I snapped back to reality, she was back. Sky dark, I saw her take a step into the bathroom. She hesitated before leaning back and disappearing some of herself from my vision. Suddenly light flooded the space, instant and powerful. The woman walked past me in stark relief, the object of attention illuminated in the inanimate room. I wondered if perhaps my attachment with the woman stemmed as much from my not fully understood instinct as from the fact that she alone was the stimulating presence in my life, the only non static visitor to my domain.

As was usually the case when she first walked in the room she did not design to give me as much as a glance, attending to another more important duty. Although not uncharacteristic of her behaviour or even particularly insulting I still found it stirring some of the low simmering rage I carried with me. The emotion shallow and lingering, reactive to this minuscule slight-a small twinge that perhaps only a being like me so vulnerable to the subtilise and more accurately overwhelming deluges of emotion could recognise. I could see how every time the woman ignored me gnawed away at me a little, that I felt it every time she glossed over herself. Emboldened by the new power I contained I resolved to keep captive her attention through whatever means I could going forward.

The seconds stretched on as I watched the woman from the hazy edge of my vision, awake and aware longer than ever before without her constant attention due to the levels sleeping inside me. Impatiently I urged the woman to hurry and gaze into my reflective surface. I noted that perhaps my surface was not as sparkling as it once was with disappointment and shame sourced frustration. Annoyed at the fact I had time for such pointless contemplation I blamed the woman’s extended stay at the fringes of the mirror.

not wishing to wait for the usual dulling of my awareness I blinked impatiently. My conscious stuttering-fading in and out in quick succession. She stared in to my perhaps luster-less surface and I stared back somewhat satisfied- although perhaps a little chagrined.

She cleaned her hands first, the motions smooth and deliberate, unconscious and practised. Her gaze grew distant as the warm water ran over her hands in its steady stream. Her eyes unfocused and she stared through me , ash she looked past me to something further only she could see. I was confused, and in that moment I felt myself grow curious. I wondered: what was she looking at, what was it her drifting mind could see, what was there beyond this reality that I found myself fixed to.

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She shut the tap off and dried her hands on the infamous towel beneath the sink. She’d moved out of the daze as easily as she slipped into it. I didn’t know what she was to be able to so easily do something I couldn’t even dream of, to enter so easily the world outside the room. I tried to imagine what the world out there might look like, where the distant light came from, but all I could think of was a different bathroom, one simply more embellished then mine.

Forcing myself to focus in once again as I often found myself doing when she was in here with me, I grabbed ahold of the ensnare spell to anchor me. I waited in place, like a man stood in a big sink with a net, ready to pounce at the fish within.

I waited through the cleaning teeth and the wipe down of the face. Through the routine. I waited for her to pause-to take a breath. To break up the monotony of the movements with a sigh into the mirror. When the moment came as I knew it did I brought attention to the spot again. Her tired face a frowning one as she looked at the spot somewhere above her lip. She quickly looked away with a shake of the head and got back to it not pausing as she splashed the warm water on her face and searched for a different towel to dry it.

Then she walked away and put the towel down, heading off to whoever it was she needed to be. I frowned to the extent I was able, mimicking the woman physical show of displeasure with the dip of my emotional state. I had only gotten the chance to cast ensnare once, and I belated realised that the usual crashing thunder of emotion was more likened to a low rumble in the being. In fact it seemed the surge of emotion originally driving me forward had faded. The tide receding and calming, the advent of my rage preventing me from ever noticing. Now with my rage a low simmer, I could feel the reduced rumbling alongside it. The captivating highs that had pushed me into my new life seemed fading.

It was as my vision began to dim that I for perhaps the first time didn’t have the presence of mind to much notice. I faded from the room in much the same way as the woman, dissatisfied. And as the world around me darkened I dwelled not in any coherent thoughts, but the disappointing feeling of displeasure.