Return to Prose

She walks because she has nothing better to do. Work is closed. Friends are quiet. Family is asleep half a world away. The weather isn’t bad, so she walks. She listens to her music, and she mouths the words beneath her mask. Without a band, without a studio, this is as close as she can get to making the music swirling inside her and giving it space in the world so it doesn’t split her open. 

She should do other things, but she walks. She doesn’t want to do those other things, and no one will make her do those things. The whole world is holding its breath for the next several days, making a wish across the bridge from this cursed year to the mystery of the next one. So, why not walk, she thinks. 

She walks and she feels nothing in particular. She feels something like peace mixed with something like happiness. The weather is nice, the sky is clear, and she is not bound by a schedule or expectations or deadlines. She feels something like sadness or loneliness as she walks alone while others walk with someone--friends, lovers, children, pets, family. She feels something like disappointment. But none of these feelings leave a lasting or powerful impression, each passing over her like the shadow of a motorcycle over the sidewalk. 

She wants to sit, she wants to write, she wants to meet with others and feel part of something again. What are others doing? She can ask, but she always asks. Not today. Today, she walks. They can ask.

But they won’t.

Voices in her music soar through her headphones, and she wills their spirits to her lips as she prays beneath her mask. Now, let’s erase it all, our memories, leave them.

She walks, and she thinks. She thinks of all the people she gives herself to, little pieces of her mind, large corners of her heart, handmade towers of her hard work and passion. She thinks of her last lover--of how little he gave, how little he did, how little he cared, how little he made her feel. She thinks of everything she gave, everything she could give, everything he missed, how he will never notice. She thinks, with shame, that she would see him if he asked.

But he won’t.

She walks because she has time. She has all the time she ever wanted to do all the things she dreamed of doing but instead she walks. She walks because she wants them to ask her, she wants them to miss her, but they won’t.

She walks until she is tired. Then she walks home.

이제는 다 지워야만 해

  The sound of the summer storm tapped against the windows and the walls of his apartment. They had a special word for this here--sonagi. He didn’t mind, though; he loved the sound. The percussion of the water reminded him that there was more to life than his dry eyes. It was late, or early, depending on perspective, but he was immersed in his work. Hunched over his desk, he flexed and rubbed his hands, aching with tension and focus on the paper before him. The picture was beginning to take shape, and he was too close to go to sleep now. The sonagi provided the soundtrack his heart needed to release what he was trying to say this time. 

His heart was not very good at speaking. He did not want to silence it just yet.

He grabbed his oil pastels and began to add the color. He was nervous; he had never tried this before. Usually, he carefully reads each label, squinting and calculating, testing on a spare sheet of paper before cautiously brushing it across the surface of his work. But not tonight. Not for this. For this, he let his intuition guide his tired hands to a color or shade that seemed right, that felt right--feeling was always tricky--and pressed it firmly to the page. This was new. This was scary. This was exhilarating. 

The storm quieted to a light shower for a few minutes. He took deep breaths, closed his eyes, and waited. Then the heavens opened.

His hands flew across the page, one hand applying the color and the other applying the pressure, the dynamic motion of blurring and blending and shading. His hands raced the sound, certain that his confidence would disappear with the rain. Sound was always easier, he thought. Music made sense; music flowed effortlessly like a native language from his hands and his heart and his head. But for some reason, tonight his heart screamed that it needed this. She needed this.

There was some dark irony in being a partially colorblind artist. He had always enjoyed sketching, drawing, simple pencil or pen creations in black and white. Whenever he did venture into the world of color, he carefully checked each label, sometimes even going so far as to look up hex codes on the computer and matching colors to a photo. He wanted to be accurate; he did not want anyone to attribute his color choices to some kind of deficit. However, while his black and white sketches garnered much praise and had won several awards at junior and amateur artist competitions, anything with color was said to be “too cold,” “too calculating,” or “trying too hard.”

He sat back, rubbing his hands with a wet towel to clean the oil pastels from his skin. He looked at the picture, a sweeping declaration of how this strange foreign creature had changed something within him. Her bright blue eyes shone cyan in his mind, a color untouched by his deficit. He loved blues, because blues were the same for him as everyone else. He could see what the world saw in shades of blue.

It wasn’t love, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. He was never sure with his heart. But this seemed different somehow. He enjoyed her presence and felt her absence. He smiled at her joy, and he ached when she hurt. She gave and gave to him and to everyone, and he wanted to give something to her. 

Decades later, art historians would speculate on who or what caused this, his unparalleled masterpiece, this absolute anomaly in the life of a safe black-and-white sketch artist. None of the colors were expected or predictable; this was not photorealism. This was pure uninhibited expression in shades of blues and reds and greens and violets and golds. 

 She wakes, but she does not open her eyes. Her phone buzzes an incessant S.O.S. for the third time, from some selfish shallow boy looking to feel like a man. She knows it cannot be later than 5am, but he is clearly desperate and tugging on each of his lines seeking a hook that will bring him is prey. She removed that hook months ago and has the scar as a memento. She rolls over. She tries to return to the darkness of a dreamless sleep.

