Bored, Maria chewed her gum and watched the ceiling fan turn slow circles as she lay on the sofa. She had followed James to this apartment for lack of anything else to do. She turned her head to see out of the living room's dirty window. It was a nice day for Silent Hill, which meant that everything was a foggy sickly yellow instead of a misty gray. She craned her head further to bring James into her view. On the other side of the room in a dusty armchair, he sat with his head bowed over some diagrams and maps, occasionally making noises to himself.
Maria felt a surge of disgust mixed with pity. Some stupid clues, she supposed, on his quest for his beloved Mary. Sighing, she tried blowing a bubble, but her gum had grown tasteless and stiff, and almost immediately popped, sticking to her lips. Levering herself up while absentmindedly picking at the pieces with her teeth, she looked around the room for James' sack.
"I need the rest of my gum from your bag, where'd you put it?" she asked. James didn't even look up, but merely pushed the pack, which was on the floor before his chair, towards Maria with his foot. Maria rolled her eyes as she fetched the bag and reseated herself on the couch. Swallowing her gum, she opened the bag and started searching through it.
She was pulling her package of gum out when something poked her wrist. Curious, she opened the bag's flap wider to reveal a knife. Nothing extraordinary, like something you might find in a kitchen, and rather dull. Well, ordinarily, kitchen knives weren't stained with blood. Pinching the end of the handle between two fingers, she lifted the knife out and let it dangle before her.
"What's this?" she asked.
James looked up with a questioning expression on his face, which immediately turned into a scowl upon seeing the knife. "Oh. That's nothing. It's not mine," he replied.
Maria snorted disbelievingly. "It's in your bag, but it's not yours? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
James sighed and set his jaw. "It's not mine, ok? I got it from a girl,"he said.
This made Maria burst out laughing. "A girl? You got a bloody knife from a girl?" she choked out.
James flushed. "What the hell is so funny?" he demanded.
Maria's laughter was subsiding a bit, and she took a deep breath and wiped at her eyes before she responded. "Oh, I don't know. Most people get things like a card, a watch, something like that from a girl. But you, James, it just seems so perfect that you would get THAT from a girl," she gestured dismissively towards the knife, which had fallen from her grasp and was now on the floor.
Papers and puzzles forgotten, James glared at Maria with his arms crossed before his chest. "You don't know anything about me," he said coldly.
Maria felt a hot surge of anger grow in her chest and she wanted to scream until the stupid, smug look was gone from James' face. Instead, smiling brittlely, she slid her bottom to the edge of the couch cushion, purposefully spreading her knees wide, causing her short skirt to ride up even higher. Speaking in a soft purr, she said, "I don't know about you, James? I know you spend all your time in a dead town that you don't understand, trying to find your dead wife."
She placed her hands on her knees and then drew them slowly to rest on her thighs before she continued. "I know you get blank letters and bloody knives from girls. What else do you want me to know, James?"
James swallowed loudly. "Stop it, Maria," he said, even while he stared at her crotch as if mesmerized. She sat, letting him stare at the scrap of black lace between her thighs for long seconds before standing abruptly and yanking her skirt back into place.
"Fuck you, James," she told him wearily, and she left the apartment. She didn't realize until she was out on the street that she had forgotten her gum.