A block of sunlight trickles through the window and slants onto the desk. It pools around the shell, and he feels the warmth as the interior heats. He is alone in the room, but not in the house. He can hear a man below.

Daddy is already settled in front of the television when she walks in, beer can in hand. Rachael supposes she should feel grateful that he isn’t a raging drunk, but seeing his bleary, red-rimmed eyes staring sightlessly at the glowing screen, she doesn’t feel much of anything.

He does not acknowledge her as she walks quietly in the background. He makes no movements expect to take another sip from his beer. She leaves the strong smell of alcohol behind her and climbs the stairs. Her room is warm and silent, sunlight refracting through the window and shafting to the floor and walls. The shell sits on the desk where she left it, pink and cream tinted gold and dusky warm by sunlight.

The girl has come back, and he stirs with interest. He hopes that she will move the shell again, because it has become hot in his crevice.

She didn’t speak to the man below and the man didn’t speak to her, but the man listens to the false, mechanical voices and music that vibrate the air up through the desk his shell sits upon. Now the girl drops something on the floor and pulls out a chair to sit near him. He hears papers rustle, her heart beat, the even sounds of her breathing.

He had watched many girls, and boys and men and women, focusing his sight down upon them and acting as spectator to their lives. He had never seen this one. She hides herself, he thinks, hides in this room and beneath cloaks of innocence. He had never liked to watch the innocent.

He turns over in his shell, and the girl hears. He feels her uneasiness and hesitation, and the cool touch of her fingers as she reaches out to probe the shell in question. He breathes in answer and she stands and backs away with soft footsteps. He hears a creak as she sits upon the bed.

“Hello?” she says. Her voice passes over him like the ocean’s waves passed over the shell, and he is frustrated by his glossy prison. He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t speak again.