It was those eyes.

There was something strange about them, Renee thought, but she couldn’t place what it was. They stared out of the faces of the celebrities on the magazine cover – people that Renee had never bothered to learn the names of. The far-too-skinny young woman in the provocative swimsuit might have been an actress, or perhaps a singer, famous or new to the trade. Maybe the man with his arm around her waist, dressed primly in a black tuxedo was her boyfriend, or her lover, or her ex-boyfriend’s lover, but Renee couldn’t tell either way. All she knew, from staring at the images of the various people on the cover, was that she did not like the look of them, or the way they seemed to gaze at her with eyes that followed her wherever she went, like a doll’s. Like a hunter stalking prey.

Renee tucked an errant lock of red hair behind her ear nervously, as she reached out to grab the magazine. She tried to ignore how her hand shook almost imperceptibly. It was only a magazine – oddly an old edition, true, but still nothing to be concerned about. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt as though a ball of ice had fallen into her stomach, chilling her from the inside out – was that why she was shaking? – or why she had wanted to throw the magazine away a moment ago, but suddenly wanted nothing more than to open it and discover what was so fascinating about it. Because, of course, it was amazing, full of wonder, and something to be desired; she should open it look at the pictures, read the stories…

The slamming of the front door caused Renee to jump, startled, and jerk away from the magazine in alarm, as though being caught with it was a crime punishable by death.

A moment later, her elder sister, Sophie, stormed into the room, thick brown hair swept immaculately over a shoulder as always. She shoved past Renee without a word, tearing the magazine from the shelf as though pulling it away from the hands of Death, and tossing herself into an armchair. Her lime green eyes had taken on that glazed quality Renee dubbed “magazine frenzy” before she had even managed to open the first page. As soon as she did, however, she was lost to the celebrities and their strange over-observant eyes.

Now that the magazine was in her sister’s hands, Renee had no desire to read it. She didn’t care about celebrity status and had never kept up on it. The girls she went to school with had long since stopped trying to include her in the latest gossip, because she simply didn’t care, and never had anything to contribute. None of the girls in Renee’s class, however, seemed quite as obsessed with celebrity-worship as Sophie. It bothered Renee that she was so different from her sister. Wasn’t it odd that they were nothing alike? Shouldn’t Sophie be concerned that her younger sister, rather than following her path, had taken three steps in the opposite direction before bolting down another line all together?

Maybe I’m just over-analyzing the situation, Renee thought. That was probably true of the magazine, too. It was nothing more than a bunch of celebrity gossip and fashion tips thrown together in a colorful little booklet. She shouldn’t let her imagination run away with her so easily, but it was a beast that would not be caged.

Her mind eased, Renee turned back to her job of gathering the trash, and tied the garbage bag closed. Hefting the bag over her shoulder, her mind, as always, flashed to images of herself dressed in a Santa Claus outfit, huffing “Ho Ho Ho,” as she slid across an icy sidewalk, victimizing some poor kid by giving him a bag of garbage for Christmas.

Dutifully carrying the bag outside, Renee dumped her burden into the burner barrel, tossing up flakes of charcoaled paper and watching them flutter like dark snowflakes in the light breeze. She stood next to the rusty barrel, letting her mind wander as the scent of half-roasted paper touched her nose with a tantalizing, almost-loving touch that called her attention.

Frowning slightly as the familiar scent of brand-new-magazine met her nose, Renee reached into the barrel and dug around beneath the stuffed garbage back. Being so full, with the most recent deposits sitting near the top, it didn’t take long for Renee’s fingers to curl around something smooth and familiar. She pulled her hand out of the barrel and looked at her prize: four brand new fashion magazines addressed to her sister, two still wrapped in their clear protective wrapping, and the other two looking like they hadn’t even been opened.

Renee set the magazines on the ground and dug through the garbage some more, getting her hands covered in black charred remains, but pulling out three more magazines, each looking brand new asides from the filth they’d gained from being in the garbage. A frown had taken the place of Renee’s previously contemplative expression, and she found herself once again at the mercy of that chilling ball of dread in her stomach. Her sister reading the same magazine over time and again was out of character but acceptable with the argument that Renee would never hope to be able to understand the way Sophie’s mind worked.

That being one thing, however, and this quite another; Sophie’s throwing away brand new magazines without a thought was not simply out of character – it was wrong. It was distinctly not-Sophie, and therefore something to be found disturbing and subsequently feared.

