~глаза~

Lisa entered the dining room. The sun had reached its lowest point on the horizon, a blazing ball of fire dipping into the farthest reaches of the curvature of the earth, only to be seen until the next morning. Erik looked up at his approaching sister, sitting up higher in the single leather seater. The TV in front of Lisa's brother was playing a commercial about psychiatric help which had a clean shaven man in a white lab coat explaining words that were too big for Lisa to pronounce.

"How did dad take it?" Erik said, his face more composed than her sister's.

"How do you think?" Lisa scoffed, leaning against the wall, facing parallel with her brother's line of sight with the TV. Both brother and sister stared forward in opposite directions. They didn't look at each other, but instead kept staring in their respective places: Lisa, the opposite wall; Erik, the TV. But both their ears were attuned to each other.

Lisa put a hand over her trembling chin. "He's come back from hell, lost his wife, and now he's been told he's a victim of post traumatic stress disorder. He thinks he's crazy. . ."

Lisa's vision of the floor became blurry. She wiped at the lower lids of her eyes. She could see more clearly the more she wiped. She cleared her throat.

"How do you think he took it?"

Erik sighed, his head tilting to the left, his gaze sawing through the TV's screen.

"Remember when that time, on the porch, just after dad left? We would keep telling ourselves how grateful we would be when dad would return; how jubilant and excited we would be. Practically falling over ourselves with joy?"

Erik stared at the side of Lisa's face, watching a thin, minuscule line of a tear trickle down the side of her nose and run over her thin lips.

"Remember that night?"

"Yes" Lisa said, her voice a shimmer in the poorly lit family room, the only source of light coming from the TV screen. Lisa looked over at her brother, meeting his gaze in an even, mute stare.

"What happened to us, Erik?" She asked. But she knew the answer.

"Life happened." Scoffed Erik, his shoulders slumped and pinned against the leather seat of the couch. It looked as if he were being pressed into couch by his own melancholy; a malicious force intent on grinding Erik into submission against the leather folds.

"You know. . ." Erik paused, sucked in a slow breath, then continued. "I thought we would be a family again-when dad would come back home, you know? I thought we would all be fine and safe once dad came back but look at us now."

Erik looked away from his sister, his voice waning. "But the second we see news reporters swarming our dad, we worry about ourselves. You know what I just realized? The moment I saw dad through the crowd, I felt excited, sure. But not exuberant. Not the least bit overjoyed-what is wrong with me?"

Erik's voice reached a crescendo, to the point where it cracked and fell apart all over the floor in front of the TV. "It-it's like. . . I wasn't even glad he was back."

Erik swept his gaze up to Lisa. She glanced at him, daring to look at her brother with tear filled eyes. Then she turned her head away, a sob emitting out from under her hand that was over mouth.

She began, "I know, Erik. I. . . I-" But stopped herself, and nodded instead. She stared down at the floor, her legs feeling weak beneath her. Lisa could feel Erik's gaze on her, his staring lifeless blue eyes just staring. At the edge of her vision she saw him turn away and shake his head.

After a long second, Erik spoke.

"Just look at us."

Lisa did. She looked at Erik, at his stumps for legs, his defeated eyes staring at the flat screen TV; not really taking in what was being said by the man in the labcoat. He just stared with an empty gaze. Lisa leaned her head against the side of the wall and let her stare land on a framed photograph of herself and her family on the opposite wall. You could tell by the bright glow of soft light that illuminated each of their faces that the picture had been taken inside a studio. There was Lisa, in the front row sitting down at her mother's right side, both women smiling into the lens of the camera. A pre-war Don Travers was smiling just as brightly as his wife, an unmistakable glint of mischief, coyness, and levity rolling in his deep blue eyes. Eyes that one could get lost in.

Lisa felt a sudden pang of sickness worm its way through her midsection as she realized that her father in the photo and her father now were no longer the same person. They were total strangers now. She remembered the tired and solemn gaze of her father when she had broke the news to him only minutes ago. She tried to visualize his eyes, those ocean filled spheres that she remembered exhibited so much life and energy that whenever she looked into them as a young girl they would fill her with life and energy too.

She tried to remember.