Her mind floats aimlessly along a sea of memories, reaching out for a warm safe place to rest.

The cold light of another morning creeps apologetically through her window. She wakes, and she opens her eyes. Bleary, she sits up, and she checks her phone. The words, a name--from somewhere deep and still innocent within her a swift and silent prayer is whispered. 

Nothing. She tries to hide her disappointment from herself. 

She stares at her empty hands, willing them to hold herself together or to let go of it again. Her heart is full, is heavy, is pressing its nose to the edge of its cage. The pressures of her swirling humours, usually a quotidian sensation, arrest her thoughts and slow them to a languid resignation.

 It wasn’t a superpower, Jamie supposed, because superpowers are not skills that can be acquired by just anyone through study but are innate gifts shaped through practice. This “power” that Jamie possessed was developed carefully over a year of dedicated if strenuous attention. Still, Jamie was pleased that they could impress their friends with it. 

As the final days of the summer after middle school transitioned into the first year of high school, so many of Jamie’s friends became increasingly concerned about their health and diet. And so, Jamie’s skills became increasingly useful and valuable. Every lunch hour, like clockwork, Jamie’s friends would challenge them with the contents of their lunches. They would present fruit, vegetables, salads, meats, store-bought confections or fast-food combos. They would watch as Jamie’s forehead wrinkled into a frown from thought and analysis. They would check Jamie’s powers against the infinite knowledge of the internet. Jamie’s friends would gasp and cheer when they flawlessly delivered the results of so much hard work. 

You see, Jamie could recall the nutrition information of any food item within a 10% margin of error. The numbers floated before them in neon lights until it burned Jamie’s eyes. They could not look away.

This song is destroying her.

She stares at a blank screen with blank eyes. She wants to write. She wants to reach down her throat and drag out the knotted mass that has been stretching is vines across her lungs and liver and lingering in her gut. She keeps looking for her voice, but it catches in her chest. Her vision blurs as tears slowly spill from her and silently leave.

She wants to write. But she is paralyzed, crying, eyes closed, listening to the voices of strangers sing exactly what she wants to say. She grits her teeth, keeps looking for some other way, some other word, some other sound.

But she is voiceless, silently trapped alone in a cage of skin and bone, vines choking her overflowing her with longing and loneliness she cannot clothe in words or notes but strangers can. You would think it would be enough, soothing, a relief to know that others feel the same and can express what you need to say for you, giving you pre-packaged exactly how you want to share yourself.

It’s suffocating.

She feels she is bursting at every fragile edge she has in need of some sort of release so that she doesn’t start to collapse inward again, but she feels the gravity pulling her already. She checks her phone obsessively, looking for any life line, almost sending a hundred different messages to friends or former lovers or family or future somethings. She deletes them all.

Her body craves closeness, being held together as her seams fray and her life leaks out like sand. She was supposed to have a date, but he canceled. She knew he was going to cancel. Somehow, yesterday, she knew. She just had a feeling.

The air is stale, still, silent as she opens the door. She forgot to crack the windows again when she left this morning. She forgets a lot of things these days.

Walking around in a fog, she slides open a window, cracks a door, and feeds the cat that clambers inside to check on her. He meows and purrs, trying his hardest to call her back to earth with a brush of his tail and nudge of his nose. But she’s somewhere else again, somewhere he cannot reach, so he does all he can before the bowl settles in front of him. She gave him two meals’ worth of food; she cannot remember if she fed him this morning. She didn’t, but he doesn’t mind. He just misses her.

She sits on the floor, leaning her back against the sofa, and picks up her phone. Images and apps flash in front of her out of habit, but nothing registers. She sets down her phone, and reaches for the tv remote. She doesn’t want to watch anything. She picks up her phone, and scrolls through the same images, the same streams, the same feeds. She looks at the remote, and she repeats the pattern until a pang strikes lightning through her chest. His name. Nothing more than a reaction to a picture here, a comment there, but still. The waves of nausea, the prickling feeling of a racing heart and tightening skin, the lightheadedness of being a mind unanchored returns. She turns off her phone and shoves it away from her, as though its proximity made her ill and its distance will make her well. It doesn’t help.

The cat leaves half of his food and pads gently to the phone on the floor. He paws at it absentmindedly, trying to figure out how this immobile unappealing item caused his person to disappear into herself. He looks at her, paws at it again as he stares at her, but she does not see him. Her eyes are vacant. He’s struck with an idea. A zoom. She always smiles when he zooms. He leaps and runs around like a kitten on catnip, purring and chirping at random as he zooms around the apartment. He pauses in his perch, looks at her. No change. Not a flicker. He flops, defeated, in his nest and pretends to sleep, waiting for her to move.

