Series

She loaded the DVD into the player out of habit, and he pressed play on the remote control.

"Which one did we stop on?" she asked.
"I forget," he replied.

How do we always forget? she wondered. They watched this show every night, and had, for...awhile. She just picked the first episode on the disc and told him to press play. She vaguely remembered doing it the night before, but she couldn't remember what had happened in the episode, so they might as well watch it again.

They had seen this one before, but neither said anything against replaying it. It was the one where Mulder and Scully end up trapped in an abandoned house on Christmas Eve, and the ghosts of a couple who had died there trick them. The agents go from room to room, and every time they think they've found a door, it's the same room again. This big library, with lots of books and multiple floors, but the ghosts had taken away the ladder. The exit was boarded up.

She sipped on some water and glanced over at him; he seemed engrossed with the episode. Yet, every time something funny happened, or scary, or anything that begged for a reaction, he didn't give one. He just stared.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"This is a good one," he replied.

She quietly wondered if he was unhappy with her. Unsatisfied, out of love, or otherwise. Was she ugly? Had she somehow changed since they'd gotten together to make him not notice her? She'd always been prone to thoughts like these, and rarely did they have any basis in reality, so she hushed her mind. He was probably just watching the episode, and it had nothing to do with her.

She resumed her attentions to the television. Mulder and Scully were pulling up the old floorboards in the library, and they found two skeletons, dead en embrace, which they thought were just some old murder victims. But upon closer inspection, the skeletons were dressed identically to the agents. Same socks and everything.

All of a sudden, she didn't like this episode. She started mildly panicking, looking at him and then at the wall. She didn't know what had set it off--she didn't like those skeletons, though they'd never bothered her before. Not wanting to stir up worry in her significant other, she tried to keep her irrational panic out of his view.

What was it? What was making her anxious about an episode of X-Files, or two skeletons in the floorboards? She loved this show. Maybe it wasn't the show. Was it him? Was it their apartment? A hot wave of sick nausea washed over her, like how she felt when he'd made her watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre a few months ago.

Then an idea crept out from an overgrown mental pathways. She knew it was irrational, unreal, and plenty of other words in the same vein, but she knew without a doubt that if she pulled up her own floorboards at that instant, she'd find her skeleton next to his, holding a DVD. And his would be holding the remote control.

She didn't remember it getting this way, but they'd somehow ended up here. She tried hard to think of the moment it happened, but nothing registered. When had she stopped remembering things? She didn't even remember what she'd done yesterday, or what episode they'd stopped on. How long had they been dating? It was somewhere around three years, but she didn't remember at least one of them. Not the specifics. Not the fun things, the double dates, the bad things, anything. It was just a chunk of white time.

Still not wanting to alarm him, she took the DVD case to check which season they were on. Season 6, out of 9. In the back of her mind, she knew the right thing was to turn off the TV and bring this up--the whole thing, that whole year of white time that she couldn't recall, and break it off. But he would inevitably ask where this thought came from, and all she'd have to say was the X-Files. Because she couldn't remember how it got this way. She had no argument.

Technically there shouldn't have to be an argument, but she figured he was in the same spot she was, and didn't realize it. She'd have to convince him, because it's hard to move someone out of such a comfortable, unmemorable existence. It's scary. She was scared.

So scared, she decided that when the series was over, she'd do it. She'd pull up the floorboards and show him, and he would have to believe her. He'd have to see that they were either dead or dying, she didn't know which; perhaps he could tell her. Perhaps he would agree, and they could just call this whole thing off. The whole three years, or however long it had been.

What if they had been watching the same episode over and over again, for years? She could not produce a shred of evidence proving that wrong. The skeletons, the same room, over and over. The exit blocked.

She might not last another three seasons. Her skin might start falling off, and she'd have to put on extra makeup to cover it. And at some point, the floorboards would open up and swallow the both of them, and they'd never even know it. She turned her head to look at him, oblivious, one last time.

Then, he met her gaze and turned the TV off.
"We need to talk," he said.