The next night. More of the same, though some of the uneasiness of sleep has returned.

She sits in bed, bra and panties. It was something that so simply excited him, thin pieces of fabric and wire and scents and sense. And flesh.

She attempted to find comfort in the idea of his committing suicide, blowing his brains all over the bedsheets she is sitting on, spray painting the walls in meaningful graffiti, bone fragments planting themselves in the soiled carpet. At least then she could have tried, made some amount of effort to help him, to make things better.

But there was no suicide, no accident, no evil diseases, no brains. He was there and then he wasn't. He ceased to exist.

She would like to think that he was sucked into the aether, one with the air around her, and that she breathes him in every night. The he helps her heart beat. That he keeps her going.

Alien abduction? Unlikely. He wasn't the type of person aliens would abduct. No hick accent, no suspenders or wife-beater shirts. No chewing tobacco. Besides, they had joked before and concluded that they were both secretly aliens adopted by human society. Why would they abduct their own kind?

It was something that made him smile, so it made her smile.

Useless smiles.

Thin pieces of fabric.