She sees the phone light up briefly and hears a small buzz, and she sits up quickly enough that she is dizzy again. She forgot to eat this afternoon--well, forgot until it was time for dinner, and then she was too nauseated to eat. But she will say she forgot if she gets asked tomorrow, because she forgets a lot of things these days. She doesn’t expect anyone to ask, though.

He opens his eyes at the sound of her motion, sees her waver, and perks up his head. She looks at the phone, and the look that comes over her face actually confuses him. He has never seen his person look that...that...un-alive. That un-person-like. She sets down the phone, and he lays down his head. He will get up and check on her soon, but he is so full and comfortable in his nest. He will move when she moves.

She sets down the phone. She stares at the blank black television screen as tears form and fall from her unmoving face. Her breathing becomes thinner but not faster. Her heart flutters slightly, but still she does not move. She does not sob. She is not sad. She is not there anymore. Something within her shuts off, and she closes her eyes and falls into a shallow, dreamless sleep.

Stretching, the cat wakes to a cold room, air moving swiftly between the cracked door and open window. He sits up, alarmed, but finds his person still seated on the floor. She seems like she is half-asleep, half-dead, but she does not smell like death. He silently leaves the nest to walk to her, to coax her to her bed where he can sleep next to her and protect her. But now he senses someone else, someone at her door, and his hackles go up. This person is not one of his or one of hers, so he approaches with caution. He stares at the door, but this person does not knock or make any noise. He merely stands, head pressed so close to the crack in the door that the cat can smell the person’s fear. But this door-person’s fear is familiar, a protective and worrying fear. The cat decides that maybe he can be one of his. So, he asks the door-person a question, a quiet inquisitive purr.

She’s started doing it again. On the back of a napkin, with a blue ballpoint pen. Nothing special, never anything complicated, always small and simple. She’s not an artist; she can never draw what she wants when she wants. It’s infuriating to her. But sometimes, when someone else is talking and she feels her throat close off, when she cannot run and she cannot move but her mind is drowning in tears held captive, and as she knows her heart is on her sleeve and her soul is in her eyes––she draws.

It starts with basic shapes. Squares or triangles, usually, but sometimes it’s circles. The triangles become pyramids; the squares become cubes or boxes. Today, it’s circles. Slowly the first circles become ovals, and the ovals become musical notes. She draws what brings her comfort, and tonight her comfort is music notation. Notes can form so many shapes and in so many directions, comprising lines and circles and curves and staves and clefs and dots. She draws five lines, so she makes it a staff by placing a treble clef. She gives it a common time signature because why not. She nearly fills the napkin with grace notes and arpeggios and appoggiaturas floating ad hoc throughout space. She starts drawing a large rectangular prism and remembers a piece of art from high school that she sloppily tries to recreate. She fails.

The napkin is covered, so she flips it over. There are some old lyrics written in half-hearted cursive from a former musical project and a former musical lover. Another habit. She balls up the napkin quickly so her date can’t see the words. She finds a new napkin and starts again.

Her date is still talking, noticing her mood slightly but too much on a roll to pause. He’s practiced and practiced the best way to break the news gently, how to hit all the right notes and pause in the right places. She’s still nodding and voicing agreement, but he is a little irked that she seems so distracted and into her little doodles. She’s not even that good.

Feathers, now, small and shaded. They look better oriented the other way, like each is floating gently, falling beautifully, but she can only draw feathers in a single orientation. She lets her pen float over a shaded blue balloon before returning to musical themes. She remembers chemistry class and college for some reason and why can’t she ever draw like this when she’s happy? She makes a clef-heart she always loved and hated, then she notices that he’s stopped talking. She rolls the pen around between her thumb and fingers and feels nothing coming from it calling to the napkin. She puts down her pen and looks up.

He’s smiling at her. Why is he smiling at her?

“Don’t worry,” he says, staring into her eyes and willing every ounce of happiness he has into that stare. “You will be happy. You will find someone better than me.” Her eyes look blank, more lifeless than he’d ever seen them. But it is late, she must be tired, and she was just drawing so maybe she’s still thinking of those bizarre little doodles. How the hell should he know? He’s trying his damndest to be kind, to be present, to be helpful. Can’t she see that?

She looks at him, sees that he’s trying, but her pen cannot protect her anymore and she feels her will crumbling like an old dam about to burst, so she says “You’re probably right. It’s late. We should go.” She looks down and bites the inside of her lip to keep it from quivering. She can hear his sigh of relief and tries not to take it personally as she gathers her bag and stuffs her napkins into her pocket. She tells herself she’ll throw them away at home.

Dear Friend,

I had pho and bubble tea tonight, and I missed you. One could argue I craved them because I missed you. I’ve been missing you a lot these days, in the friend I have made and lost to another already, in the friend I have made and will soon lose. I felt I needed to write, but I can’t find a fiction for this one. So, I guess this is more like a journal entry than anything. Maybe a letter that I will fail to send.

