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It had only been a few months since Omen found out that he could actually control his movements. Walk. Whatever this was. It had been only a little longer since he started thinking for himself. When would the next development come, and what would it be? Perhaps the ability to speak? After all, the thinking part was like a light switch had flicked on, and suddenly he had a deeper understanding of what was going on around him. Shapes were objects, sounds were words. He remembered things he was certain he had never seen before waking up.
Like the glass he was trapped in. If it was glass, for he remembered a variety of materials that were both hard and transparent like this. But perhaps some months ago, he was just bumping against these glass walls, not understanding that they were his containment, and he could not pass through just because he saw what was on the other side.
Humans, too. They were no longer autonomous objects, another sign of life other than himself, but he remembered facts about them. About how they had names. About how they walked on two legs. Even more complex thoughts about them such as the variety of languages they could speak or habitats they lived in, even if these two were the only faces he saw every day.
One was a man named Liam, tall and broad. Some unconscious part of him was wary of him, as if a human of that size was something to be scared of by appearance alone. He often visited at odd hours, when there was no sunlight, and he was often here to visit the other human, but sometimes if Omen was alone, he would walk up to the chamber and just stare. Only recently could Omen stare back with any meaningful level of focus.
The other was a woman named Sabine, also tall, but not as broad. Just the way she walked was different to the man, with purpose but also quiet and careful, as if the ground could give away under her feet. She was here almost all the time. When there was light coming in from the cracks in the curtains, she was there, sitting at the desk while working away on her laptop, or sometimes with paper and pen. Then at night, she would leave for a few hours, but she would always return before sunrise. Though, there were some nights where she tried to stay awake past when she normally left, and on those nights, she would often fall asleep at her desk. That was always when Liam would come in and take her away.
Omen, which is what they called him, was here all the time, no matter what. He had this small chamber to himself to walk across and think. Some part of him was always sad, but he couldn’t figure out what it was quite yet. And due to his inability to speak, he had no way to communicate that. So, he just moped around day and night. At some point, part of him wondered if he could communicate from drifting around in the shape of letters. After all, he could spell, he knew words, so in theory he could communicate.
One day, while the woman sat at her desk, Omen tried to move around in noticeable patterns. A simple ‘hello’ was what he wanted to spell out for her. Sabine did not look at him once. It was then that he realized that she rarely looked at him at all. From the moment she walked into the moment she either left or fell asleep, she was focused on her work, not even sparing him a glance. Then, he realized that in addition to that, even as she walked into the room, her eyes were on the floor. Even now, as she absent-mindedly tapped her pencil against the table, she was staring at a knife she kept with her at the table.
Until Omen could make a noise, she would not look over at him, relegating him to some shadowing corner of not only the room, but of her mind too. It was frustrating, to be sure, but also in some ways commendable. He was the oddity, the curiosity — even he knew that. So why didn’t she care? It drove him mad when that’s all that he could think about. Day in and day out, he would try to catch her attention, but she never looked. Why not? He was her experiment, right? Why wouldn’t she look at him? He couldn’t even communicate with Liam because he didn’t see the patterns, just the creature — Omen.
The clothes they both started to wear slowly looked to get longer or thicker. They were in coats and boots these days, which meant winter. Which meant Christmas. Why did he know about something he had never experienced? Along with the strict facts he could recall, he felt a warm little feeling in his chest as he thought about it. Why? If he were once human, could it be that these were the slightest inklings of memories?
Just by the clothing changes, Omen could somewhat guess that another few months had passed, and yet he had not developed any further. He could hold an opaquer form, but that was it. His main grievance was that he could not talk, get their attention, communicate. So, he was trapped in more than one way in this glass cage. If there was no reason to pay attention, then he too would slowly go comatose, just like Sabine sitting at her desk, staring at the knife.
How much more time passed, he didn’t know. However, today seemed to be Christmas. Sabine had started the day like all others, but Liam came earlier today, soon after the setting sun. He came with gifts for her.
“I thought I told you I didn’t want anything,” she muttered. Quite viciously too, despite carefully unwrapping the box.
There was a cardboard box inside, and after opening that up, she pulled out a few items. A nice scarf, a few chocolates, and something that she instantly put away.
“I… Where did you find that?” She pulled it out again, and Omen got a better look. It was a wallet it seemed, but it was worn around the edges. She opened it and carefully traced her finger over what was on the inside. Omen’s knowledge told him that it was most likely money or a credit card, but it didn’t seem like it from the view he had.
Liam cleared his throat and said, “I hope I didn’t overstep.”
Sabine shook her head and wiped away the first few tears. “Thank you for getting this. I know I shouldn’t think about him but—”
In a flash, Liam moved forward to wrap his arms around her. All of a sudden, shame and discomfort settled in Omen’s thoughts. This was too tender for him, a creature of shadow and particles, to see. It was how Liam turned his face to Sabine’s hair so he could whisper something while giving her a forehead peck. It was how Sabine wept so openly, something Omen could never see her do before tonight. It was the soft glow of light illuminating just their two shapes while Omen watched in the dark corner like a shadow.
Even shadows should look away at a display like this, but Omen could not.
He knew it was possible, even thought about it in theory, but this was the first true time he had seen some sort of emotion between the two of them. A Christmas event for the two of them, and yet he was still on the outside, transfixed on the golden scene and their raw feelings, hoping that they might include him. But that was silly.
So, he looked on from his isolation, wishing that he could one day know what something like this felt like.