InsaneJournal

Apt 9164, evening
The first time it had been a mere glimpse in his bedroom mirror, something easily explained as a trick of the light. Then she had come and looked over his shoulder as he washed his hands in the bathroom and their eyes had met for a long moment before she had faded.

She had been as beautiful as he remembered then, but the next time, glimpsed as he left the flat to go to work, her face had been pale and strained.

The day after she had smiled at him, he lips moving weakly and the dark stains under her eyes, the yellowish tint to her skin had made his breath catch.

Speaking to Charlie and Cindy at least put paid to his suspicion that he was going mad but other than that it was little comfort that other people were oing through the same horror.

Today she was reflected in the glss of one of his many watercolours and she looked worse. Far worse.

"Why now?" he whispered. "Oh Caro, my love, after all this time, why now?"

"Because," her cracking lips formed the word, and he felt the first clutch of pain around his heart and reached for his bottle of pills.