Her sister pulled. Anna’s hand lifted an inch from the armrest. And the couch screamed—not a sound, but a pressure, a longing, a terrible no that burst through the windows and turned the milk in the fridge to curds.
Her sister grabbed her wrist. The couch hummed louder. The room trembled. And Anna—Anna Ralphs—felt the fabric ripple beneath her, felt the slow, patient heartbeat of the thing she had been sitting on, and understood at last that she had never owned the couch.
“I can’t,” Anna said. Her voice was soft, almost amused. “It won’t let me.”
Neighbors sent casseroles. Her sister left voicemails that shifted from worried to sarcastic to resigned. “Anna,” she said on day twelve, “are you actually fused to that thing now?” Anna listened, thumb hovering over the screen, but the couch’s hum deepened, and she put the phone down.
She began to dream the couch’s dreams. In them, she was not a woman but a hollow shape, a depression in a vast upholstered landscape. Other shapes pressed into her—strangers, animals, children who grew old in a single afternoon. She felt their warmth drain into her fibers. She felt herself becoming useful in a way she never had while standing upright.