Credulous

“Jack, are you about ready to go yet?” I called through the apartment as I walked out of the bedroom, wondering where my boyfriend could've possibly slipped off to, as well as why he was being so abnormally quiet. That's so very uncharacteristic of him.

No reply came and I started to become a little worried. What if someone had broken in or something while I was getting ready in the bathroom? What if they kidnapped him, or, worse yet, killed him? What if they were still in the house?

My thoughts ran rampant as I froze in fear. Of course I eventually realized how stupid I was being - if someone had broken in, Jack would've made some sort of noise, right? - and I relaxed once again.

But what if something happened while you were blow drying your hair? The blow dryer isn't that damn loud, is it? Even if it isn't, they could've used a rag and chloroform or something to knock him out. What if they slit his throat before he could eve-

My train of thought was cut short when I walked into the living room. Jack was standing right in front of one of the numerous Blink-182 posters scattered throughout all of the rooms, doing nothing other than simply staring up at Mark Hoppus, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration.

"Are you okay?" I asked slowly as I crept forward. Instead of a robber or something, this was like some Blair Witch Project shit; like at the very ending, where she was holding the guy in the corner of the basement. Creepy as fuck.

Yet again, no answer came. He didn't even flinch at the sound of my voice. When I was standing parallel to him, my chest almost touching his arm, I turned to look up at the poster. Maybe there was something there that hadn't been before?

Of course, nothing was out of the ordinary. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time I'd seen it, which was only a few hours prior. The next thing I did was turn to study Jack.

His features were similar to that of a deep scowl: thick eyebrows drawn, eyes narrowed and unblinking, lips - which are already impossibly thin as it is - practically nonexistent as he pursed them into a tight line, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.

After one more quick inspection to make sure that the poster was, in fact, the same as it had been before, I reached out to gingerly poke at Jack's arm.

His gaze didn't move from where it was trained, and I started having a mental panic attack. People don't just fucking freeze, do they? That's not even possible.. is it? Do ghosts just appear out of fucking nowhere and do shit like this all the time? Are ghosts even real?

"Jack, seriously, what the fuck are you doing?" I managed to ask a little shakily, trying to not put too much thought into everything.

This time, however, I got a simple, "Sh," in return. I wouldn't have heard it had I not seen his lips pucker the slightest.

"Why, exactly, do I need to 'sh'?" I inquired, thankful I was getting some sort of reaction and hopeful that he'd keep it up, if not snap out of his little trance altogether.

"Concentrating," came his short, grumbled reply. He didn't look at me, but he seemed to shuffle forward another step or so.

"What are you concentrating on?" I pushed. "That poster has been there since we moved in last year; it was in my room when we were kids, and it was always your favorite. What makes it so different now? What makes it any different than all the others? Why is this o-," I started rambling without even realizing, my mouth spewing a million different questions at once while he seemingly ignored me.

"Lex, stop," he muttered, and I could tell he was doing everything in his power to not roll his eyes so that he wouldn't have to stop looking at the glossy paper stuck to the wall.

"I just wanna know why you're looking at it so intently," I mumbled quietly, feeling a little embarrassed for not just asking that one, simple question in the first damn place.

"I'm waiting to see him move," he answered in response, and it took me a few moments to make sure that I'd actually heard him correctly.

"You.. You're waiting to see Mark Hoppus, who is on a poster, move?" I asked in disbelief. Jack didn't smoke anything as far as I knew, but there's definitely a first for everything.

"Yes," he hissed, "and you keep trying to distract me."

"Are you high right now?"

"No, I'm not high," he said with an annoyed sigh, most likely at the fact that I kept trying to talk to him.

"Are you sure? Did you overdose on allergy pills again? It's one every twenty-four hours, Jay, not two every four. If you took four in the matter of six hours again, I'm not going to let you handle any type of medication on your own ever again," I warned. Last time he did that, he spent an entire day going through life in one hell of a fucked up daze.

"No, I didn't overdose on anything again, especially not allergy pills," he stated rather boredly.

