“You can’t see me at all, can you?” 

The face in the mirror looked back at her with eyes cut open by dried tears. 

In the other room a television static blasted at max volume as it peppered her thin arms with goose bumps that froze her shaking spine. Her lips were sallow, her nose pruned to a tip. Too softly had her skin been melted over the skull beneath that it appeared too clearly as a mask thereon. She was a mannequin dressed in the blood of a real person. 

The sickly hand with stick-ish fingers grasped the cold reflective faucet handle and turned it under a light squeal. The effort was nearly too much. As the water poured from the spout she played with it in her fingers. Swaying them beneath the torrent back and forth as she felt the temperature cooling and cooling until her fingers' exsanguinated lengths had nearly felt frozen to the touch. She cupped those fingers and took a handful of that heatless liquid to her face. She dipped her nose and eyes into it, begging the blood to return as the small puddle overflowed and poured water on the countertop and dripped to the floor. It puddled around her exposed foot fingers, a cheap imitation of the prior act of supplication. Her breath shortened to a speck, air trapped in her mouth and throat, burning her chest with pain. Her hands fell away at the pain, letting the cold water make a mess of the bathroom floor. 

“You could never see me, could you?” 

The exposed flesh of her eye sockets held no response.