She had been trying to pull her girlfriend away. She’d come into the bedroom, seen her sitting there all blank and vacant, and known immediately something was wrong. The TV was on, showing what looked like just static – white and black fuzz, nothing but roaring white noise from the speakers.
Her girlfriend had been sitting, naked, chin up, back straight, staring. She’d called her name. She’d shaken her. She’d tried to drag her away.
She’d looked at the TV, trying to figure out why she was staring like that. What had she been watching, before it went to static?
Then she saw it.
Her girlfriend hadn’t been watching something else before going catatonic and staring at the static. She was watching the static.
There were patterns in there, shapes. There was something moving. Twisting, pulsating. Wriggling.
It wriggled into her. Through her eyes, into her brain. She felt it wrap around, tighten.
She heard her own breath go sharp and shallow, felt her body tense. She felt her eyes refocus.
Her girlfriend didn’t move, but she could feel something in her shift as whatever it was they were staring at set itself in her brain. It had both of them now. What was it her girlfriend felt, knowing they were both caught – terror? Despair?
Relief? Excitement?
She felt her hands moving. She took off her clothes.
Then she just stared for a while. It pulled and tugged in her mind, constricting. Strangling off parts of her.
She moved slowly onto the bed, wrapping her legs around her girlfriend, much the way it wrapped itself around both of them.
They stared, letting themselves be annihilated, letting it replace them with what it wanted.
Mmmm, lovely