"So.. Why are you waiting for the poster to move? That's not possible yet," I pointed out.

"That's what they want you to think," he muttered.

"Who's they?" I inquired, my curiosity getting the best of me though I knew for a fact that pictures on paper didn't just move. You can't print gifs yet.

"They," he insisted, as though that would really be considered an acceptable answer.

"Well, how do you know that it even moves in the first place? Have you seen it happen already?" Despite my better judgement, I turned to gaze up at the poster as well, all previous thoughts of our little lunch date gone completely from my mind.

"No, not yet. I know they do though, Lex. They just do it when we're not looking, so I'm not gonna not look until something happens," he explained.

"You must have some sort of proof that they move, right?" I mean, you don't just start assuming that inanimate objects and images budge of their own accord; they're considered inanimate for a reason.

"You know how when you move, their eyes follow you?" he asked quietly, as though he were afraid that Blink would hear him if he spoke too loud and realize that he'd caught onto them, even though he'd already said enough so that if they did hear him, it'd be too late.

"I.. No, not really," I confessed with a shrug.

"Step back a few feet and watch his eyes when you do," he instructed. I did as told, and sure enough, it did seem like the picture form of Mark was focused on my every move. I stepped back up to where I was standing again, ready to admit defeat and join Jack in having a stare down with the photo, when another thought crossed my mind.

"Did you happen to notice his eyes shift when I backed up?" I asked, thinking that there was no way he'd be able to come up with some plausible explanation in his answer.

"No, but that's what they want you to think," he hissed, his gaze seeming to harden even more than it had been before.

"I'm not really thinking it if it's not something you can even question," I pointed out triumphantly.

"They have ways," he disagreed, shaking his head. If it could even be considered a shake of the head since it was all of maybe a centimeter to each side, gentle and only once.

I just sat there, staring at him stare at a picture, which didn't have the ability to change on its own, just wondering how I got such a gullible boyfriend. Are all boyfriends this insane, or did I just get lucky? Of course, I did start getting some ideas.

"I just don't understand why you're worried about pictures when you should be concerned about mirrors," I said as nonchalantly as I possibly could.

He was silent for a moment before he whispered, "Mirrors?"

"Yeah, mirrors. I mean, they're clearly doorways to an alternate reality. How do we know they don't do something different than us when we turn around? Our reflections could be over there fucking shit up in some other universe, and we wouldn't even know because we stopped watching them," I mused thoughtfully, waiting to see what Jack would do.

His arms slackened a bit as his face fell, his eyes widening and his jaw practically falling straight through the floor. "Oh my god," he eventually murmured, which was soon replaced with a look of pure horror. "What if we're the reflections, Lex?"

That kind of caught me off guard. I almost started putting some real thought into it, up until I realized I was being as naïve as he was. That's too many gullible people for one relationship; one is too many as it is.

Before I could even say anything, Jack was pushing past me and tearing down the hall into the bathroom.

With a heavy sigh, I trudged after him. When I reached the bathroom, I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame. Jack was stood in the middle of the bathroom, his gaze locked onto his reflection. This time he didn't seem upset that nothing was moving, but scared that something would.

"Jack," I said softly, not getting a stir out of him. I tried again and again, but he wouldn't even tell me to be quiet this time; he was too engrossed in his own image.

More ideas began to fill my mind, and with a smirk I dropped silently onto my hands and knees. I crawled up to him, making sure he wasn't paying any attention to me as I inched closer. When I was finally positioned directly behind him, I shifted into a crouch before counting to five in my head. At the end of my mental countdown, I jumped up with a scream, successfully causing Jack to shriek and flail, the terror on his face only seeming to increase.

I burst into a fit of uncontrollable hysterics as Jack clutched at his heart through his chest, his hands shaking ever so slightly. He didn't look scared anymore, just a mix between pissed off, annoyed and amused.

"You're a fuckin' douche," he commented once I'd finally calmed down enough.

With a grin, I closed the distance between us and pressed my lips to his quickly before pulling back to say, "And you're far too impressionable."