The pho is not as good here, but the bubble tea is better. Spring has finally come, so I walked home to my apartment and saw the cherry blossoms and missed you. You would have loved this walk with me, talking about unicorns and isolation and the end of the world, carrying empty bubble tea cups until we got home. We would have planned to go climbing tomorrow; the weather is going to be perfect for it, and there’s an outdoor wall not far from me. I would have hugged you goodbye at the steps to my building, and you would have taken the bus to the train to I don’t know where. Wherever you lived when you lived here.

We were out of sync, you and I, by a few years it seems.

I miss you more than I’ve ever missed a friend. Anyone else in my life I missed this much, they were more than just a friend. They were family, or lovers. I don’t say that to diminish your place, but quite the opposite. You are unique to me, my dear friend. I wish I could have loved you, or felt what you felt for me at least, whatever that feeling’s name might be. I wish we could have been together longer. I thought that because we didn’t, because we weren’t, we could remain friends even when you found someone else. Now, it seems that’s not the case.

I miss hearing your voice. I miss reading your writing. I miss telling you my stories. I miss hearing you tell me your stories. I miss us having the same thoughts, feelings, hell, even history, to a frightening degree.

I feel alone in the world again, like I did before I met you.

I had pho alone. I had bubble tea alone. I walked home alone. And I missed you.

It’s like hypnosis from the moment you hear it. Your ears dive into its shallow suggestion until you are inundated with its melody. It’s an incantation whispered into the muscle fibers of your chest, radiating along the insides of your arms, rippling across your back. Pulse elevated. Eyes dilated. Face flushed with the heat of desire. You look everywhere for the source.

It does not matter where you are. It does not matter why you came. It does not matter what happened before. You are a predator on the scent, endlessly hungry for that sound.

There. There is the magician. His small sly smile splinters as his fingers sprint along the strings. You shiver. Each note is perfectly placed, a command wrapped in supplication; each bend weakens your knees. You close your eyes, and he captivates your ears. You open your eyes, and he hijacks your mind. Your breath catches. The way his body moves as he sings with his hands, as though compelled to move by all that he cannot contain. Oh, what melodies you would create as he makes you sing with those hands. Oh, to be the one that compels his body to move by the whole of you he cannot contain.

You try to run; his memory follows you. You set the traps; he deftly evades them. You pace the fence you built for yourself; he smiles at the gate, and you open it. You stare at the spectre, the shadow of your incomplete memory of him, and you know.

Sophia wanders the field, the early morning shrouded in mist and the fog of early fall. She sees a dirt track where horses used to train for bigger better race days surrounding a simple guiding rail of white. She’s never been here before, yet it all feels deeply familiar. Her breath a cloud before her, she smells the electric air and knows a storm will come today.

She walks towards the center of the ring, and she is surprised to see what appears to be a cellar door in the ground in the middle of the grass beyond the guard rail. She stoops under the rail and nearly slips on the dewy wet grass. Upon approaching the door, she sees it is locked. She reaches slowly towards her necklace--a simple key on a simple black string. She removes the key; it fits perfectly. She turns the lock, pulls the door, and smells gunpowder and chocolate. She thinks she should be alarmed or confused; she feels neither. She feels nothing but mild curiosity and the pull of a narrative she cannot control.

Down the creaking wooden steps, Sophia arrives at a white door. She reaches for it, and it opens without her touch.

Stepping through to the other side, she is in her room. In her hands she holds a grenade. As though trying to protect a lone egg, Sophia wraps her hands around the grenade tenderly. It feels warm. She presses the grenade to her chest, and she feels it melt into her skin, slowly going flat like dough yielding to gentle pressure, soaking into her body and attaching itself to her ribcage. Her heart races with the stinging sparks of the reaction. Breathing becomes shallow and pained. And then, after a short time, it is done. The static leaves her skin. Somehow, Sophia feels her body is no longer her home now. It is some other machine, some other vessel following the controls of a distant and detached player.

Still in her room, she lies down on her bed, facing the blank ceiling, arms wide like Christ on the cross, and she closes her eyes.

Sophia awakes with a start, eyes flying open, seeing the open sky stormy and shivering with lightning outside her window. She is still in his arms, and he is breathing quietly beside her. He feels her wake, and he sleepily pulls her closer into him. Sophia reaches for her neck and finds her necklace, calming her. Her chest begins to burn, though; her back pulses, itches, becomes a shell of spikes and scales. Her whole body feels like it is boiling from the inside. It hurts. She curls into herself, willing herself to implode. Confused, he asks, “Why are you like a child?” And he kisses her head gently.

Sophia, radioactive, back like shrapnel and grenade-hearted, explodes.

3

Three nights in a row, you took over my dreams. You walked with me around a museum or around a shopping mall, taking my arm and using that voice and that name meant only for me. You smiled at me, and your warmth felt like a heat lamp trying to be the sun. Still, it made me smile and laugh and feel I am loved; my cheek remembered your touch, my nose remembered your scent. My arm gravitated to your arm and wrapped around it. The knot in my stomach and the guilt in my heart faded to a dull glow but did not disappear. You tried so hard, you stayed so long, and I---I was a leaf stuck to a fallen branch floating down the river of this dream, your dream. A single string of thought occupied my mind: this is wrong, it shouldn’t be like this, we’re about to break our hearts again, but...but... I miss it so badly.

