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The house is dark, almost silent. The faint blue glow of the TV is just visible from the entryway, pulsing, flickering. Dancing lights rising and falling against the blank wall. The volume is just low enough to hear the scratches of something playing.
His hands fumble against the tangled laces on his boots. Kicks one off, tugs off the other, lines them up next to the door. Shucks his coat slowly, dangling off his arm, sliding down to the floor, then up, collar over the brass hook. His head turns, mouth turning down.
He can sense the presence; a heaviness in the air. Like the whole house had frozen when his car's headlights had turned onto it.
There’s a long, drawn out second before he moves. Slowly, creeping down the hallway of his own fucking house. Socks against the carpet, knuckles trailing against the wall. He can smell it, now.
Ambrosial. Halting; flashes of a stinging sensation above his brow. Mark hovers at the edge of the hallway; standing in the long shadows.
Her eyes are already on him.
Motionless, hair glowing like fire when the TV flashes white. Her palms are flat against her knees. Back straight, she’s as still as a mannequin.
There’s no evidence that she’s even there. Enough that he could convince himself this is some fucked up hallucination- reintegration depravity. No scuffs in the clean vacuum lines on the carpet. Everything exactly where he’d left it.
Mark takes a deep breath. “How did you get in here?”
“Spare key.”
She says blankly. Her mouth moves, that being the only part of her engaged in any motion. She’s wearing a long black coat. Dark blue heels; one pointed inward, the other out. He wonders how long she spent arranging herself into place. If it comes naturally to her, or if she’d been cultivated from birth into stagnation.
It’s uncanny. There’s something about the blankness that doesn’t seem right.
“You have a key?”
“Your neighbour does.”
The TV flickers, coating her in shifting colours. “So what is this.” He asks. Not because he gives a shit, but because he thinks if she doesn’t start moving, he’s going to go over there and make sure she’s actually fucking real.
It’s unnerving. There’s a part of him that wants to make her flinch. Make her leave, but there’s another part- small and troubling, that wants to watch her strings get cut. Wants to see the slump of her spine; body lax against the cushions of his couch.
Her hands twitch, almost imperceptibly. “Nobody knows I’m here.” Mark shifts on his feet.
His eyes draw to the fish tank, the TV's reflection bright against the glass. It's a commercial about double-glazed windows.
“Okay?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. His throat constricts, stomach roiling. He needs a fucking drink. “I don’t have anything to say to you. You should leave.”
The beer burns on the way down, sour and bitter in his mouth, He’s got his hand wrapped around the bottle when her form shifts in his peripheral. He startles, shifting on his feet, brow drawing up. She just stands there.
Mark slumps back against the hard line of the counter, waiting for her to say something. She doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. He’s almost tempted to offer her a drink, but not once does her gaze move away from his face. He feels his heart stutter, disquieted by the complete lack of anything resembling emotion in her features. She’s entirely blank, not a single hair out of place.
Then, her shoulder tilts, Slow, not hesitant- just slow, then all of her follows. Helena leans back, and with a nauseated lurch, he realises she’s mirroring him with an unnerving precision.
Mimicking the way he’s standing, down to the direction of his feet.
He feels sick.
There’s faint laughter coming from the living room; some sitcom playing at this hour. He feels frozen, almost scared to move. “The hell is wrong with you.” He says, low and unsteady.
Her eyes are unblinking.
“Stop fucking looking at me like that.” His voice sounds foreign to his own ears. Like somebody else is saying it. He takes a breath, wrenches his eyes away from her. Turns to the cabinet behind him.
He tugs the handle, slipping his hand inside and pulling out the gin from his stash. Tries and fails to steady his hands. Her gaze is like a fucking lead weight, pushing down at his tensed shoulders. He unscrews the cap and reaches for a clean glass, fills it up halfway, then caps it over the glass so whatever he spills doesn’t get wasted.
He downs it like water, and hangs his head, hands flat against the counter.
“Mark.”
He doesn’t turn.
He can hear movement behind him. Tries not to tense up any more than he already fucking is, his heart beginning to race.
He thinks he can hear the slide of glass against ceramic. The slosh of liquid. There’s a popping noise, like she’s wrapping her lips around the beer bottle and draining the rest of the liquid. It’s somehow even more unsettling than before. That she’s now intentionally creating movement and noise, drawing his attention back to her against his will.
Glass against counter. Heels clicking against the floor. She’s somewhere behind him. He doesn’t turn. “Leave.”
“No.”
Gin back in his hand, liquid sloshing into the glass. He knocks it back, the clink loud against the counter. “Why?”
She doesn’t respond. There’s more of that clicking noise, her heels moving. He wonders if she’s pacing, approaching or retreating. It doesn’t really make a difference. When he finally turns around, the space behind him is empty.
She’s over on the couch, same position- exact fucking same- that he’d walked in with. At this point, it’s all a fucking joke, breath puffing out of his chest, an amalgamation of fear and intrigue pulling him equally in two directions.
He approaches the couch slowly.
Her eyes track the movement.
He sits down on the far side, feeling like he’s seconds away from something bad happening. Something truly, genuinely bad. His hand is shaking, far too much for it to not be obvious, and he grasps onto the remote, flicking away from the commercial breaks to one of the other channels.
Maybe it's the alcohol, or the prolonged stress melting into a far simpler emotion, animalistic anger snapping its maw, grinding his teeth. His fist clenches, fingers digging into his palm. She’s so fucking indifferent, beside him. Like the owns the place. Like she’s part of the fucking furniture- some model home from an Ikea catalogue that he stumbled into, all wrong and out of place.
He turns his head, wonders how motionless he can become if he tries hard enough. Or if his racing heart would make that impossible.
Her face flickers in the TV glow. Long lines of shadow running up the bridge of her nose, light bouncing off the curve of her eye.
Helena’s head turns slowly, watching him; eyes sinking like teeth into his neck.
“What do you want from me?” He asks, squeezing his thumb into his enclosed fist. Her eyes blink, and the TV buzzes, the laugh track almost taunting.
“Why do you think you have anything I want?”
He reels back, that animalistic terror prickling all over his body. “I don’t-“
Helena’s head turns back to the TV. Something almost reminiscent of a smile curves onto the thin stretch of her mouth. “I like this one.”
“What?”
She doesn’t answer. His breath shudders out of him, torn between snapping, torn between retreat.
Mark slowly slouches back against the couch, clenching his jaw so hard his ears buzz with the force of it.
Helena’s shoulders are a solid line, in his field of view. Her dark coat free of any imperfections. Her hair is curled into soft tufts, tumbling down past the folded collar.
Mark imagines running his fingers beneath her chin; tilting her small head back. The long line of her throat arched, hair pooling down her shoulders; her back. Imagines running his thumb over her skull, slowly digging into their matching wound. Unspool her brain onto the carpet, sift through the tangle of wire and electric current to see what she’s thinking.
Slowly, she bends, like a tree’s branches swaying in the force of a storm, she eases herself back against the cushions, following; mimicking.
When her head tilts, he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to not react. She rests her head against his shoulder; in some sick fucking distortion of warmth.