Gemotions

The house seemed to shrink around Sarah. The silence was oppressive, punctuated only by the rhythmic tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Sarah hadn't spoken to her sister, Lily's mother, in weeks, another wound in the growing wound of her isolation.

Lily brought her a drawing depicting herself and a bizarre creature with antennae and many eyes, drinking tea in a garden. Sarah felt a peculiar recognition. She'd told no one of her own invisible friend, who vanished the day she started school. The past reasserted itself, a phantom limb that ached.

She found herself, later, wandering through the garden, the colors of the roses somehow muted.