Each morning I woke up hollow and quiet, the morning outside a dull glow.

2

Two weeks ago, I saw him entering the bar, and my body shivered like a wind blew through me. My heart sprinted, my breath seized, and my skin went electric. Obscenities fell from my lips like petals from the cherry trees, and my mind became a tornado spiraling out of control, pulling everything into its vortex. He laughed, and that laugh became the soundtrack to my descent. My ears hungered for more of his sound. He smiled, and I turned my face away to hide the explosion of warmth, an explosion that sent me reeling, falling, faster into the eye. That night, I swore I would not keep the storm to myself any longer.

“It’s never the fall that kills you; it’s the landing.”

1

One day, I will wake to the sounds of someone breathing quietly beside me, and I will smile, because smiling will be easy. I will gently kiss the skin I have memorized so well, and I will continue the study. I will let my secrets fall from my lips like petals from the cherry trees, and I will not hide the explosion of warmth or the lightning storm. I will listen to their voice for hours as it tells me every path traveled by a beautiful mind, as it whispers my favorite words in every language, as it makes my name sound like a prayer.

It will sing me to sleep with lullabies and spells meant to shield my dreams, meant to make you

Why are you digging In the mud For hints or clues With your bare hands?

These things you want, They aren’t hard to find When they are Actually There

You don’t need to look Under every rock To see if you missed one Or pick up dead leaves To check for water

These things you want, When they’re there, They explode from the ground Like the sun

Alopex opened her eyes and unfurled her sleek body from the spiral in which she had been sleeping. Her jaws stretched into a yawn, and she glanced outside. Clouds covered the sky like a gray blanket, a shadowed reflection of the white snowy floor that had been laid the night before. Gently, Alopex padded to the mouth of her den and lifted her muzzle to sniff the air. A storm was coming.

She shook out her milky white fur and stretched her long form, feelling each sinew and muscle push and pull beneath her coat. She flexed her paws, licked her fangs, and lithely stepped out into the frozen wilds.

The wind pierced straight through her, and she clenched her jaw to keep from shivering. It would take almost all day to walk to the nearby town, and she was not thrilled about the prospect of enduring the wind for the whole journey. There was no other option, however. Tonight was the full moon. She could feel it rippling through her blood and bones.

For about three miles, she walked silently and smoothly, floating atop the fallen snow. Her stomach began to growl, but she knew that eating would make her changes difficult, so she ignored the rumbling and pressed on. About a mile from the town, she paused at a cave she frequented on these journeys. After checking the surroundings at least three times, Alopex took one last look at the setting sun with her icy blue eyes, swiveled her ears, sniffed the air, and disappeared into the darkness.

There were many words for what she was, many names and many curses. Kitsune. Kumiho. Succubus. Evil Spirit. Demon. But to Alopex, she was just a creature like any other, trying to survive with the lot she had been given. That lot meant that she lived most of her life as a small and solitary arctic fox, but for a few days each month transformed into a young and beautiful woman. In those short days, she felt she was truly living. The way others looked at her, the way they gravitated into her presence, the way they beheld her as otherworldly--because she truly was otherworldly in ways they would find horrifying if they learned. But then, she returned to her small vulpine body, cursed with the memories and thoughts of any other human woman but trapped in a distrusted scavenger valued only for the money her coat could bring.

The change was always agonizingly painful, ripping her and reshaping her for what seemed like eternity. She could not stop herself from crying out during the change, and had she eaten, she would have vomited. Every time, she would pray to those unfeeling gods please just let me be normal, let me be like everyone else, let me die. Every time, they failed to listen. Or failed to care.

At last, she lay shaking and shivering naked on the cave floor, a woman once more. She took her fingers and felt her face, her small nose, her soft lips, her harmless teeth. She ran her fingers through her hair, sweaty and stuck to her neck from the change. In the corner of the cave her stash of clothes remained. Oh, how difficult it had been the first few times she changed and walked into the town stark naked. But that was many towns and many lives ago. Now, Alopex was always prepared for her other life.

The clothes were nowhere near as warm as her arctic fur, but it covered her enough that she would not die or fall ill before she was able to find a place to stay indoors. Finding a place to stay was never difficult. Men were more than happy to help accommodate her. She applied some rudimentary cosmetics to her face, looking in a cracked discarded shard that used to be someone’s mirror. She bit her lips gently to make them appear more full and red, accidentally drawing a small amount of blood. She licked it away and smiled. She liked the taste in both bodies.

The last thing she put on was a necklace, her failsafe, her talisman. She placed the back of the pendant to her lip so that a drop of blood dried there. Once she could smell the blood on the back of that pendant, she knew her time was up. The change was coming soon, and she needed to flee.