Renee, as mentioned, would never understand her sister, just as Sophie would never understand her, and they had always seemed content to admit this, if mildly annoyed when curiosity struck. As with all siblings, however, there were simply some things that you knew about each other, and Renee knew that when it came to clothes and magazines, Sophie could not bear to even look at a garbage can.

Renee’s room was filled with books. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Poe, Yeats, Wordsworth, Thoreau… there were more books than there was room, and so Renee slept more upon well-read pages than upon bed sheets.

Contrarily, Sophie’s room bore the scars of tacks and nails from posters being staked upon the walls and torn down, as one phase led into another with the eerie swiftness often attributed to the symptoms of disease. Her room did not find organization in a bookcase, but in boxes of printer paper, filled with old editions of fashion magazines that she had long-since memorized and could confidently quote as easily as Renee could Hamlet. Red and black or grey and white boxes filled her closet and were shoved in the corners of her room, as though she had once considered moving and then decided to give up on it halfway through packing. She never took the magazines out of the boxes once she had read them, but Sophie also never threw a single edition away.

Staring down at the seven magazines, Renee felt suddenly as though she should be doing something. She didn’t know what she could possibly do, as she found herself abruptly standing upon uneven ground. Renee knew her family, knew her sister, and knew that this – these seven magazines in the garbage – was wrong.

But she didn’t know what to do about it.

Renee released an exhausted sigh, like the final breath of a dying child escaping past dead lips. She was not a strategist. Renee had never been the kind of person to think things through, unless she was analyzing a poem. Let her ponder the soul-deep meaning of “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” or try and determine whether the narrator in The Black Cat was lying or just completely nuts from the start; she could manage that easily. But sitting down and pondering out what her next move should be in this massive chess game called Life? That was better left to the football coaches and their star quarterbacks, who grinned at the challenge as though it would boost their testosterone, or the philosophers, who cared. Renee would much rather search for the meaning of life in Walden than in the definition of her own morals; would rather contemplate the whims of a character in a fantasy novel than determine what maneuver she would make in a situation that required action.

But here she was, in a situation that she could neither deny nor ignore; something was wrong with her sister and, equally, something needed to be done.

“Renee, are you ready to go?”

Renee looked up from the magazines she had unconsciously been staring at to see her mother watching her from the doorway, golden-brown locks dancing like wheat in the breeze. “Oh my, you’re filthy!” She swept off of the porch with the grace of an immortal, dancing out to meet Renee halfway across the yard. “What on earth happened?”

“I… lost something in the trash,” she said, the magazines tucked securely under her arm and going unnoticed by her mother. Renee didn’t think that her mother would truly consider what she had on her mind. She loved her mother, of course, but Alette Renault saw things the way she saw them, and one would be hard-pressed to turn her head in another direction.

“Well, hurry and get cleaned up,” Alette said, her accent coming out thicker as the disapproval showed through in her tone. “We have to leave soon or we’ll be late.”

“Oui, mère,” Renee slipped past her mother and quickly into the house. She barely noticed that she had spoken in French, which was always the case. That was what she got for being part of a bilingual family; she often confused her friends by abruptly sliding into French in the midst of a conversation. Luckily, the majority of her friends had known her long enough that they could speak a little French, which was useful because they often spoke French throughout the house, Alette being slightly more fluent in her native tongue than in English.

Renee slipped into her room, dumping the magazines on her bed, before changing her clothes quickly and running into the bathroom to wash her hands. As she scrubbed the soot from her arms, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw a lingering fear in her eyes that had never burdened her before. While she never slept for as long as she should have at night, the black bags under her eyes seemed more pronounced today.

She was, of course, exaggerating her observations, but everything seemed to be larger now, heavier. A greater burden.

Drying her hands on a towel, Renee stared into her Atlantic-blue eyes, seeking an answer that she could not find within her own haunted gaze. It was as though her eyes were empty, holding nothing within them that could call out suggestions to her soul as it begged for help.

“You have no idea what you’re going to do, do you?”

Of course, her reflection gave no answer but to stare back without contest. There was no challenge within the meeting of that gaze, but just the understanding that they both equally shared a burden, and one that they could not shirk, no matter how much they might wish.

“Well, you better figure something out soon, Renee Sylvie Renault, or there’s going to be trouble.” She nodded smartly at her own reflection, as though she had just proved a troublesome point or talked some sense into an errant child.

Flicking off the lights, Renee left the bathroom quickly, before her reflection could make a snarky comment in retaliation. Grabbing her tote bag off of her bed, Renee made it into the kitchen just as her parents were making their final preparations to leave.