In her mind she tried to find that spark in her father's eyes; she conjured up an image behind her closed eyelids and searched her father's face. She searched it and compared it and dissected it and, for a moment, she was hopeful.

But only for a moment.

She knew it was no longer in her father's eyes; no whisper or glimmer of what had been. She remembered last night's incident, her father's cobalt eyes rough and worn as steel, staring down at her with malice as she felt his knee pressing deep into her stomach. Lisa rubbed her sternum, feeling the bruise underneath her shirt. The pain of her bruise didn't bother her. She had been pierced from the inside last night on the kitchen floor. She held the wound not of a sharp blade but of the metallic sheen that dominated her father's eyes. Eyes that Lisa had once known as a swirling ocean blue had stabbed her in the chest last night. And just a few minutes ago, she had talked to the man with those eyes. She had told him the situation, even recounted the entire predicament because of the incident that had happened last night. She had seen with her own eyes every last drop of happiness drain from her dad's soul when she told him what Dr. Donnelly had decided and Erik and she had agreed to. To what was going to happen. She saw her dad's face, his eyes fill with disappointment. Not with Lisa, but himself; she could see him tearing up from the inside. She also saw First Lieutenant Travers. She saw a soldier, knowing he's been defeated, being told that the war had come to a close. It was all over.

Seeing the pent up frustration in her father's eyes reminded Lisa of looking into her mother's eyes when she was at the last moments of her life. It was all there. Emotions of pain, suffering, frustration, anger, all of it. Not pain from physical wounds, her mother was already loaded with morphine by that point. No. It was pain in knowing she was leaving. Their mother was leaving her children, leaving Lisa and Erik, her only two children in the whole world. Lisa had seen the pain pour out from her mother's face in her last moments, so much so that she had to leave the room, which was something she regretted.

And now Lisa's father was filled with that same kind of pain, the same kind of agony that could only come from within. Pain. Torture. None of it physical.

Lisa looked up, eyes wide.

"Call the doctor." She said, gazing at Erik. He squinted at her in the dim room, his pale face flooded from the images on the television screen.

"What? Why?"

Lisa waved her hand. "Tell him that our dad is going to stay with us, tell him we made a mistake."

Erik scoffed. "I can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because," Erik scratched the underside of his jaw, frowning at Lisa. He spoke slowly, as if counting his words. "We already promised him that we accepted his invitation for dad into an asylum."

Feel her cheeks flush, Lisa replied, "We didn't promise! We didn't sign any paperwork. We need to tell him that it was all a mistake and-"

"Lisa," Erik shook his head. "Do you even know what you're saying? Donnelly just gave us his diagnosis-you were there! You were there last night, you saw him, how he was acting. You know this is the right thing to do."

Lisa shook her head, crossing her arms. "Dad needs us, not some strangers in white labcoats picking his brains for two hours about nothing."

"Lisa!" Erik sat up, hands on both sides of the armchair. "What is with you? You were the one dad nearly suffocated last night, and you're protecting him?"

"He's our father!"

"He nearly killed you! I saw the gun, Lisa, I saw the gun!" Erik twisted in his seat to face his sister. He had his hands out in front of him: a gesturing plea.

Lisa threw her hands up in the air. "It'll be better here than stuck in some insane ward for the rest of his life. Don't you care?"

"Of course I care!" Erik shouted, running a hand through his hair, his fingernails scraping his scalp. "I also care about you! I want you to be safe, too, and this is the only way I know how you can be safe!"

Lisa shook her head, pursing her lips, her hands at her sides. "This is not the only way. If you really cared about me, you would care about dad," Lisa huffed, stepping closer to her brother. "And family takes care of one another, not leaving them to rot somewhere with people we don't know-with strangers."

Lisa stopped a yard away from her brother, her eyes glaring into his. Erik's eyes were just as fiery. They had a simmered shine around them, as if he were upset, but he was too tired to fully argue. Then she saw his eyes light up. Erik angled his head up at his sister who stared down at him.

"Is this about mom?"

Lisa didn't reply. Her face was emotionless on the outside, but on the inside, her stomach churned and frothed. She felt like throwing up.

"What was that?" Erik said, sitting up. His sister looked down at him, saw his careful stare being replaced by wariness and vigilance. Then Lisa heard it too.