"Don't do this to me."

Searching the eyes, she found the same, relentless anger burning, but there was something else. Something different. Something that told of... She struggled to place her finger on it, to identify the difference. It was emptiness. No, blindness.

Tearing her eyes away from those so indifferently staring back at her, she let her mind revisit the years gone past. There was something in those eyes that she reluctantly recognized, that she helplessly feared. It caused the familiar tingle deep in her soul, the only touch of life she'd felt since... since a time beyond the reaches of her memory.

Was it hate? No. They didn't burn as brightly nor did she catch the glint of menace she'd grown to expect. Could it be boredom, with life, with its worthless occupants perhaps? Still, there was the cloudiness. What could possibly cause that?

Glancing back at those eyes again, carelessly, casually, uncaringly, she found something had lifted. She found sudden vacuum. Twin abysses. Black holes that drew one in, with a force as yet unmatched. Then they closed in on themselves, and shut out the rest of the world that would never be privileged enough to gain a peek into their world.

When they opened once again after what seemed a lifetime of pauses, she searched, valiantly, for that which had so devoured her attention and confused her.

Yet all there remained, a single tear, blackened, reddened, a stain on pristine porcelain. And there, on a single forlorn strand, wrenched, abandoned, she found her answer.

It is just low-life, some coldness in us all, some helplessness that causes us to misunderstand life when it is pure and plain, makes our existence seem like a border between two nothings, and makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road - watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire.