The monolith

I can't shake the feeling that it's knows I'm there. Even with my back turned I'm aware of it's presence, feeling it's presence aware of me. Faceless, eyeless, it watches me. An absurd thought. It's just another inanimate object after all. Large, black, rectangular. Difficult to anthropomorphise, even for me.

It's been sitting there for a couple of days now, this obsidian cuboid of darkly familiar dimensions. A single solid mass, much larger than I'd anticipated. It dominates the room, drawing the eye above all other distractions. The already small room seems even smaller, darker. It's utterly silent, though I fancy I hear a non-existent hum emanating from it when my mind wanders. Neither hum nor silence offers any comfort.

Gazing upon it the though crosses my mind again. That all it would take is a hand pressed gently against one silky ebony surface and the softest of pushes to follow Alice into a twilight looking glass world. Sheer nonsense of course, but oddly believable despite the rules of common sense. I resist the temptation to touch it.

Perhaps these feelings are common among owners of new television sets. Or is it just me?