“Where’s Sophie?”

“Out in the car,” her father, Jacob, said, without looking up from tying his boots. “She had everything she need already packed up, so she went out to start the jeep.”

Went out to read her magazine is more like it, Renee thought, especially since she didn’t hear the car running. The “jeep” was actually a 1996 Chevy Blazer the color of a robin’s egg. The windows were tinted, so Renee couldn’t see inside, but she knew Sophie was sitting in the back seat, reading her magazine. As she stepped near the car, however, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, like when she had to run down to the basement just after watching a horror movie. Goosebumps raced up her arms like spiders, and she swallowed convulsively, trying to force that thick lump out of her throat so she could breathe properly.

Blinking away the haze of fear from her eyes and trying to shake off the disturbing emotions that seemed to cling to her like cobwebs, Renee opened the door to the blazer and pulled herself into the driver’s seat.

The key was in the ignition, but Renee settled down comfortably in the driver’s seat, glad that her dad had parked the blazer in the shade, so the leather seats didn’t burn her legs. Renee studied the dashboard in front of her, noting the fuel level and oil temperature with not so much care as amusement. They were taking this hiking trip in celebration of her fifteenth birthday (they went to the beach two months prior for Sophie’s seventeenth birthday), and when they came back, Renee would be getting her driver’s permit. Until then, however, the biggest thrill she could get from a car would be turning it on.

Renee grabbed the key and turned it swiftly in the ignition, grinning as the engine roared to life and thrummed beneath her. She put her hands on the steering wheel and sat straight in the seat, staring out of the windshield and imagining herself as the only one in a car of her own choice, driving down the road to wherever she pleased, not having to wait for someone else to tell her when and where she could do something. In her daydream, she was driving a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge, fluorescent orange and in perfect condition.

Reaching over, Renee hit the button to turn on the radio and grimaced as 102.7 FM released hip-hop from the speakers. Pushing the button for the CD player, she smiled in contentment as the music softened and became a wordless dance of instruments, as one of Beethoven’s symphonies sang from the speakers with a beauty that no bird could ever match.

Renee closed her eyes and simply let the music wash over her as the car thrummed with power beneath her. Her heart was dancing to the draw of a bow across the strings of a violin when she felt the heat of an exhaled breath at the back of her neck. Her eyes snapped open and she felt her own breath catch within her throat as she saw, in the rearview mirror, the reflection of her older sister, sitting right behind her, their cheeks almost touching.

Sophie’s eyes were not on her neck, however, where her lips very nearly touched flesh, but locked onto Renee’s through the mirror into which they both stared. Renee wanted to jump out of the car and run back into the house, back to her parents, but found that she couldn’t. Whether it was her own bitter curiosity or the force of Sophie’s gaze, Renee could not look away long enough to truly contemplate leaving. Instead, her eyes locked to her sister’s, she was forced to take in every detail that screamed wrongness.

Her sister’s hair was no longer immaculate, as it had been earlier and usually was. Rather than falling gracefully over one shoulder, much like their mother’s did, her hair now splayed out around her in a frizzled mess, as though the air were humid instead of horribly dry. It made her appear less-civilized, somehow, to have her hair falling around her face like a ragged, centuries-old curtain. Her lime green eyes were not wide and wishful, as usual after reading a magazine, but narrowed, with a sinister gleam. Despite the look of malice within them, however, they also seemed to hold a strange emptiness, sunken in like the eyes of a skull. Her normally-rosy flesh was pale and almost-sickly looking, and she kept licking her lips as though she were hungry, even though they’d eaten just an hour ago.

Sophie never seemed to blink the entire time that they sat there, their eyes never straying from the other’s reflection. It must have been at least a full ten minutes before Renee jumped, startled, as the car door was opened.

Her mother peered in at her. “Ça va, Renee?” she asked, a mildly-concerned looked on her face, barely visible from behind the amusement. Renee was well-known for drifting off, so it was no surprise to her parents that her mind might have been elsewhere. It was nice that they still asked, though.

“Oui, ça va,” Renee slid out of the driver’s seat and dropping to the ground, before walking around the car.

She hesitated only a moment before opening the door and climbing in next to Sophie. Her sister, however, never looked up from her magazine, and Renee found that to be just fine. It was an hour’s ride to the campsite they would be staying at, and Renee would probably need that long to sort out what had just happened a few moments prior. She didn’t think that it had quite sunk in, yet, and she was a little worried about what would have when it did.

