The appliances are old and white.
The linoleum floor in the kitchen is cracking, and the hardwood floors are scuffed and creaky.
In the living room, a large mouth bass is mounted over the brick hearth, and the walls are covered with fishing lures in frames—at least a hundred of them.
There's a master bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms on the second floor, one of them crammed tight with triple bunk beds.
Lisa and Jennie eat Dairy Queen out of greasy paper bags.
The light above them throws a harsh, naked glare on the surface of the kitchen table, but the rest of the house stands dark.
The central heating struggles to warm the interior to a livable temperature.
Lisa looks cold.
She is quiet, distant.
Like she's caught in a slow free fall into some dark place.
She barely touches her food.
After dinner, Jennie and Lisa brought in armloads of wood from the front porch, and Lisa uses the fast-food bags and an old newspaper to get the fire going.
The wood is dry and gray, several seasons old, and it quickly takes the flame.
Soon the walls of the living room are aglow.
Shadows flickering across the ceiling.
Lisa goes to prepare their room.
Jennie sits on to the floor to rest. Letting the heat from the fire wash over her.
She mutters to herself, "If I wake up in the night, I can throw an extra log on the fire. Maybe then, I can keep it going until morning, warm this place up."
She continued spacing out. It's been years since Lisa and Jennie is under the same roof again, and Jennie tries to savor the moment, to slow it down. But like all good things, it goes by so fast.
"I'm with Lisa now. That's all that matters." Jennie whispers to herself like a mantra. Her breathing going unsteady out of many things that she feels as of the moment. Feelings like, insecurity, intimidation, absence.
Rising from the floor, Jennie toss another log on the fire and trudge back through the kitchen toward the other end of the house, the hardwood floor cracking under her weight.
It's almost too cold to be sleeping in the room, but Lisa has stripped the beds upstairs and raided the closets for extra blankets.
The walls are wood-paneled.
A space heater glows in the corner, filling the air with the smell of scorched dust.
A sound is coming from inside the bathroom.
Sobbing.
Jennie knocks on the hollow-core door.
"Lisa?"
Jennie hear her catch her breath.
"What?"
"Can I come in?"
She's quiet for a moment.
Then the lock punches out.
Jennie found her wife huddled in the corner against an old clawfoot tub, her knees drawn into her chest, eyes red and swollen.
She have never seen her like this—physically shaking, breaking right in front of her.
Lisa says, "I can't. I just...I can't."
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Infinity: A Jenlisa AU
Fanfiction"Will I see her again?" "I don't think so." Those are the last words Jennie Kim hears before the masked abductor knocks her unconscious then Jennie woke up in an entirely different world. Suddenly, her house is not her house, she's not married to L...
Chapter 27
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