Alopex repeated her mantra. Deep breath. Shoulders back. Head up. Smile. You own the night.

***************************

Altaic sipped his Jack and Coke half-heartedly, glancing at his phone out of habit and boredom. This bar wasn’t exactly what he had expected when he agreed to help his friend out with the contest. This wasn’t his crowd, wasn’t his scene. The people running the show seemed pretty out of their depth, and all of the women were, well, not exactly his type. I’m gonna need a lot of booze and a lot of smokes to get through this, he thought. He finished his drink and went to the bar to order another.

He stood at the bar and signaled to the bartender. The bartender nodded, then went back to fixing someone else’s drink. It was bright pink, the color hiding the very heavy amounts of liquor being added. He watched the drink make its way to its owner, someone directly to his right. She was pretty, he guessed, but not stunning, though her long wavy silver hair was eye-catching. She thanked the bartender and smiled at him like a dear friend, then turned to go. Her icy blue eyes caught his, and his heart stuttered, unexpectedly. Then she sat alone at a small table, and she began to read a book. A book. In a bar. She was certainly unexpected.

The first group began, and he watched with half-sustained interest, occasionally glancing at the strange girl sitting alone with a book in a bar. They were not impressive, stumbling through their part as though they’d never prepared. They were useless at keeping his mind away from her. Mercifully, they finished after a short while, and he fled to the smoking room for the second half of his coping strategy.

The smoking room was familiar territory, a comfortable haven from the external chaos. He began to relax. He was talking to a couple other guys, trying to be polite but detached as he let the tobacco and fumes work their magic, when suddenly she entered. Her presence, her energy filled the room and burned through him like a strong shot. She asked some guy she knew if she could borrow a cigarette, and Altaic offered one of his without thinking. She raised the cigarette to her lips, ruby red like fresh blood, and he found himself jealous of the roll of paper cradled there. She gently touched his hand as he held the lighter for her, and as she inhaled the nicotine he inhaled her. He heard the announcement for the next group, and she quickly finished her cigarette to rejoin the room. Her eyes locked on his as she said earnestly, “Thank you for the cigarette. I owe you one.” Then she smiled and walked out.

She was like a virus in his mind. The whole night, no matter what he drank, how much he smoked, Altaic was tracking her with his gaze, following her footsteps, reveling in her joy, smiling at her carefree dancing, hungering to feel the curves of her body closer to his. Hours passed, and she kept returning to him, smiling and dancing and infecting him with how alive she was. He was in her trance, and he was not alone. Jealously, suspiciously, he watched as other guys gravitated to her as well, asking for attention with questions that shallowly hid their true intentions--just a few more seconds of her captivating focus. The contest ended, her favored groups victorious, and he watched her celebrate with complete abandon. His fever rose, her virus took control, and he grabbed her hand and said quick goodbyes. He needed to feel her. He needed to have her.

Her body was sorcery, her skin as soft as the finest fur. She growled and moaned with pleasure beneath him, and they made love and war for hours. He couldn’t stop, he never wanted to stop, he wanted the night to reign eternal with her in his arms, in his bed, on his lips, on his skin. At last, both completely spent, they collapsed together, her resting gently on his chest, the smoke of his cigarette tangling around her silver hair.

**********************

Alopex awoke to the smell of cigarettes, and her nose burned. She opened her aqua eyes to behold the sun peaking through the shutters of an unfamiliar room. He still lay sleeping, and she remained peacefully experiencing the warmth of their naked bodies and the sound of his heartbeat. She softly stroked his chest and reached to adjust her necklace. Only to find it absent.

Her heart raced. Her body tensed. Her necklace was gone.

She tried desperately to smell anything, anything but the cigarette smoke floating in her hair and all around him. Her nose was on fire. She could smell nothing. Panic rose, and she got up lithely and padded to the bathroom. She locked the door and turned on the water, filling the room with a purifying steam. She took her nail and made a small, barely visible scratch on her arm. The metallic scent flooded her nose and made her mouth water. This was very bad. The change was coming.

**********************

Altaic awoke to the sound of water. He stretched lazily and waited for her to come out of the shower, so he could pull her back into bed and feel her wet skin against his. He sat up and felt something in the bed next to him. Her pendant necklace must have fallen off during their lovemaking last night. Either that, or in a frenzy he had ripped it off of her. She brought out something truly animalistic in him. He’d never fucked like that with anyone before. He rubbed the stone in the center of the necklace and marveled at how it changed in the light. The water shut off, and he smiled.

She stepped out of the bathroom, and his smile faded into concern. She seemed unwell, all the color had drained from her face, and she looked like she was about to be sick. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I need to leave. I really don’t feel well. I’m sorry,” she said in rapid succession, stumbling over the words like they were a foreign language to her. She dressed quickly, her eyes darting all over the room for something she seemed to be missing.

