2019-12-10 - Facing your inner fears

8 Elm normally was such a quiet house, all things considered. But there was something eerie about the silence in the aftermath of what had happened. Legs draped from the side of the bed, hanging limp and without life. The flesh of the gray haired artist was a pale white, devoid of the spirit which should have given those features their expressive casts of smiles and joy. The fluffy, pink bathrobe in which he was covered still had the tie on it, and that? Made the lack of color in Dylan's corpse all the more crisply noticed, the way the blues had been sucked out of his eyes to leave only black, the hair faded to gray, his flesh that chalk white.

No blood leaked from the body to stain the sheets, though the room was in disarray. Fluffy slippers were everywhere, tossed helplessly about. Clothes were strewn. And then? The creak of the faucet sink in the bathroom down the hall came on, letting water start to pour and fill the basin. Fingers cupped the water to splash on a face, and as the water rolled down, the man's head lifted, and Dylan looked at his own reflection in the mirror. It was hazy at best, as if it couldn't quite materialize into being to properly look back at him just yet.

"How am I ever going to explain this to Mae?" The words came flowing out loud. Fingers still shook, and his legs were slugish in their response as he headed back to the bedroom to peer at his dead self that had stepped out of the mirror. Part of him had hoped that the dream had shattered, the body had faded by now. Surely it would, right? At least before Mae got back to find, well, this, and freak out.

His gaze blinked a couple of times when he noticed the addition of something red laying on top of that pale, lifeless forehead. "I don't need you helping too, Jokey," He grumbled out as he stepped closer to see the little origami cross that had been made from a kitkat wrapped. And then he set about picking up the mess in the bedroom, all while silently wishing for that figure to dissolve back into nothingness, and the dream to go away.