The Omen

It appeared quite suddenly and without a sound. No bright light, no crash of thunder. Nothing. It was just there. As if it had always been.

Andrea was home from work with a headache reading on her phone with her feet up on her coffee table, some random article about penguins, and had looked over when Jack, her bishon frise, had barked at the mailman. When she looked back, there it was sitting on the couch next to her. It wasn't touching her, it was just sitting there. She started, bounced slightly on the couch and sharply pulled away from the object. Nothing happened. It sat there, static. Nonchalant. It didn't even bounce. What the hell is that?! Andrea thought. She leaned in, barely breathing, and examined the object. It was black, so black that you could almost mistake it for a hole in the world, a completely empty void like space. It was small, about the size of her fist, spherical, but not perfectly, it was an odd shape. No matter where Andrea tilted and tipped her head she couldn't maintain the shape in her mind. Perfectly smooth, yet somehow almost edge-less. Every angle she looked at it from seemed to make the object more unusual and shapeless. It was more like a missing pixel in a computer screen than a present object.

Andrea stood up and slowly shifted off of the couch, careful not to jostle the cushions too much as she stood up. She grabbed a pillow from the couch, angled it towards the object and very slowly reached out to touch the object with it. Just when she thought the pillow was going to touch the object it went straight through it and out the other side. Ok, what? she thought. She gently lowered the pillow down on top of the object, and yet again the pillow went straight through it and the object peeked out the top of the pillow. She dropped the pillow on the other couch and grabbed hold of the couch cushion under the object. She started shaking it. Nothing, it didn't even jostle. Ok, this is ridiculous. Andrea grumbled internally. She pulled the cushion completely out from underneath the object until nothing was supporting it from above or below. Seriously? Jack came over and sniffed her, confused. Andrea gingerly placed the cushion back on the couch, picked up Jack and said, "What is this weirdness Jack?" He didn't even look at the object, he just kept staring up at her. "Jack, smell it or something, sort this out for me my sweet boy." Blink blink, Jack's eyes said. Andrea snuggled Jack, kissed his head and put him down.

Wait, maybe Tom knows what's up with this. I mean, why would he, but maybe it's a weird project of his? She pulled out her phone. Like a weird new building material? "Architecture is weird, right Jack?" She took a picture of the couch, texted it to Tom and phoned him.

"Hey love, can you take a look at the picture I sent you?"

"Ya, let me look. Hold up...what am I supposed to be looking for?"

"Do you know what the ball is?

"What ball?"

"The weird, black ball on the couch. Is it something from your work?"

"Maybe take a different picture? I don't see a ball on the couch, maybe try a different angle."

Weird. She took another picture from the other side of the couch, this time much closer to the object. There's no way he'll miss it now.

"You see it now?"

"Babe, I just see our couch."

"Seriously? Are you messing with me?"

"No? Are you feeling ok? Is something up? Is your headache getting worse?"

"No, I'm feeling fine." I am right? "It's just a headache. Here, let me take one really close up for you, maybe the light is somehow interfering with the picture...how about now?"

"No...there's nothing there babe. Are you sure you're ok? You're kind of worrying me." Tom's voice was starting to sound panicked.

"No...I don't get it. I think I'm fine. I don't feel like something's wrong."

There was hesitation on the line. And then, "I'm going to call it early and come home."

"No, there's nothing actually wrong though, it's fine."

"I'm mostly done anyways and the meeting's been postponed until tomorrow."

"Ok, I mean I like seeing you, and this is weird..." And I'm starting to feel a bit crazy.

"Ok, I'll be home in 30, love you."

"Love you too, see you soon."

"Weird." Andrea muttered to herself. She stared at the object for a minute more, shrugged and went to the kitchen, with Jack trailing after her, and made tea. Nothing to be done with it for now. When she was done, she peeked back into the living room and surveyed the room for a moment. "Nope, still there Jack!" She strolled back into the room with her tea and sat back down on the couch, tucked her feet under her and watched the object. Should I touch it? Andrea thought. She had an odd feeling that it wasn't supposed to be touched. Or at least not right now? she surmised. She wasn't sure why.

She sipped her tea and felt quite nauseated. "What's wrong with this tea? Why would it-" She grabbed at her head, her mug dropped to the carpet without much of a sound or crash. Jack ran over to her. "Jack, my head hurts so much, something's wrong!" She closed her eyes tightly, suddenly the lights were too bright. She collapsed, without thinking, directly on top of the object. If anyone could have seen the object and Andrea in the moments leading up to this, they would have noticed that Andrea's head now completely encapsulated the object. In the limited awareness that Andrea had left, she felt Jack jump up onto the couch beside her and start licking her arm. And that is the last thing that Andrea Lee ever felt.

Tom arrived home exactly when he said he would, and found Andrea dead on the couch. An autopsy was done and the cause of death was found to be a cerebral aneurysm that had ruptured and killed Andrea. What the autopsy did not find out was that Andrea's brain had inherited a predisposition to aneurysms as a result of her mother's genetics, but they would never have found that out as her mother had died young in a car crash and had never had an aneurysm before her death.

The doctors assumed that Andrea had hallucinated the object in her final moments, but Tom was never completely convinced.