“Oh, looking for your necklace?” He held it up. “It’s really incredible; it looks completely different in the day than it did last night. But, it’s kind of dirty...”

She grabbed it and put it on deftly. “It’s okay. It’s very precious to me. I can take care of it later.” How had she gotten dressed so quickly? She walked over to the bed and stumbled, catching herself on the mattress. “Sorry, just feel a little weak.”

“You should stay here and rest. You look really sick.”

“I’ll be fine,” she breathed, voice almost raspy. She gave him a quick kiss, and he swore he could smell something different on her. Like the air just before it snows. “I really need to go. Thank you for last night. You made me feel…” She paused, her face looking pained, and she gritted her teeth. “Sorry, gotta run. See you soon.”

Altaic stared at the door, wondering what sort of spell she had cast over him, and what that spell must have cost her. Then his phone buzzed, and he glanced at it out of habit.

**************************

I never expected to meet him here, a loud bar for cowardly expats who crave the familiar or a ladder over the language barrier. I had already moved from another disappointment to my comfortable place of self-doubt and melodramatic despair, and still I had somehow stumbled upon a soul that shone like mine, at least in the low light of a Saturday night.

Then I looked up, and you smiled at me. Well, he smiled at me, but it was your smile, your eyes glowing in the face of a stranger. For an hour, we were two ships passing in the sea of singles, until I said something that caught his ear. He introduced himself with your name, his tongue curling around his English like a viper coiled in the Outback. We talked a little between drags on borrowed cigarettes, and the way my name floated from his tongue, chasing the filter--and then later that night, breathing deeply for reasons other than nicotine--my name hadn’t sounded so tender since you last uttered it, a prayer of mea culpa.

He wears the sun where you wear a storm. He was so much warmer than you and your hurricane heart, unafraid to let me lie in the heat and sleep in his arms. We spoke in languages and of lives we desired, and I sang my siren song as he sang along. And his voice ebbed and flowed like the ocean.

But his skin tasted familiar, his lips moved like yours, and his gaze elated me and scared me just as yours did. My heart shivered and swooned when he said my name one last time, your eyes shining as he wore your smile and your name and left.

Her shoulders shrugged forward, Mary walks quickly to the tempo of the music in her headphones. She marches onward, deliberately not thinking of anything beyond the odds of the upcoming interaction. Her thumbs press slightly forward on the backpack straps she grips as she goes over again and again everything she knows and everything she doesn’t know but might as well know. She takes a measured but deep breath, rolls her shoulders back, and reviews the odds. The first outcome is over 90% likely. The second, 9.9%. And the final, most desirable outcome, that one is only 0.1% likely to occur based on the available data and the autobiographical data of countless women before her. This will be no different than any other date.

The smell of rain is on the wind as it tousles her curls. She prefers her hair straight, but she knew as she got ready that any attempts to straighten her hair today would be wasted time with the weather on the verge of a downpour. She approaches the cafe cautiously, a bit early so that she can get the lay of the land, assess the surroundings and choose an optimal location. To Mary’s surprise, he is already there, seated at an outside table and facing her direction of approach. He seems lost in thought, giving her the necessary few seconds to wipe her face clean of her analysis and present a pleasant and entirely normal smile before he can notice her. She updates her data, reruns the analysis, and sees no meaningful change in the outcome likelihoods. She sets down her backpack as he rises to greet her.

They order drinks, and Mary impresses him with her knowledge of obscure beverage options. She makes a mental note of the flattery, but she cannot help but notice that at least on the surface, his delivery was sincere. This makes her uneasy, but she elects not to show it. They return to the table outside, and she begins the questioning. She is careful not to press too hard or too fast, but she maintains constant control of the conversation, the pacing, the topics. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he does not seem to mind, and he does very little asking. She notes this, revises her data. But, something is amiss. As the conversation continues, as the topics change, she discovers that the favorable outcome becomes less ridiculous. The likelihood climbs to 2%, and she states that she needs to use the restroom. He graciously directs her to it.

In the bathroom, Mary takes out her contacts, assesses her makeup, and wrestles with the data. The sincerity factor continues to skew her results. Her brow furrows; he cannot be this genuine, it’s almost impossible. And yet, she detects no deceit, malice, or manipulation attempts. If he is an actor, he is the best she’s ever encountered. She revises her plan of action, and unlocks the door. Another controlled and deep breath, and she returns to the table.

Hours fly by, and she knows she must get out, get back to her lab, retreat into her mind and figure him out. He notices her fatigue and asks one of his few questions. Startled, she responds more honestly and fully than she intended. He agrees to walk her back to her place. Alarms sound in her head, but she ignores them for some reason. It must be the drinks, Mary thinks, and she decides to take the small risk to gather more data. Either way, she must learn more about what he wants to determine who he is.

