her voice went on, with that desperate spite so peculiar to love in pain. “…You’re gone, Kevin…gone. I, God, I used to look for you…used to look for you when I came. I thought, yeah, sure…a shock, he’ll be back. C’mon Kev…can you hear me? be back. I thought you’d be back.
“I asked you questions…’bout mom…” she snorted, derision a sob. “You know? you remember?” she pleaded, “I sat there - and there. I told you Beth was OK, and - and…well, Tyler’s not-not hurt anymore….but you just stare. I come in…and you say probably…probably about something. I don’t know. Probably I could…but you know, you don’t do anything, Kev. What could you do! You could talk to me, maybe, yeah? You could look away from that damned window that doesn’t look at anything. Nothing. You could say it’s OK, or it’s not, or look! Lis, I’m sick. I want to die.”
She shook her head, vaguely, a shimmer in the reflecting glass of damp hair and faded-pale brow.
“But you don’t.”
Hands quivering, Kevin could see the face crease, grimace in the pane. It screamed at him, wailing silent. And his thoughts tangled…
“Probably,” he whispered…but now he didn’t know why.
“Do you want to die, Kev?” Lis repeated, pleading, “Because Hell, if you do, say it! Do something; just tell me. Stop staring at that stupid hole! it’s nothing; there’s nothing there.”
Say it! screamed the crooked features in the glass, say it in mockery, but in silence. Not what, it didn’t say. It creased and twisted, and oil trailed down’s its colorless cheeks, dragging darkness from its hollow gaze.
His chest - too tight…he felt the world might be swaying. But the face was the same. Weeping, griefless, it screamed at him and drowned out all sound.
“I…probab - I…”
“…Kev?”
“I…”
“Will you just - do something?” Lis’s voice, vague.
He didn’t know it. He couldn’t hear.
Say it! he shook his head - the visage in the glass reeling as he did. It had always been hollow, hollow eyes across the world, staring into his. Wildly, he sought his thoughts. I am, he wanted to say…but that terror swept up behind, hollow - saying nothing. And the voices, ragged in his mind slid in, begging, sobbing, screaming…voices he knew from far away.
“Kev…wake up. Kev, look at me…are you OK? …are you OK?…”
I hope MY Kevin never gets like that... *shudders*
