what's going on in there?

The arguing escalated to a deafening silence.

Sensing that he had neither a care nor a plan for how to deal with the impending photographer, she silently decided they would proceed with taking the portrait. He silently agreed.

The fragment of hope that, maybe he would be better soon, kept her awake at night. That and the gaping emptiness of 2,000 count Egyptian cotton lying next to her. Their guest room hadn't housed visitors in 3 months and their bed no longer housed him.

The fragment of hope that, maybe she would leave kept him awake at night. He fantasized about her being the one to pull the trigger. Too fearful to leave and too apathetic to try, he progressed on, lifeless and hypnotically vacant. His erratic anger that once demanded her submission had evolved into an eerie calm. She restlessly awaited the next quake, not knowing when or if it would come.

The photographer arrived 5 minutes early.

And so they sat, unattached, uninterested, and unlovingly apart from one another as the photographer whistled politely to himself in between sputtering rants of nervous babble.

"Alrighty there, now let's have one where you sort of tilt your knees over to the le--ahhh, yes. Ok now can you come down just one step there, mam, alri--ok, no ok then just sit right there, goooood, yes, just perfect, perfect. There we go and a smile from you sir would be--alri-ok then, that's fine, ok now, alrighty and a 1, 2..."

As they sent the photographer away, she choked up so hard she had to pretend to sneeze and ran to the bathroom "for a tissue."

The first time he noticed she hadn't come out of the bathroom was 6 hours later when he was mowing the yard. His lawnmower chewed up a piece of broken glass that had fallen from the bathroom window when she pried it open. She'd gotten out.