You know how when you’re worried about something coming in the future, time seems to move more quickly toward it? The opposite is also true. Renee was dreading the moment when she would finally have to act – to do something about this abnormality in Sophie’s actions. Her stomach churned nervously at the thought of them finally reaching the campsite, and so the trip seemed to take days instead of a single hour.

Renee spent the whole ride tensed in her seat, as though expecting an attack. She was hyperaware of Sophie’s actions – each twitch of a finger, lick of the lips, every breath drawn. She was also distinctly aware of the fact that her sister never blinked, not once.

First, she wasn’t acting like Sophie. Now, she wasn’t acting human.

When they finally pulled into the campsite, Renee didn’t know whether to shout for joy or cry, so she settled for swallowing the lump in her throat and climbing out of the car. She tried to ignore how Sophie slid out right after her and stood too near – far more closely than she had been before.

But of course, she knew.

“All right, you two,” Jacob said, walking over to his two daughters. He looked at them as he always had – with pride and amusement in his eyes. He noticed nothing of Renee’s plight of Sophie’s unSophieishness. “Why don’t you grab some firewood while your mom and I set up the tent?” He sounded so excited. It made Renee want to cry all the more, knowing things weren’t as carefree as he assumed. Of course, you know what they say about assuming. “Remember, get the dryer wood, and some twigs for tinder.”

“Yes, Dad,” Sophie said with a smile. It was the first time that Renee had heard her speak all day. Her voice was the same, of course, but it seemed to hold another quality – one that Renee wasn’t accustomed to. “Renee, help me find some firewood,” she said, turning and stepping away without looking at her sister.

Emotionless, Renee thought, the word filtering into her mind. Yes, that was how she would have described Sophie’s voice. Not monotonous, but without emotion. Where previously the fashion-obsessed teenager would have been sarcastic in normal conversation when she wasn’t openly complaining about being stuck outdoors and away from civilization, she was being agreeable, in a voice devoid of any tone.

How many signs would have to snap into place before her parents realized it, too? Or was it already too late?

Renee had followed Sophie deeper into the forest surrounding the open site, picking up stick along the way. As she stopped behind her sister, she noticed only now that Sophie hadn’t bothered to pick up a single twig.

“You’re very observant,” Sophie said, her voice holding some form of amusement that didn’t seem to match the sister she knew. “Of course, we forget. Your primary sense is sight, isn’t it?”

“My eyes are horrible, Sophie,” Renee said, frowning at the thought of the contacts she had to stick in her eyes every morning. “You know that.” She felt like they had been playing a game, but the fun was ending while the game continued. Only this time, nothing but danger remained.

“You were on a role before,” Sophie said, her back still facing Renee. “Don’t let genetics make you as dense as your parents in regards to what you know to be true.” A chuckle escaped past Sophie’s lips, but it did not match her laugh. It was deeper, almost masculine, and held a cruelty that had goosebumps racing up Renee’s arms. “Do you know who I am?”

“I thought I did,” Renee was beginning to realize for certain that the person standing before her was not her sister. It was someone else. Someone who was playing a game of cat and mouse, and Renee had to choose whether she was going to let herself be chased and eaten by this beast, or whether she would be the one doing the chasing.

She narrowed her eyes, trying to analyze the situation – to decode the words non-Sophie spoke, as though she were picking apart a poem.

“Is your greatest sense not your eyes?”

That chuckle came again and Renee bristled. “Hunting, Renee, does not become you,” she said. “Besides, curiosity killed the cat.”

Renee swallowed thickly. “My eyes are not my own,” non-Sophie said after a moment’s silence. “Nor are my hands or my lips or my ears. I see what others see, hear what others hear, and feel what others feel. All that I have that is mine is my mind, for the minds of your kind are not great enough to make ours obsolete. Not yet. I doubt they ever will be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your species relies predominantly upon your sight, but your eyes are horrible in comparison to the sharp gaze of an eagle. Your sense of smell is deplorable, at best. Your hearing is nearly obsolete, as the majority of you filter out what you deem unimportant – whatever is not part of a foolish attempt at entertainment on television. Your sense of taste has been reduced to hot or cold, spicy or bland, sweet or sour.

“The only sense you have that might be worth anything is that of touch. Unfortunately, your species is far too stupid to comprehend that once you touch something that injures you the first time, a second touch is not likely to be more forgiving. The ignorance of your kind – blatant and purposeful at most times, sadly – is the reason you will not last long in this world. At another time, you may have been a threat to us, but time and knowledge has made you lazy. You have forgotten what you once knew and your minds have gone to waste. That is why we are here. We have come to take from you that which may be of some use to us, but which your kind have since left behind.”