As they walk up the stairs to her apartment, she quickly reruns the analysis, taking care to include both the sincerity and the distrust of the sincerity, and finds a dangerous result. The higher the likelihood of her most desired outcome, the higher the cost of failure. Still, she cannot detect the slightest stirring of anything but honesty, even though all the data points to the contrary. Personal experience, she wryly muses, has an interesting way of dominating the odds. It sways the analysis, mutates the algorithm, until the answer is unrecognizable to anyone but you. And right there, right then, you are easy prey.

From the moment they enter her apartment, she gets to work. He asks to use the bathroom. Perfect. She takes the time to scan for anything he may target to ingratiate himself to her. Her display of books, he’ll probably look at those. Her piano, he might play that. Some photos, mostly family. Nothing too revealing, though. And so, Mary sits at the piano and begins her plan. She starts her siren song. Just like the conversation at the cafe, she aims to control the story here too.

But something happens. As the faucet runs, signaling the washing of hands, she hears gentle singing from the bathroom. His voice, sonorous and beautifully in time, aligns with hers. The numbers and predictions freeze, crash, shower around her like the rain on her window pane. She finishes the song quietly. She sits at the piano until he exits the bathroom and walks to her. Then she stands, takes his hand, and wordlessly leads him to her bed.

She steps onto the bus and touches her pass to the reader. Hood up, sunglasses on, earphones in, she would give off the air of someone suspicious if she were not incredibly petite, each step as gentle as a child's fingers along freshly cut grass. She sits in the first seat she can find, and if there are no seats, she stands in a corner, head down, immersed in her own world. She rides the bus to work across the river, most assume, but some days she exits the bus right before the bridge.

Some days she stands in the middle of the bridge, hood down, sunglasses off, earphones out, eyes closed, taking in the sounds of the city and the river blending with the wind. Some days, there are people who walk to the middle of the bridge, and she talks to them. On those days, they walk back off the bridge.

One day, the bus driver of her route is walking across the bridge and sees her, standing, waiting. He smiles, asks her what she is doing, and is startled by her piercing blue eyes and gentle auburn hair. Her voice is like music. She says that some days, like today, she smells a storm in the air, that she's very sensitive to that sort of thing, so she's waiting for it to come to her. He laughs, and asks if she's joking with him, it's cloudless and sunny today.

The phone’s eerie glow shines on your exhausted face, tired from trying to sleep more nights than you actually sleep. You scroll through the internet feed because you can’t help yourself, you just want to see. You’ve long since given up on the no-phone-in-bed rule, though it helped for a couple of nights. It’s about 2:14am, and you remember that some show said “nothing good happens after 2am” and you believed it for a while.

You see nothing special, and you pause on nothing longer than 6 seconds. Some quotes. Some photos. Some videos. Nothing to distract you from not-sleeping. The algorithm is struggling to keep up with you these days because everything goes by for about the same amount of time. You tell yourself you’re not searching for anyone in particular, but you are. You always are. Your curiosity, always pacing around in the back of your mind, watches for the weakness that it can exploit. In some past moment of wise resolve, you remember, you had hidden some updates from your feed in a concrete attempt to keep yourself safe. But your curiosity is nothing if not patient, like a wolf waiting for the fire to die.

The first flicker.

You click on the search field, telling yourself you aren’t going to linger long, you just want to make sure they’re still alive. With a deep breath, you type the name you used to feel resting on the edges of your tongue, dancing in your ears, begging at your lips. A small picture, a different picture, appears below your work, and even that stirs your breathing a little. You click and close your eyes. Count to three, as if it would change anything.

Eyes fly open, and pupils swell to adjust to the light. You begin to scroll, and feel relief when nothing really affects you. Some shared articles. Some videos. Some… You pause. There’s an album recently uploaded (by someone else) of photos and videos, but you have to click to see them all. You quickly scroll past them.

The wolf growls.

Below the collection, you can’t seem to focus on anything. No status is interesting, no share is important. Nothing matters but who was in that first photo, what they were holding. You keep scrolling, faster and faster, searching for something anything compelling enough to silence the wolf breathing louder and louder. Frustrated, you turn your screen off. You bury your phone beneath your pillow, turn your back to the full moon. You wait, praying that sleep takes you.

A breath of wind. Now nothing but embers.

The wolf makes its move.

Consumed by a new drive, you snatch up your phone and unlock it. Who really gives a damn what you look at and for how long and why, you are a goddamned adult who can handle your own shit. You find the album, you click the first photo, and there they are. The aches return, your heart races at the sight of their smile. Every limb feels heavy with longing and loneliness.

But not for long.

Something shifts. Something stretches along every muscle fiber and shakes along your spine. Longing and loneliness are replaced by disbelief, by rage. You reach the end of the collection, you stare for a moment, hands shaking, limbs livid. You throw your phone across the room and do not flinch as it crashes against the brick wall. You might hear a crack, but if you do it doesn’t faze you. You are fucking furious. You breathe faster, louder, your eyes alight and burning. In broken digital rendering rests the final picture, a testament to what they were never willing to do or to be for you. Their new lover, looking blissfully into the camera, holding a puppy.