empty rooms

For S___, who became unexpectedly unfamiliar.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend's house suddenly stopped existing. It was just a formless white mist trailing into nothingness. Everywhere I went, the mist would retreat a little bit. It was almost impossible to detect while I was in a room, except out of the corner of my eye there would be some little detail missing, something that was just that solid white mist. Even looking through the windows, there wasn't a world there, just the white mist. The house existed in a weird sort of vacuum. Even the streets I walked on to get here only stretched for a few yards before the white mists arrived.

It was easy enough getting back home, but I started noticing, or thinking I noticed, little details missing, or bits of reality where the mist took hold once again.

When it stayed that way when I came back to visit the other day I finally asked her about it. It wouldn't have been so bad if she said she saw it too, or she didn't see it, but she didn't understand the question. I took her into the study to try to show her the mists as they unfurled and she just stared and asked me what I was talking about.

I wasn't planning on going back home that night, but I did, and tried to take her with me. She wasn't having it. I slept alone, dreaming of clouds that swallowed everything.