Non-Sophie turned around slowly and Renee got a glimpse of her without the mask of a mirror. She stood five foot three, frizzy brown hair waving around her head like an electric veil. Her pale face appeared skull-like, her eyes sunken in. Where her eyeballs should have rested within their sockets, however, there was now only blackness. Renee could hear a ragged, raspy breathing coming from non-Sophie, as though it took every bit of energy her body retained to continue drawing in breath. She took a step back in fear.

Non-Sophie smiled. “I have come a long way and been through many bodies already, but this was by far the most enjoyable. You see, I must filter through the contents of your mind and take only that which is useful to me. While I work and there is still information for me to gather, the body of my host remains in stasis, of a sort. It is as though nothing has changed her.

“There was a great deal of useless junk within the mind of your sister. I had quite a bit of garbage to filter through, and so this body has made a wonderful home for me for nearly a month now. That’s actually a record. You should be proud of your sister. Unfortunately, she won’t understand what she’s given me, as I’ve taken the liberty of devouring the information I need not record.” She licked her lips. “It was delicious but, I must appear, I’m still quite hungry.”

Renee shrieked in terror as non-Sophie lunged at her, but her cry was abruptly silenced, and only blackness remained…

~*~

“Interesting. I would have thought that all of the purposes for the humans had been discovered, but this gives us an entirely new perspective on their species. You say that she’s been your host for how long?”

“Four years next week, your majesty,” Renee said, speaking at the holographic image before her. Thing had changed over the course of the past four years. After the death of her sister, she had needed to see a therapist to overcome the repressed memories caused by the bear attack, but that had gone well. She had continued her life easily enough, with only a few changes here and there.

She had started reading magazines, not for the fashion but for the current events surrounding celebrities. She liked to know where certain people were and who they were with. It seemed important, somehow.

She still enjoyed reading her books, of course, and she studied nonstop. Now, though, it was more than for schoolwork – she yearned for knowledge about anything and everything. It was like she could never get enough; like she thirsted for it more than she did for water, breathed in knowledge rather than air.

She had grown two inches in the past year, and her once rusty-red hair had taken on a darker crimson gleam. It frizzed out around her head, framing her too-pale face like a tattered curtain. She suffered from asthma now, though it had never bothered her as a child, and she carried an inhaler with her wherever she went. Her parents worried when she would have trouble breathing, like Sophie used to, her breath rattling in her lungs as though each breath might be her last. She’d taken to spending her days inside, reading textbooks – she seemed to breathe easier when she didn’t exert herself any more than to study. And hey, if it saved her life, what was being called a bookworm but a compliment?

Things seemed to be going well for Renee. Occasionally she had blackouts that she blamed on exhaustion from reading so much, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. The bags under her eyes had grown a little, making her seem skull-like with her pale complexion, but then, she rarely went outside anymore.

“Yes, it’s quite intriguing.” The hologram crackled and blipped, a tremor running through at the limitations of distance. “I never would have expected that we would find an endless supply of food in the mind of a human so willing to learn. And there’s more, you say?”

“Oh, many more, your majesty. Colleges, universities – schools filled with humans studying for tests, and professors with knowledge that rivals them all. It’s delicious!”

“Food enough to feed an army! I will send a regiment immediately. We must stake our claim!”

“I will be awaiting your arrival eagerly, my lord.”

Renee turned a page in her book on psychological disorders, chuckling deeply in amusement over some examples of schizophrenia. The doctors had given her medication to take for the voices she heard, talking about humans and knowledge as food. It worked sometimes, but it made her so tired, and the blackouts came more often.

Smiling, she turned another page and greedily took in the information. She wanted to read as much as she could before her parents came home from the doctor’s with her little sister. Three and a half years old, the girl was abnormally smart for her age. Unfortunately, she had this delusion that there was a bug inside of Renee’s mind, making her do weird things. She blamed Renee’s love to read on a bug!

Renee laughed, shaking her head. The doctor that had helped Renee would find a way to help Julia, she was sure. Everyone knew that the girl must simply have an abnormally-active imagination to go along with her high intelligence level. Anyone who looked at Renee would be hard-pressed to find what made Julia think of a bug. She was just a normal college student, her face buried in a book.

Of course, some people knew, and simply didn’t voice it. Some people could see the changes, see the difference. They didn’t call it out, but they knew that there was something strange. Something distinctly… non-Renee.

It was those eyes.